A few weeks ago, a nice fellow interviewed me for a project in one of his animation classes.  I thought I would publish my answers here, too.

How did
you get involved with animation?

In fourth
grade a few friends and I started making flip books.  Usually involving stick figures, guns,
defecation and the occasional rocketship. 
Years later, in college, I made some animated gifs.  That was before Flash came out.  After university, I got my hands on Flash 5,
and soon realized I couldn’t live without it.

Now, I
should point out that I didn’t study animation or art (although I wish I
had).  I have a degree in music.  So I was doing some teaching and gigging on
the side when I started learning Flash. 
I started taking on freelance animation and illustration jobs after
that.  That went on for maybe 5 or 7
years.  It’s really only been in the last
two years or so that I’ve made a concerted effort to earn a living solely with
animation.  I can’t say  that I’ve “arrived” yet, but my perseverance
has certainly paid off.

How did
you get your first job in animation and what it was like?

I
convinced my boss to pay me to make a cartoony website for the school.  It won some kind of local website award, and
so he was willing to hire me again to make some animated Ecards and banner ads
etc.

Do you
have any advice or tips for university graduates on how to get involved and be
successful in the animation industry?

As trite
as it sounds: stick with it.

Would you
recommend working freelance rather than directly in a company?

I’ve
always worked freelance.  It’s probably
pretty nice to work for a company if you can find one who will hire you.

Which
computer programmes do you use most often?

Flash,
Photoshop, Cubase,  various sound editing
software, Illustrator

What
equipment and materials for characters and sets are used most often in your
animations?

Paper,
pencil, and Wacom

Could you
tell me roughly how expensive equipment, materials and programmes for graduates
who wish to be freelance animators will cost?

I don’t
have a light table.  I wish I did.  But I have a tablet.  A graphire 2, and recently I bought a bamboo,
which was less expensive but just as good if not better.  I’ve worked on the larger intuos tablets and
I don’t find the larger drawing space to be advantageous.  So I’d say go with the bamboo for 50 EUR
roughly. 

Flash is
something like 200 or 300 bucks, I can’t remember exactly.  Some programs come with hardware — I got an
LT version of photoshop which came with my graphire, also music software came
with my midi keyboard.

Do you
have any advice for finding work and meeting deadlines?

You’ll
need a demo reel, and a webpage.  Even
one of those free blog pages will suffice to show off your work.  Even when you are starting out, never take on
any work that doesn’t compensate you fairly. 
If they try to persuade you with promises of  “exposure” or the like, politely run for your
life.

I think
that good planning is the key to meeting deadlines.    And metaphorically speaking, start with the
brush possible.

What was
the hardest job you have taken and what do you find as animator is generally
the hardest part of any job you undertake?

The job
I’m working on at the time is always the hardest, for some reason.  

And I’d
say the hardest part is good planning.  
Sometimes, I’ll have panels in the storyboard which are really vague and
I tell myself, “ah, I’ll deal with it when I get to it in Flash”.  It always comes back to bite me in the ass.

What do
you enjoy most about your work and animations you create?

Working
in Flash, most of my animations rely on “cutout” type animating.  Occasionally I find an excuse to do some
traditional animating; I get a real kick out of the times when it  turns out good.

As corny
as it sounds, the most rewarding thing is the rare occasion when my work  causes 
a genuine emotional response from the viewer. 

We are packing up tomorrow, and heading off on Monday. 

My new favorite website is Atlas Obscura.  Cargo Cults.  Ghost Towns. Stuff from Sax and Max.
Atlas Obscura | Wondrous, curious, and bizarre locations around the world

I  made a film for 24hourtoons – a laid back little contest where you submit a film within 24 hours of the topic being posted. 

But dig the cinematic opening for the upcoming game.  It’s amaaaaazing.
The Beatles: Rock Band

I almost fell for this one, and I wasn’t born yesterday. Thanks to ole Thunderbird for watching my back. What’s the word?
Phishing is particularly dangerous because 1) it is possible to fake a return email address and 2)it is possible to use misleading links.

I haven’t a clue how it’s done, but steps can be taken to make a maligned email appear to come from a legit sender, like pictured here.

Secondly, you can make a link go to a false address by changing the href tag .  Like this:  http://www.yahoo.com if you click on that link you’ll see it does not go where it would appear that it should.   Or just look down below in the status bar when rolling over said link.

If you look at the status bar before clicking, be sure to take a good look, too.  Domain names are always the last thing before the first single slash:
For example:  a url says:  http://www.google.com  — that’s google.  http://maps.google.com — still google, pointing to the subdomain maps.  Subdomains go to the left.  But http://www.google.com.seezen.net is not google, it’s seezen.net, with a subdomain called “com” and a sub-subdomain “google”.  So the ruse is to use a legit sounding subdomain in your evil webaddress to throw off the scent.  You wouldn’t click on http://www.iamavirus.com, but you might fall for http://www.google.com.iamavirus.com, which is basically what the one I got today does.

The final ingredient for a phish scam is to cause some false alarm, for example, a fake message from ebay saying that your account has been hacked.  However, that kind of thing has already been widely written about to the point that it would raise an automatic red flag.  This message is particularly insidious because it lacks that kind of drama and goes instead for a nagging “gotta get that done” kind of message.

Lifehacker – Use Caps Lock for Hand-Friendly Text Navigation – Ubergeek

Actually, it’s Uebergeek. Ü is shorthand for ue.  The monks came up with that.  So if you don’t have a ü key, you should type ue. 

which brings me to this link.  It’s a little hack that allows you to hold down the caps lock and use the right hand keys like arrow keys and then some.  Neato Toledo.

Indian flatbread.  It’s quicker than bread, but more involved labor-wise.  But absolutely worth it.  I can scarcely imagine having curry without it.

The basic ingredients are flour (whole wheat if possible), yogurt (or water in a pinch) a little salt and a bit of oil (optional).  I measure everything by the yogurt.  That is to say, one cup of yogurt yield 6 or 8 breads, or enough for 2 bread lovin’ curry eaters.  You add scant amounts of salt and oil, you add enough flour to make a kneadable thickness.  Then you knead.  If you have time, let it sit for an hour.  Or don’t.  Make into balls, no larger than ping pong balls.  Roll out thin — not flour torilla thin, but thinner than a fluffy pancake.

In a hot pan or skillet, ungreased, they do about a minute on each side.  After the first flip, you can push around down on it with a clean dishtowel, to get it to puff up.  Sometimes you flip too early then you can do this on a third flip.  Being the dude I am, I don’t always have a pile of clean dishtowel to put in direct contact with my food, so I opt for a large spoon.  On YT, you can find an indian lady deftly doing it this way.  But really, the towel approach is much more forgiving. 

This link is for my Mommy, who missed it the first time round. 

I enjoy making curry, although in my own little way.  That is to say, I don’t really measure anything, and the ingredients are seldom the same, save onions and curry powder.

seezen.net » Blog Archive » Fake Curry

BIRDY NAM NAM – THE PARACHUTE ENDING – CLIP OFFICIEL

I find this pretty damn cool.  I don’t love the music, but twinned with the visual it is very fitting.  Apparently done completely in Flash (!) you can’t deny the the strong influence from Fantastic Planet.  I also see a little bit of 1 2 3 4 5 … 11 12 from Sesame Street in once brief sequence, but maybe that’s just me.