The Animation Podcast

“That to me is one of the funnest things about animation; is experimentation. And that’s…that’s the spirit of animation.”

Ken Duncan has served as a supervising animator on four Disney films. His characters include Thomas (Pocahontas), Meg (Hercules), Jane (Tarzan), Captain Amelia and Scroop (Treasure Planet). Ken was also a sequence supervisor on Dreamworks’ Sharktale. He currently is running his own studio, Duncan Studio, based in Pasadena, California. This is part one of the interview.

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“It’s still really intriguing for me to see the trick happen, to see things come to life. That has not got boring.”

The interview concludes with part three as James Baxter talks about learning from the old masters, what inspires him, and his experiences on films from Beauty and the Beast through Madagascar. James was the supervising animator of Belle, Rafiki, Quasimodo, Spirit, and director of the animation for Enchanted. This is part three of a three part interview.

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Q. I was wondering if you had any idea about how recruiters react when seeing generic rigs in the demo reels they receive. I heard that they lose interest as soon as they see animation created using certain “free online rigs”.
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The crazy thing about me doing an audio show is that I sometimes find it so darn tough to put my thoughts in to words and then have those words come out of my mouth. Go figure! While I will always strive to improve my “on the air” skills, I find that I receive quite a few questions from listeners that I would like to answer and share with everyone. Most of the time I try to reply to emails, but that only gets the info to one person. To do that in the podcasts would take more time than I’d like to admit. So today a new section is born!

Simply put, it’s Q&A.

When I get a question in an email or in the comments of one of the posts that is worthy of singling out, I’ll break it out and drop it in it’s own Q&A post. Eventually, there may be quite a bit of information here that many people would like to know so it seems logical to keep it under the Animation Notebook section of the site.

Look for the first Q&A later today.

Now you can let the whole world know that the voices in your head are “The voices of animation” by wearing your Animation Podcast t-shirt and Animation Podcast hat while sipping your beverage of choice from your Animation Podcast coffee cup! You can even stick your Animation Podcast magnet to your favorite piece of metal. So don’t walk – RUN! Get to The Animation Podcast Swag Shop (TAPSS to those in the know) and show the love!
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