Animation Mentor:
What inspired you to become an animator?

David Breaux:
From the time I could sit up straight on my own I was watching cartoons. The older I got, I just added SciFi and Fantasy films to the list of reasons to stay inside during the hot New Orleans summers. In high school, I got involved in ROTC and decided I wanted to be a fighter pilot in the Air Force, but along came The Little Mermaid and it really lit something within me. As fate would have it, our school took us to Disney World for our senior field trip, and as I exited the animation building I started looking for someone with a mouse shirt to ask how I could get into this...so between the information desk and the exit door my decision was made.

David Breaux:
My college was great, but at the time the animation program wasn’t aimed as strongly at performance animation. I learned all sorts of other art skills there and don’t want to take anything away from it. But if Animation Mentor would have existed at that time, I think I would have at least doubled up or signed up right after I graduated to get the hard core animation study under my belt. I learned just how much I was missing when I landed my first film gig, but by the end of the project my animation director made sure I was up to par. With his guidance I made leaps I never thought possible in such a short time.

David Breaux:
Characters are like potato chips- no one can have just one. Garfield was fun from a performance point of view. Aslan in the first Narnia film was great, though the only dialogue shot I got had his mouth out of frame, but I animated it as if it were in frame just to make the facial muscles and fur move correctly. I was a lead animator on Outlander, this weird Sci-Fi Viking film, and the monster in that was fun to work with even though the rig was a living hell.

David Breaux:
My first job was in video games. I got into a studio called Sunstorm in Indiana where I was supposed to animate, but ended up spending more time modeling, texturing, and even doing some game design. By the time I left I was a lead animator on Deer Hunter 4 - yahoo! In games, you have so many branching animations. I did an animation with a deer in mid-stride (run) and it got shot and tumbled to a stop. I showed it to the head of the company and he said “I don’t know it seems a little violent.” I was like, “Are you kidding man? We’re making hunting games here!” I think that was the first time I saw someone have an emotional connection with something I animated.

David Breaux:
It was Bill Kroyer, hands down. It was funny, in college I saw Fern Gully, and at the time was really wanting to get into Disney as a traditional 2D animator. But when I saw Fern Gully it opened my eyes to other studios whose work I could enjoy. Then after years in games I finally arrived at Rhythm & Hues to work on Garfield, The Movie and low and behold Bill was the animation director. As stated before I really learned what I didn’t know under his supervision, and I feel like he took me under his wing and really helped guide me to where I am today. What I found fascinating was that someone I had considered a mentor had also become a best friend. He requested me for several projects over the years, and it’s really become a two way road when we work together which is a great feeling.

David Breaux:
Animation Mentor has been great; there have been a few bumps here and there, but I like seeing when something clicks with the students and they make that next jump in their work. I also like being able to work with people from around the world, and see what they are like as people. I found explaining things to students helped me to understand animation more for myself because I would vocalize it for them and find myself going, "Yeah…why hadn't I thought of it like that before?"

David Breaux:
I like the eCritique® tool. I really like being able to draw over each frame. I even used it for one class to take each student’s reference video and draw little stick figures over what I considered their key acting poses and mechanical poses so they could see what I was looking at in the reference. I just wish the windows could be larger....