- Introductions
(Tell us about yourself)I'm 29 years old, love reading, nature/science, travel, and listening to the BBC and CBC. Work gives me lots of time to do the latter but not the first three, unfortunately.
- How did it all begin?
(What got you interested in the animation world?)I'd always been interested in animation – my dad's a big fan of Disney and the classic Warner Bros shorts so I was brought up with a keen sense of animation snobbery. :) I remember watching our recorded videotape of The Making of Beauty and the Beast over and over, and loved watching any making-of special I happened to find (in the days before DVD bonus features you had to catch them on TV), but it wasn't until reading The Art of The Hunchback of Notre Dame that I realised real people become animators, and at that insight all the pieces clicked into place and I knew that's what I wanted to do.
(Whereabouts did you go to school for animation?)Capilano College (now University) in North Vancouver, BC, Canada
(Where was you first animation job?)A studio called Bardel in Vancouver.
- How was your school like?
- How was your first animation job like?
It was really cool – I was very lucky to have such an interesting and inspiring show to cut my professional teeth on. It was by far the best thing I worked on in five years at that studio, and the project on which I had the most fun.
(How were the colleagues?)Really awesome – it was a project that even got the jaded old industry veterans excited, and it was great to work with a group of talented people who really cared about what they were doing. On top of that, we had some of the best talent possible, as the industry was at the bottom of a pretty nasty slump and we were one of the only shows in town, so we got to cherry-pick the talent. There was even someone from Disney working on it, who had moved up to Canada after Disney shut down their Florida studio.
(How were the offices/cubes?)I wasn't important enough to have an office or cube ... :) I had a hutch, sort of like the things you sometimes get in library study rooms, which was a sort of half-box with a shelving unit on top and a folding table-top animation desk on the work area. These were arranged in rows and we were crammed in the studio like bees in a hive, but it served my purposes just fine.
(What was your highlight of working there?)I ended up doing nearly every possible job on the project, from assistant character design to cleanup to board revisions to layout ... Towards the end of production, the overseas studio was falling behind, so we had to pick up some of the work that should have been done by them, mostly layout work. Drawing the layouts was fun but the best part was doing the posing, because that was almost like animating. By this point I'd been working with the characters so long that I was really confident drawing them off by heart, and just got to have fun with the performances and the action. I never thought I would get to animate for real, because 2D animation was pretty much dead by this point, but this was the closest I got the whole time I was in Vancouver, and it was delicious.
- Current position and goals accomplished
(Where do you work as of today?)
Disney! For better or for worse.
Disney! For better or for worse.
(Have you ticked off your “Animation Bucket List”?)Most of it ... I've animated on two 2D features now and met most of my animation heroes. I even got to animate someone careening around a corner! I can't think of anything specific I wanted to do in animation that I haven't at least had a taste of, but of course the longer I stay in it the more things I discover that I want to be a part of, like learning how to animate like the French and doing something that is exciting and different either in look or content.
(Have you accomplished your animation goal?)My goal, when I first got into animation, was to become a supervising animator and have a character of my own that I could call the shots on. I had to give it up when 2D animation got shut down, but it resurfaced when I came to Disney to work on Frog ... I am beginning to think it's going to have to go back on the shelf, though, because of the situation here and everywhere. At this point, if I ever achieve it, I'll be happy, but it's not really at the front of my mind as a major motivating force because it's just unrealistic at this point.
- Any future goals?
- Any advice for upcoming animators?
And that concludes our first interview with Sarah Airriess! I hope you enjoyed this, and please look out for more inspiring interviews just like this one!
