The Animation Podcast

“You learn everything from every production that you’re on, even if it’s, you know, a commercial that lasts three weeks. You learn something from it.”

It’s finally here – my exclusive podcast for Animation Mentor! It marks a few firsts: my first podcast in over a year; my first roundtable with five guests; my first women guests! Since this is an exclusive, you’ll need to head over to Animation Mentor to listen and download the show. My focus for this show was to grab five artists at Disney who recently went through the Talent Development Program at Disney and talk about how they got there and what it’s like to work at the studio. My guests include Story Artist Jeremy Spears, Visual Development Artist Lorelay Bove, Rough Inbetweener/Jack of all Trades Joe Pitt, 2D Animator Sarah Airriess, and CG Animator (and Animation Mentor alumni) Kira Lehtomaki. Please leave your comments and feedback on this this post. I’d love to hear what you think.

I’ve been sorely absent from this site for a large part of the last year, but I haven’t dropped off the hairy back of the internet. Pinched with little time to spare, I’ve fallen for the ease and short form of the tweet. I make a point not to tweet my life, so you won’t hear that I’m out of milk. But I do tweet about animation, which leads me to the best part…

I started a hashtag (a way to mark topics) on Twitter called #animtip.

Click this search and you’ll see what it is.

PLUS, every Tuesday is now Animtip Tuesday where tons of animation fanatics post their animation tips on animation. It’s fun and inspiring. Share an animtip on Twitter any day of the week, but especially on Animtip Tuesday.

I’ve added an icon at the top of the site to find me on Twitter. My username is AnimPodcast. If you follow me, send me a tweet to let me know who you are.

Fantastic animator Sandro Cleuzo sent me an email this week to tell me about the blog he has started. Only six posts in and it’s all great stuff. I can’t wait for more. He’s including some background of the images in each post, which will be of interest to those who like to learn about production work that never made it to the screen.

Sandro easily fits in my top ten of working traditional animators – if you think the drawings are beautiful, you should him move them on screen. I had the pleasure of watching him work on The Emperor’s New Groove, Sweating Bullets/Home on the Range, and The Princess and the Frog. Check him out:

Inspector Cleuzo

Copyright Sandro Cleuzo

In case you check back once in a while, wondering if the site is falling apart from disuse, you’ll see that it has been dusted off and slapped with a brand new coat of paint! This isn’t just a tease, I am getting back into the podcasting business. (I never left, really, I was only stretching my legs for a bit.)

I really wanted to get the shows into the spotlight. Now you’ll always find the latest show on the front page, above the fold.

This isn’t just a cosmetic overhaul, I decided to make some tough choices, like changing my link structure to a much simpler format. SO… if you’ve got links out there pointing here, they may not reach their final destination. That’s OK. We’ll rebuild together.

As with every revamp of the site – at least it’s been my experience – things will have broken, and may not work like before. I’ll be tinkering, discovering, and patching as I go. If you run into anything drastic, pitch me an email and let me know.

Some features are drifting into the shadows, while others are lurching forward and begging for some love. It will all balance out as we get back into the swing together.

I’m adding an image for when I tear it all apart next time and people wonder, what did it look like before?

I’m going to take my time here, so I’ll put the summary first:
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Ok, now for the long version…

In 1994, during my first week as an intern at Disney, everything was magic to me. They had a shelf full of fresh (and expensive) animation paper for anyone to use. Draw through your stack? Take some more! Unfathomable. The pencil supply shelf was like a treasure chest. I figured that these must be the most popular pencil choices of hundreds of the greatest artists from over decades of use. I took one of each to figure out which one would be the key to unlocking my latent drawing virtuosity. (None of them worked.) There were drawing classes every lunch hour – with food provided! Was this heaven? I was so wide-eyed and for years I saved every scrap of paper that came across my desk because I just knew that when I am 87 years old, I’ll spend my hours going through dusty old boxes, reading memos reminiscing how great life was.
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