The dreams and the realities of the animation business came together for four Animation Mentor graduates who got their first work on an animated feature with Blue Sky Studios' Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! In total, 22 Animation Mentor graduates and former students animated on the film.
The dream is working on a film as big as "Horton," which is based on the classic book and due out March 14 through 20th Century Fox. Featuring the voices of Jim Carrey and Steve Carell and directed by Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino, 'Horton' is the first attempt to turn Dr. Seuss' classic, cartoony style into CG animation.
The reality is the task of making the movie is a huge one, prompting Blue Sky to give temp animators including Animation Mentor grads Aja Bogdanoff, Gordana Fersini, Lluis Llobera, and Ken Music their first taste of the intense work that goes into making an animated feature. In all, 11 Animation Mentor graduates and another 11 former students worked on the film.
"When you arrive here it's really humbling to see how far away you still are, how much more you still have to learn," says Llobera, who was hired on for the last four months of production on the movie.
"It was eat, sleep and breathe animation — and not just animation, but really high-level character animation, some of the best stuff I've ever seen," says Bogdanoff.
Most temps worked on the film for eight to 10 weeks. They started out learning the Blue Sky pipeline and began working on background cycles, moving up to background characters and then to crowd shots and reaction with foreground characters. That required long hours of hard work, the ability to learn quickly and to collaborate with each other.
It was a lot to absorb, but Music says it also inspired him. "I felt like I was one of the greenest persons there and it's very easy to feel bad because you're not as good as everybody else — but it makes you try harder," he says.
Fersini says it was a challenge to adapt her own style, which she describes as "more a middle ground between artistic and cartoony," to the rubbery style of 'Horton.'
While the quality of the work was impressive, so was the willingness of the crew to answer questions and help temps make their shots as good as possible. "You could go up to anybody and ask them questions about workflow and how to do a specific task and everybody would help you even if they had crazy schedules," says Music.
Even more impressive, Llobera says, was how quantity never trumped quality. "Even though everybody was working super hard and the deadlines were really crazy sometimes, nobody sacrificed quality for speed," he says.
The students say they felt prepared for the job by Animation Mentor. "I think what we're doing very close to what I was learning," Fersini says. "I found all the ways of approaching a shot the same ones I used when I was a student."
Music says planning was the most important skill he brought to the job. "The more planning you did, even if it took you a little bit longer in the beginning, the faster you would get through the shots," he says.
Fersini agrees. "It's always the thing that, no matter which job I am doing, it's what gets me going well or gets me out of trouble if I'm stuck somewhere," she says.
Their education paid off especially in handling reviews.
"I didn't go in there feeling like if anyone said anything bad about my shot I would curl up into a ball and disappear," Bogdanoff says. "I actually really welcome negative feedback on my work, because as I learned at AM, that's the best way to improve."
Fersini says Blue Sky seemed pleased with the quality of their work. "I think they were very happy with the way we were prepared because it was very professional and we were able to produce professional work," she says.
Topping the experience was working on shots with the film's stars. "They were, of course, not dialog shots or anything with super high acting skills," says Music. "It's more like 'Horton' reaction shots. One of them was 'Horton' sleeping and he was kind of snoring."
The animators say Animation Mentor was as essential to their success at Blue Sky as 'Horton' has been to their careers. Llobera continues to work at Blue Sky, having moved on to the third Ice Age, while Fersini and Bogdanoff are at ReelFX in Dallas and Music works for Framestore in New York on commercials for Geico. All look back on the experience as a rewarding one.
"I think with ‘Horton,' how incredibly inspiring it was to be surrounded by some of the world's best animators and be able to walk up to them and ask for advice on shots," says Bogdanoff. "It was quite a gift to work in that kind of environment."
About Tom McLean
Tom McLean is a Los Angeles-based journalist who has written about the entertainment industry for Variety, the Los Angeles Times, Animation Magazine and Emmy Magazine. His first book, "Mutant Cinema: The X-Men Trilogy from Page to Screen," will be published shortly by Sequart.com Books.
