Variety’s 10 Animators to Watch in 2021 Includes Artists Working in Stop-Motion, Graphic Design and Puppetry

Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León

“The Bones”

Chilean stop-motion animators Cociña and León, who met while studying art and design at Universidad Católica de Chile, have always considered themselves “visual artists.”

“I wasn’t into animation,” says Cociña. “I was more into drawing and video. And, basically, Cristóbal came one day to an art show opening of my big charcoal drawings. And he said, ‘Would you like to work with me? We can work together with your drawings.’ So we started working together.”

Their inaugural collaboration was the experimental short film “Lucia” in 2007, followed by short films such as “Luis,” “The Arc” and “Padre. Madre.” In 2018, the duo’s debut feature, “The Wolf House,” a dark, gothic-like drama about a young woman who escapes a German cult and takes refuge in a house in southern Chile, won a spate of awards, including feature film at Annecy and animated film from the Boston Society of Film Critics.

Their latest, “The Bones,” which was exec produced by Ari Aster and again plumbs themes of death and nightmarish horror, took the best short film prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Cociña and León are next set to create animated sequences for Aster’s upcoming feature.

“We love these traditional fairy tales and, this sounds pretentious, but we have big goals,” says León. “We’re trying to build up, you could say, our own South American contemporary fairy tales, because, of course, we grew up here.”

“But we also admire the German, French and English fairy tales,” adds Cociña. “And when you think about it, Walt Disney was sort of the big film version of all that. So, we sort of have been thinking, we can make our own South American Walt Disney version of that. We will see if it works.” — Malina Saval

Justin Copeland and Chris Copeland

“Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts,” “Wonder Woman: Bloodlines”

When Justin Copeland was young he thought movies were real, until one day his mom, watching him playing with Hot Wheels — and clearly directing the action — said, “You’re just like Steven Spielberg.”

When he learned that “E.T.” wasn’t real but that someone made it, he says, “I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

After that, his brother Chris recalls, “We couldn’t play a game of tag without this fool walking around with a broken-ass camcorder like he was filming it.”

Justin drew comics because he didn’t have real film equipment. But Chris always wanted to draw and developed into the superior artist. His epiphany came when he’d show his portfolio to people at comic conventions and they’d say, “You have a real animated style, your drawings look like cartoons,” he says. “That dictated my direction.”

Since arriving in Los Angeles in 2009 the two have fulfilled their dreams to an astonishing degree: between them, they’ve directed and produced animation for Warner Bros., DreamWorks, Disney and Cartoon Network, and are developing a feature film together for DWA inspired by their childhood in Chicago.

When they worked separately, they’d talk “constantly” about what they learned. And as a team, Chris says there’s no rivalry. “We’ve respected each other’s lanes from the jump, and we want to be part of each other’s journey.” (For the record, they both say that if something goes wrong, Chris would be the one to tell their mom.)

Their success derives from their work ethic and skill but also a confluence of “blessing and timing,” Chris says.

“We did expect to be here eventually,” Justin adds. “We worked our tails off, so it makes sense, but we’re still so lucky.” — Stuart Miller

Aphton Corbin

“Twenty Something”

When Corbin was invited to direct her first short through Pixar’s SparkShorts Program, people suggested she design the film herself. But Corbin had other ideas.

“I wanted to take full advantage of being the director,” she says. “I did some concept artwork but I wanted the chance to direct a character designer, so I told her what I like—older cartoons and New Yorker and Charles Schulz comics—and she was amazing in how she translated it.”

That’s not to say Corbin felt fully comfortable in the director’s chair. Corbin’s 2D film, the Disney Plus release “Twenty Something,” is about a character named Gia celebrating her 21st birthday in a club… except Gia is so insecure about the onslaught of adulthood that she envisions herself as a stack of three earlier incarnations of herself—at ages one, 10 and 16—inside her trench coat, undermining her efforts to be grown up.

It’s a fitting theme for a child of the Pixar generation, who grew up with and went off to college with Andy from “Toy Story.” She is one of the few of her peers, however, who went on to land a job at Pixar and even worked on “Toy Story 4,” along with “Soul.”

Corbin, who now is in development on her first feature at Pixar, says that during her directing debut she was most frequently plagued by 16-year-old Aphton in her metaphorical trench coat. “She’d always pop up, saying, ‘This is going to be bad,’ ” she says with a chuckle. But she took well to directing others. “I’m very self-critical but in directing I get to see other people’s work, which is so exciting and beautiful and I’d say, ‘They’ll do a much better job than I could have. So this will
be good.’ ” — Stuart Miller

Lucy Heavens and Nic Smal

“Kiff”

Not every creative pairing is a natural fit from the start, but Heavens and Smal recognized their synergy from the moment they met at the Cape Town animation studio Sunrise Prods. “Just in how we worked together, we realized we were on the same page with regards to comedic tone, what we enjoy watching and consuming outside of the work that we make,” Smal says. “We have very different sensibilities, but [share] a very good sense of humor,” adds Heavens. “It felt like it came quite effortlessly.”

Though the South African duo come from different disciplines — Smal cut his teeth in graphic design and 2D animation, Heavens as a scriptwriter and creative director — their skill sets meshed perfectly when they began to develop “Kiff,” an animated series that this year was greenlit by the Disney Channel.

The show follows an optimistic squirrel and her bunny bestie, whose good intentions often lead to complete chaos. Set in the mountains where animals and magical creatures live together in harmony, the musical comedy show features the duo embarking on a series of adventures that the creators hope will have a positive impact on kids.
Smal describes the journey of bringing the animated buddy comedy to the Mouse House as “wildly impossible.” “There aren’t these kinds of comedy shows being made in South Africa,” Heavens says. “It felt so against all odds.”

Though “Kiff” will be produced out of Disney’s L.A. studios, the duo recognizes what their achievement means for South Africa’s fast-growing animation industry. “There’s no lack of talent here,” says Heavens. “It’s inspiring,” adds Smal. “It gives animators and creators and illustrators an example of how you can create something, and if you believe in it, this is what’s possible.” — Christopher Vourlias

Yashar Kassai

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Next Chapter”

Growing up watching “Star Trek” fostered a love of sci-fi in Dallas native Kassai. But although he was a fan, it wasn’t until his sophomore year in college that he realized he could have a career in animation.

He moved to Los Angeles nine years ago to pursue his dream. “I couldn’t be one of those people without a job. I was too afraid,” he says. “So I locked that in from a distance first and then came here with some sense of security in mind at least.”

After a stint at Sony, where he worked on “The Emoji Movie,” among others, Kassai segued to Nickelodeon, where is now production designer on “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Next Chapter.” The film is scheduled to come out in 2023.

“I have loved that franchise since I was a kid,” he says, confessing that Raphael is his fave. “I have bedsheets and lunch boxes and T-shirts and socks. But now I am trying to re-create a unique interpretation that is not too distant from the original franchise that we all know and are familiar with, and also make it fresh.”

To make it new while not jettisoning what made “Ninja Turtles” so beloved, Kassai says, “you anchor yourself enough in the familiar elements of it so that it is easily recognizable but then you either add or enhance some of the existing charm of
the franchise.”

With modern animation tools and 3D, he feels a responsibility to make something cool for the new movie similar to “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” and “The Mitchells vs. the Machines.”

“The franchise deserves that, I think.” — Shalini Dore

Lindsey Olivares

“The Mitchells vs. the Machines”

Olivares got her start at DreamWorks Animation in 2009 after graduating from Ringling College of Art and Design, working on “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” in visual development. “It was a great training course for me,” she says. “It was in its early development stage. I really got to stay with it all the way through to the end and got to understand animation production more intimately.”

After helping out on a few other projects at DWA, Olivares started doing freelance gigs. Eventually she found her way to Sony Pictures Animation, where she worked in early development on what would become “The Mitchells vs. the Machines,” ultimately becoming production designer and lead character designer on the hit film, responsible for a lot of its unique look.

“I really loved pushing and breaking the medium” in the movie, she says. “Conceptually, we were trying to make a movie about humans, celebrating humans versus technology, and so we wanted the human hand to be felt. We wanted that kind of hand-drawn, mark-making quality to persist into the final frames, and we’re really happy with where we landed with it. It was a nice blend of our personal taste, and something that can push the story forward.”

She’s working for a project in early development at DreamWorks Animation as well as personal projects.

Olivares advises people looking to get into animation to “post your work, find a community online, even if it’s among peers. It’s important to find your voice, find why you like doing things, and your work will be more genuine for it.” — Terry Flores

Sung Shin

“Star Trek: Prodigy”

Shin brings to Nickelodeon’s “Star Trek: Prodigy” a love for telling a story filled with adventure and characters that embody the franchise’s “humanistic” philosophy and inclusiveness.

But, there’s also humor in the stories as well. “It’s really fun,” Shin says, “the comedy is not forced and it comes from within the characters.”
Shin took a roundabout route to the animation world. He studied English literature in college with the aim to become a writer. “Comparatively, to most other animators, I do feel like I started a little bit later.”

Shin took classes at community college in art, where he was encouraged to take his art career further, and attended CalArts for a year. “I was in love with hand-drawn animation at the time, and 2D animation was kind of shutting down in the U.S., so I went overseas to [work at] Studio Mir” in South Korea, where he worked on “The Legend of Korra,” among other projects.

His connections there led him to animation jobs in the U.S., including “Avengers Assemble,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Young Justice” and “Voltron: Legendary Defender” while also directing live-action shorts.
Animation “is just a different form of storytelling, but it all connects,” he says. “I do kind of see myself as a filmmaker slash storyteller first.”

Does Shin worry about leading a new iteration of such a beloved franchise with devoted fans? The team behind the show is confident that the characters and stories capture the spirit of “Star Trek” — “we have amazing writers” he says, and credits exec producer Ben Hibon with his visionary leadership.

He’s continuing to take classes and develop his voice as a filmmaker. — Carole Horst

Gaelle Thierry

“The Summit of the Gods”

As with many animators, Thierry was a toddler who loved to draw. But her interest in animated film had gorier roots than most. “When I was 10, my mother put on ‘Akira,’” Thierry says. “It’s not the kind of movie to see when you are 10 — she didn’t know it was so violent. But I saw that movie, and I was fascinated with the animation. I knew I wanted to do this.”

Thierry’s choice of education was also inspired by a movie. She attended Gobelins, L’École de L’Image in Paris after watching a documentary about the school. In 2010, she won the Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival’s award for student film with her short “The Lighthouse Keeper.”

She has since worked on children’s projects including “The Amazing World of Gumball,” “Ernest and Celestine,” comic-book adaptation “Lastman” and, most recently, the manga adaptation “The Summit of the Gods,” for which she served as animation director.

“ ‘The Summit of the Gods’ was the most challenging project I did in my whole career,” Thierry says. “My first time on a realistic project. The movements you do, you have to do them right. Mistakes? It’s not possible.”

Up next, Thierry will work on the planned “Ernest and Celestine” sequel. Beyond that, she hopes to one day direct her own film. She’s already working on the screenplay: “It’s about a little puppet. And a boy. And it’s about life and death.”— Selome Hailu

Victoria Vincent

“We the People”

Vincent was barely out of college at CalArts last year when she got an offer to work on a project with some big names attached. As in, really big names: think Netflix, Kenya Barris, Michelle Obama and Barack Obama.

But as big a deal as it might have been to be recruited to direct a segment of Netflix’s series “We the People” (in her case, the episode on income taxes), Vincent was hardly new to animating for a large audience. Growing up obsessed with Akira Toriyama and Jamie Hewlett, Vincent had been uploading her homemade animated projects to YouTube for a while when, three years ago, a short of hers titled “Float Land” blew up on Reddit.

“Before that I had maybe 10 subscribers and no views on anything,” she remembers, “so it was really exciting to see that people were suddenly interested in what I was doing.”

These days she has just shy of a million subscribers on YouTube, with a thriving fanbase on Instagram and a merch shop as well, and she’s already developed an immediately recognizable style and sensibility: full of deadpan dark humor, surrealistically skewed perspectives and themes of alienation and digital-age ennui.

That style can be seen most clearly in her recent nine-minute short “Twins in Paradise,” which features two tennis prodigy sisters who suffer spiraling identity crises while an escalating military conflict plays out unnoticed in the background. It was inspired, she says, by the experience of CalArts during the pandemic, and “the feeling of being in a privileged little artistic bubble while the world outside is ending, and knowing it’s still gonna end whether you pay attention or not.”

Vincent is developing her own series with Bento Box: titled “Dirt Girls,” it’s loosely inspired by her childhood in Riverside, Calif. — Andrew Barker

Marc James Roels and Emma de Swaef

“The House”

Roels studied animation in school, but by the end “had had enough, so I transitioned into live action, making short films and commercials.” De Swaef, by contrast, studied live-action filmmaking but loved making puppets.

Those handmade wooly beings provided this Ghent-based couple with the perfect balance: “Working with puppets is similar to live action in that you’re using lights and cameras on sets,” she says, “except everything is in miniature… and a whole lot slower.”

But the pace of creating their fest-favorite films “Oh Willy” and “The Magnificent Cake” doesn’t take a toll because they don’t do the actual animating themselves. “That would drive us completely bonkers,” Roels says. De Swaef adds: “We’re in awe of how our animators do it.” (Their work will be featured in Netflix’s upcoming anthology “The House.”)

But the duo do have challenges. “When we’re writing, it’s always in the back of our mind that the puppets can’t do a lot of things, they can’t sit down or bend over,” Roels says. “But we use those constraints to inspire us and the storytelling comes from the inflexibility we face.”

De Swaef has tried working with clay and other materials but says, “I just love textiles and especially wool.”

That said, the couple believe they can draw you into an imaginary world with any kind of puppet if the story works, Roels says. De Swaef points out that Roels entertains their daughter by using two fingers to create a little man. “She feels for him when he falls and cries when he goes away,” de Swaef says. “As humans we want to believe, to see the characters. With very little you can do so much.” — Stuart Miller