Animation Mentor:
What inspired you to learn animation?

Benjamin De Schrijver:
For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve loved computer games. Even when I was 6 or 7 I was playing (or watching my brother playing) games like Prince of Persia and Wolfenstein3D. I really grew up with them, so when I saw an ad for software to create your own games when I was around 13, I was naturally attracted to it. Through that, I started getting an interest in 3D software and became attracted to pursuing a career in commercials (since here in Belgium, game development companies or film/TV animation studios were virtually nonexistent). But as I was looking for a college or university, I bumped into a forum thread at CGtalk.com announcing Animation Mentor. Bobby, Carlos and Shawn became active in this thread, and we were advised to read The Illusion of Life. And when I did, a whole new world opened up to me. I realized some of the potential of animation, of acting, filmmaking and artistic levels (I say “some” because the more I learned, the more I saw that potential expand). I had never felt this passionate about something before. It fired up my old interest in drawing again, after having barely drawn anything in over 6 years, and I started paying more and more attention to films. And before I knew it, I was running around in the virtual hallways of Animation Mentor as one of the few 2D students. So really, I owe Animation Mentor not only for teaching me animation, but for allowing me to discover my passion for it as well.

Benjamin De Schrijver:
Honestly, mixed. On the positive side, I don’t doubt for a second that there’s no place anywhere in the world where I would’ve gotten a better education in the craft of animation. What this school teaches and the way they teach it is amazing. On the negative side, this being a school comprised almost entirely of CG animation students, there was very little support or info as to what was needed to animate with pencil and paper, or to learn how to draw. To find out about these things, I often had to contact mentors other than my own that did have a 2D background, or I had to resort to websites or books outside of Animation Mentor. This was very frustrating at times, but fortunately, the web has expanded so much in the past few years, that this wasn’t too much of a problem -- from animation lectures and rough animation tests on YouTube, to class notes posted by blogging animation students, to drawing theories posted by professional animators, storyboard artists and draftsmen. Sometimes it was difficult finding my way around all of this information, and finding out what would really work for me personally, but I don’t think I would’ve been able to learn this fast, say, a decade ago. Another negative would be that animating at home has this uncanny ability to become much harder and frustrating when your life outside of animation isn’t going too well, haha.

Benjamin De Schrijver:
How to teach myself. How to really be an artist, by consciously making informed judgments of what’s happening in the world around me. I’ve learned a ton through what Animation Mentor taught me directly, but I’d wager that I’ve learned even more by studying life, other arts, and other artists’ work.  Animation Mentor taught me how to do that— how to approach it. Doing that keeps your work honest, which I found is truly important for me to keep my work interesting and to feel satisfied with it. It’s incredibly hard to do that well -- even if I give it my all I often don’t succeed -- but it’s incredibly fulfilling when it does happen. Unfortunately, it’s a surprisingly rare quality to find out there, and not only in animation.

Benjamin De Schrijver:
Ever since I discovered animation, I’ve wanted to be a supervising animator on one particular character of a feature film. The acting aspect is what attracts me the most to character animation, and I really hope to help push the acting in animation to new levels in the future. However, as I was studying about acting, I came to realize that if we really want to get to a point in animated acting where we can get the depth, diversity and truth of that of live-action or the stage, we would also have to explore more diverse types of films. Since then, I’ve become interested in more and more aspects of filmmaking, such as editing, cinematography and writing. Writing in particular can be joyful, as you can put so much of your own life into it, similar to the cathartic experience of acting that I one day hope to achieve. So I guess right now my absolute dream job would be the position Hayao Miyazaki is in. Completely writing, boarding and directing my own films, while also getting the chance to animate on them.

Benjamin De Schrijver:
Animation/acting-wise, I’d have to say my favorite would be the Beast’s transformation scene in Beauty and the Beast. It’s not what you’d normally consider acting, but the emotion expressed through almost abstract movement simply blows me away. As for a CG scene, my favorite is actually from a hand-drawn film: the scene where the Iron Giant starts crying when he thinks Hogarth has died. The acting there feels so completely spontaneous, true, and again, honest. It’s really a deeply touching moment, even when looked at outside of context, which is no doubt a wonderful acting achievement.
If we’re talking about a favorite animated scene, though, instead of favorite animation, I’d no doubt end up with a scene from a Studio Ghibli film, or perhaps from another wonderful Japanese film, Mind Game. There are so many impressive scenes in those films, though, that I can’t say one or another really stands out above all the rest.