Holy crap!! I hope I can keep up with all this grilling! This is great. But I hope everybody can be patient, it'll probably take me a couple of days to get through all these questions.

Elder:

1) To be a great character animator, which I hope to someday be, I think it's all about delivering a performance that both fits within the constraints of and furthers the audiences understanding of your characters personality.

2) It's hard to name one piece, because I get inspired by so many animated films and shorts, and TV shows. But I suppose the Disney classics and the Pixar films are the ones I always come back to.

3) See 1), above!

4) I suppose I liked the idea of trying something new. This was back in 1995 and the recent upheaval hadn't begun. And I really disliked it at first, in fact I went back to 2d to work on Tarzan, thinking I was done with CG. But then I got placed on Dinosaur, and much to my surprise I really enjoyed it. So I wish I could say my switch to 3d was a case of prudent foresight, it was pure chance.

5) Sheer panic, my friend.

6) It seemed like more fun than graphic design. I'm not one of those folks that knew from the age of five that they wanted to grow up to be an animator. I envy people like that.

7) Practice, practice, and practice!

Hello Doug,

Very cool that you are doing this (though it must be hell to keep up with our questions). So I'll keep mine breif.

Now and then there is a lot of talk here about acting. How much do you "practice" acting, if you are practicing it at all? Or do you have any "cheats" that you know you can use here and there just to "get by"
Or do you think it's essencial that all animators take acting classes now and then?

Thanks again for listening!

best regards
stefan andersson
 

1. Do you ever become confident that you can execute any shot? Or handle complex shots and know they'll come out (at the very least) decent? Or is there always a degree of uncertainty no matter how good you get?

2. I guess this is similar to one of Elder's questions, but...what state of mind are you usually in while you're animating?

OK, I'm back! I'm now at home, on my own time, with a lovely gin & tonic and a bowl of salt and vinegar chips (that's crisps to you, Andy). Yum.

I had to finish off painting a room in my house. All you folks who are just starting out in animation-- it's important to have outside interests besides animation. I've discovered that my outside interests consist of doing whatever my wife tells me to. Ha!

Todd,

I am one of six supervising animators on Chicken Little. We are each responsible for one or two characters, and my characters are Runt of the Litter (the pig) and Fish out of Water. When an animator is cast a shot with one of my characters in it, they need to show me before they show the director. This helps to keep each character's performance, mannerisms etc consistent. But unlike traditional, I don't have a set crew of animators. Critique is done by them calling me and me strolling on over to their desk. I have to say that everybody on the crew is very professional and talented.  

Floyd, my man!

1) Without a doubt, learning computerese. I didn't even have a computer at home when I started using one at work. I'd never been on the net. I'd never sent an email. I had no concept of directories, files, commands, scripts, and so on. I was a blind man in a dark room. Now I'm a man suffering from severe cataracts in a dimly-lit room.

2)Hmmm, tough one. We are spoiled with so many great tools at Disney that it's hard to imagine anything else I would need. I suppose just faster machines. But of course, the faster the machines get, the more they load onto the rigs so it all ends up a wash anyway.