Illustrated self-portraits of Variety’s 10 Animators to watch class of 2015.
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Phil Bourassa
Once an aspiring comicbook artist, Bourassa is living his dream, albeit in a slightly different way, in the DC Comics universe at Warner Bros. Animation.“As a young kid who loved to draw, I discovered comicbooks early on,” he says. “I even created my own comicbook.”He took it to Comic-Con in 2001 and sold between 50 and 100 copies, one of which ended up in the hands of a Warners exec. “She liked it and gave my book to (director) Denys Cowan, who did ‘Static Shock,’ and he brought me in to do character design.”Since then, Bourassa has had a chance to become artistically involved with some of the most iconic characters in the comicbook realm, including Superman, Batman and Robin. “It’s the best job in the world to get to work with these beloved characters with such a storied tradition both at this studio and in the comics,” he says.And he’s already got an Emmy for his efforts. The character designer picked up the kudo for individual achievement in animation for the first episode of “Young Justice,” about superhero sidekicks striking out on their own, airing on Cartoon Network from 2010 until March 2013.Though he’s been at it for 13 years, “I still feel like I have to push myself every day to improve my craft … to take in new influences and new inspirations and infuse them in my work,” he says. “I hope I’m still able to be competitive and do better work next year than I’m doing this year. That’s always my goal.”— Terry Flores
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Lorelay Bove and Brittney Lee
For girls who love drawing, growing up to work at Disney is nearly the happiest ending imaginable.
That’s how visual development artists Bove and Lee feel about the path that led them to share an office at Walt Disney Animation Studios, where the pair have become heirs to the Mary Blair mantle.
Born in Spain, Bove has always adored the Disney classics. When her family moved to America, her father, an artist, told young Lorelay, “Dreams come true if you work hard here.”
“It was like a movie,” she says. That spirit pushed her to apply to Disney-founded CalArts (she was turned down at first, but took drawing classes, built a portfolio and tried again). “I’m always drawing by heart and emotion, rather than draftsmanship,” says Bove, who interned for Pixar the summer after graduation, followed by a spot in Disney’s trainee program.
It was “The Little Mermaid” that convinced Lee she wanted to be an animator. In first grade, she sent a drawing inspired by the film to the Disney Channel, which featured her sketch on-air.
“Because I came from Pennsylvania, my art teachers had no advice to give,” recalls Lee, who applied to Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York, where she was mentored by Disney vet Nancy Beiman. “I studied animation there off in the frozen tundra.”
Both are now considered rising stars within the Mouse House’s halls. Bove brought her Spanish background to the design of “Wreck-It Ralph.”
The film’s vidgame world of Sugar Rush, made of candy, was inspired by (Catalan architect) Antoni Gaudi, she says.
Meanwhile, Lee can be credited with many of “Frozen’s” signature looks, from the Ice Palace interiors to Elsa’s “aspirational” hairstyle. “When I started on the film, she had black hair and blue skin,” Lee says.
Both are set for larger roles on Disney’s still-secret 2018 feature.
— Peter Debruge -
Daron Nefcy
T hough she’s only a few years removed from film school, 29-year-old Nefcy is already knee-deep in storyboards for season two of her first animated series, Disney’s “Star vs. the Forces of Evil.” Based on a drawing she created during her junior year at CalArts, the hand-drawn series follows the wild travails of a 14-year-old magical princess sent to live on Earth as a sort of intergalactic exchange student.
Nefcy says she grew obsessed with Japanese animation in middle school, and wanted to make an American “magical girl story” along the lines of “Sailor Moon,” albeit one with a gentle subversive streak — Jenny Slate, for instance, voices the character Pony Head, a floating, disembodied unicorn head that dispenses decidedly unwise advice to our heroine, like a crocked Jiminy Cricket.
Nefcy is only the second woman to create an original Disney Television Animation series — and the first to do so since 1997 — yet she says she’s hardly had to battle with the forces of patriarchy at Disney.
“I guess in the past animation has been more of a boys’ club, but I haven’t felt that at all,” she says. “My crew is about half female, maybe even a little more.”
With “Star” picked up for a second season midway through the first’s run on the Disney Channel — it debuts on Disney XD later this month — Nefcy is full of praise for the freedom the Mouse House’s channel has afforded her.
“Disney tries to do creative-driven projects,” she says, “and I’m really happy to be on a TV show right now. I loved ‘Big Hero 6’ and I love what Laika is doing, but I wish more (animated) movies would branch out and try to be a little more interesting. TV’s kinda the place to be for animation right now.”
— Andrew Barker -
Dylan Brown
During the 18 years he spent at Pixar, Brown was a top animator on “Toy Story 2,” “Finding Nemo” and “Ratatouille.” He also ran Pixar’s short-lived branch studio in Vancouver. Now at Paramount, he will co-direct the newly established Paramount Animation’s first all-CG feature animated film.
“I seem to be drawn toward — or fall into — the beginnings of studios,” Brown chuckles. “I started at Pixar in 1995. I grew up there professionally, then went up to Vancouver to start a new studio. I spent a year thinking about … the things that create the right kind of culture, where people can be truly creative and enjoy coming to work. Coming here was like joining another start-up.”
When Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg came to Disney from Paramount in 1984, neither executive had any experience making animated films. They quickly learned just how different animation production is from live action. Brown has been applying his experience at Pixar to helping the personnel at Paramount scale a similar learning curve.
“Paramount is a 102-year-old live-action studio that hasn’t dabbled in animation recently beyond distribution,” he says. “It’s refreshing that it’s not locked into any kind of historical track or way of doing things. But because it doesn’t have any tried-and-true methods, there are some hard roads to navigate (when it comes to) helping people who only know how live action films are made understand how animation works.”
— Charles Solomon -
Matt and Paul Layzell
The duo have been separated by an ocean and a continent for a little over a year now, but they still manage to make their partnership work. Matt is working at Nickelodeon as an animating director on “Sanjay and Craig” while Paul remains in London, working on freelance projects for such studios as Disney and Cartoon Network. But as the Layzell brothers, they continue to create projects in a style that defies categorization.
“I don’t think we’re necessarily pinned down by a particular kind of style,” Paul says. “We can change it depending on what the idea is.”
As a team, the brothers play to each other’s strengths: Matt, the elder by three years (“Two and a half,” interjects Paul), comes from an animation background while Paul studied illustration. And theirs is a partnership built on strong familial bond.
“I always remember drawing with Paul, and coming up with ideas and characters since we were little kids,” Matt says. “It just feels natural.”
“We work together really well,” agrees Paul. “We have really similar ways of thinking about things. ”
While Matt is gaining experience about the studio system at Nick, they are collaborating on developing their own TV shows.
“The stuff we’re really excited about, we want to approach it in the right way,” Matt says. “It’s taught me so much about working with a team and how to run a show efficiently. A team that can work well together is very important.”
— Terry Flores -
Miguel Jiron
“I started drawing before I learned how to write, which is why I grip pencils with four of my fingers,” says Miguel Jiron, who was born in Baton Rouge, La., to Nicaraguan parents who spoke Spanish at home. “Growing up, I never felt like I was the same as my peers, just because I ate beans for breakfast,” Jiron says.
At first, the young artist was reluctant to incorporate his heritage into his work, although he came around to the idea in grad school at USC, where his explosively colorful (and personal) thesis film, “Lagarto,” playfully re-creates a childhood trip to Nicaragua, where iguanas come to life in the sun and the sound of rolling R’s fills the sky.
“While I was at USC, I learned a little bit of CGI, just enough so I could wrap my brain around it, but it’s nothing like putting pen to paper — or stylus to Cintiq these days,” says Jiron, who makes his living as a storyboard artist on Illumination’s “Minions” movie by day, but spends his nights and weekends working on a short film and comicbook projects.
Still, that pace seems relaxed compared to two years working 80-hour weeks in Japanese artist Takashi Murakami’s New York studio. “I was in charge of physically executing his paintings,” Jiron says. “You got to have your name written on the back of every painting you worked on.” He credits the demanding experience with pushing him toward animation, where a group of artists come together to create work no individual could accomplish alone. — Peter Debruge -
Nick Bruno
Right now, Bruno is working for “Peanuts,” and he couldn’t be happier.
A supervising animator on Blue Sky’s “The Peanuts Movie,” due out in November, Bruno is bringing Charles Schulz’s beloved characters to a new generation. And he’s not unaware of the pressure.
“It’s the first project that, when we got it, my dad called with an opinion on how not to screw it up,” he says.
It makes sense that Bruno is working on a movie about a bunch of kids, since keeping his childlike sensibility alive is very important to him. “It’s always been important to me to not let that 8-year-old version of me die,” he says. “It’s the thing that sparks everything I do. If I’m trying to be funny, I want to make that 8-year-old version of me laugh; if I’m trying to be heartfelt, I want to move that 8-year-old me.”
Bruno’s inner kid had varied influences, from Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” cartoons, to the Muppets, Looney Tunes, “Ren & Stimpy” and movies by John Hughes. “If you mix all that into one big melting pot, you get one weird kid,” he jokes.
He pretty much always knew what he wanted to do. “In my sixth-grade yearbook it says, ‘When I grow up, I will be …’ and next to my name it said animator or baseball player,” he recalls. “At the time, it seemed more realistic to become a baseball player, because animation was, and still is, to me, like joining a circus. How the hell do you join a circus? But you know it exists and people are in it.”
— Terry Flores -
Thomas Grummt
As lead animator for the character Cloudjumper in DreamWorks’ “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” German-born Grummt had to create movements for the four-winged dragon that carries Valka (Cate Blanchett) through the skies and that presented major challenges. Animators study real movements and caricature them. But no bird or animal has two sets of wings that flap — the turbulence they’d produce would make flight impossible.
“We talked about how to make his double set of wings convincing, so people wouldn’t question it and it would still look cool,” Grummt says. “(Director) Dean DeBlois wanted the character to be elegant, massive, graceful and in control at all times. So it was really important that the double wings weren’t over-complicating the visuals.”
In 2010, when Simon Otto, head of character animation on “Dragon 2,” presented a program about the first ‘Dragon’ film in Frankfurt, Germany, Grummt was one of several local students who showed him their work. “I was really impressed,” Otto recalls. “I took the reel back, we reviewed it and Thomas came to DreamWorks for ‘Croods’ and ‘Kung Fu Panda 2.’ When we were in development on ‘Dragon 2,’ I was able to put him in a lead position. I’ve told (president of production) Bonnie Arnold, there’s no way this kid’s not going to be on ‘Dragon 3.’”
Grummt hopes Otto’s plan comes true: “I don’t know what my next show’s going to be right now: I’d love to work on ‘Croods 2,’ but eventually I want to work on ‘Dragon 3.’ ”
— Charles Solomon -
Tim Reckart
In his Oscar-nominated student film “Head Over Heels,” Reckart used stop-motion animation to depict an older couple who were on such bad terms they could no longer agree which way was up: Each partner’s floor was the other’s ceiling.
Now Reckart has announced plans to direct an animated feature for Sony Pictures Animation. The film will be CG rather than stop-motion, but Reckart sees similarities in the two media.
“From the point of view of directing, you’re still crafting a performance frame by frame,” he says. “Stop-motion and CG both involve a three-dimensional space that allows artists to use live-action film language and incorporate more sophisticated camera moves.”
Reckart, who is developing both the feature at Sony and a series to be made in conjunction with BBC Worldwide and Evergreen Studios, is looking forward to the collaborative atmosphere of a major studio after making “Head Over Heels” with a few friends.
“Working in a studio can feel like you’ve got more balls in the air or it can feel more supportive,” he says. “If the people are pulling together to make the film, you’ve got so much more support. You’re not the one guy who’s got to hold all the storyboards in your head, you’ve got a whole team with you. I’m looking forward to having the support of people who are applying their minds to the same problems.”
— Charles Solomon -
Josh Cooley
Cooley, who served as the head of story on Pixar’s “Inside Out,” the most eagerly anticipated animated film of 2015, was recently named John Lasseter’s co-director for “Toy Story 4,” the most eagerly anticipated animated film of 2017.
Cooley, who just finished directing a short film set in the world of “Inside Out” that will be on the Blu-ray, began at Pixar as an intern in the story department on “Cars.” He was chosen for that spot by the late Joe Ranft, probably the finest animation storyman of his generation.
“Joe singled out Josh Cooley as a guy with potential, and Joe knew how to pick ‘em,” says “Inside Out” director Pete Docter. “Josh is funny, unique and collaborative. And funny.”
While working on “Inside Out,” Cooley tried to follow Ranft’s example. “On ‘Cars,’ Joe always said about the story, ‘It’s the journey, not just the destination.’ He brought the same attitude to running the department: It’s working together and collaborating with everybody that’s the real treat.”
Turning to his new assignment, Cooley adds, “To be co-director on ‘Toy Story 4’ with John, who brought the ‘Toy Story’ characters to the screen 20 years ago, is a dream come true.
“When I first saw ‘Toy Story’ I was amazed by the groundbreaking computer-generated animation. But it was the strong storytelling that kept me coming back. ‘Toy Story 4’ will continue that tradition and I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of it!”
— Charles Solomon