Animation Mentor:
What inspired you to learn character animation?

Mario Pochat:
Back in 1994 (when I was young and beautiful), I was a Softimage demo artist transitioning to a production environment to make what I thought would be cool computer graphics in motion. We started getting production work that involved character animation, and throughout these projects I realized there was always something funky about our computer characters. As I watched 2D animated films and TV cartoons, I thought to myself, "Here I am, with the latest and greatest computer graphics software and hardware (and most expensive!), and here are these guys with just pencil and paper, making characters that look great, with clear actions/intentions that don't feel like zombies (like the ones we were making on the computer)." Later, I found out that character animation was an art form by itself, with its own challenges and very satisfying results. I started admiring classical animation and felt intrigued by it, so I left my sophisticated computer world and traded it for a pencil and paper. I started as an Animation Mentor student in Fall 2005, and am now a mentor.

Mario Pochat:
There are a lot of steps that I consider to be very important in my animation career. The first one that comes to mind is spacing – without having it right, any character in any medium looks like a zombie! Once I found out about it (while studying classical animation frame by frame), I incorporated an animation pass solely dedicated to spacing. Classical animation is the perfect medium for me to intimately visit and create each frame of animation, and space them and re-space them until they feel natural.

Another important step is body mechanics or anatomy in motion. This step solidifies and brings my animation to another level, making it more believable and also bringing additional clarity for the viewers. When I started paying more attention to body mechanics, my animated characters felt as if they had a bone structure.

The last step I will mention is storytelling. I found that having a strong understanding of the basic beginning-middle-end concept has benefited my animation. Animation Mentor reinforces this concept quite often: Animators are storytellers.

Mario Pochat:
I got my first job in 1995 at a well-known advertising agency in Mexico City called Advox that opened a tiny animation department with only one computer and animator (me!). It was a great place where we did TV commercials for well-respected firms. I worked there six years and was lucky enough to grow the animation team to six people. In the seventh year, the animation department grew so much that it became one of the three largest post-production houses in Mexico City, and the advertising agency slowly faded out. Animation was booming!

Mario Pochat:
I currently work at Mimo Films, a computer animation studio based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

In the past, I worked for a great visual effects studio called CIS Vancouver (previously known as Rainmaker Animation & Visual Effects) as an animator for game cinematics and feature films such as:

Feature Films

• Nutcracker: The Untold Story / CIS Vancouver (Lead Animator)
• Space Buddies / Keystone Entertainment (Lead Animator)
• Twilight / Summit Entertainment (Lead Animator)
• Dragon Ball Z / 20th Century Fox (Animation Supervisor)
• Tropic Thunder / DreamWorks SKG (Animator)
• Snow Buddies / Keystone Entertainment (Lead Animator)
• Blades of Glory / DreamWorks SKG (Lead Animator)
• Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties / 20th Century Fox (Animator)
• Dr. Dolittle 3 / 20th Century Fox (Animator)

• Need for Speed: Most Wanted / Electronic Arts (Animator)
• Amped 3 / Rainmaker Animation & Visual Effects (Animator)

Mario Pochat:
I am currently developing additional episodes for Marcelino and Bartolomeo: Bye-Bye! (Bye-Bye! was Mario's student film at Animation Mentor) at Mimo Films based on the success, popularity and demands from a wide range of sources from the festival circuit in 2007-2008 to a viral effect on the internet to a generated interest from audiences and TV networks. Season 1 will include 10 three-minute animated episodes to be distributed for online viewing, mobile devices, DVD and Blu-ray Discs.

Also, I am involved in Vancouver Animation, an online gazette based in Vancouver, where we interview great artists at national and international levels. This way, we can showcase their work and get to know about them a bit more.

Mario Pochat:
Here are three I love! I really liked animating Will Ferrell's face in Blades of Glory. I thought it was hilarious and very interesting at the same time. We required the facial expressions to go with the stunt actions while keeping Will Ferrell's personality in mind. It was wonderful to explore a variety of emotions within a character. I also liked animating a fruit bat and butterfly in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder. Again, the combination of "real" and "comic" in a visual effects film is very appealing to me. I liked how they made me explore the characters from various angles, breaking the "realism" barriers to find them and then taking them back to make it believable when sharing the screen with live actors. Lastly, back in my TV animated spot days, my favorite character was an animated pig from a bank based in Madrid, Spain (BBV). BBV commercials always had very entertaining shots and stories, and they were very open for our creative suggestions. It was all about utilizing the character's personality to drive the story. I'd always wanted to animate that pig!

Mario Pochat:
I have two mentors that impacted my animation life. My mentor from my classical animation education was Charles Phillips, a Canadian animator who graduated from Sheridan College. Charles taught me so much and never tired of my million questions. He made me see animation as a profession and career, and taught me that hard work pays off. Bret Parker from Pixar was my mentor while I was a student at Animation Mentor. She was very professional, and was always pushing my animation and making it progress in a very positive way, never giving up on exploring new possibilities for the animated character.

Mario Pochat:
The enthusiastic vibe of the school! Animation Mentor has had such a positive impact in my life, not only in animation but in other areas as well. When I was selected as a mentor, I was excited to be a part of that fantastic team and culture. Thanks for making this happen, Bobby! Such culture gets transpired in the Q&As, emails and forums with students and staff. Now I get to have a taste of working for a great company. To me, Animation Mentor is like Apple, doing great things for the world and in this case the world of animation education.

Mario Pochat:
It has been a wonderful experience. The transition was fairly easy since I was an Animation Mentor student and was already used to the online campus, the culture and the community. As a mentor, it keeps pushing me not only to be good, but to be better. I find that Animation Mentor students are the most active and committed as they learn to animate. I am honored to be part of the Animation Mentor faculty.

Mario Pochat:
My favorite stage in the production process is storyboards and animatics. I just love this stage, it comes naturally to me and I am happy as a clam while in it. I find that I can explore, plan and have so much fun going back and forth between the drawings and the computer software to bring them into a sequence without any major technical struggle. It is the right combination and balance of art and technology for me.

Mario Pochat:
Everything!! I remember I used to struggle during the production processes that were not related to animation, such as administration, leading roles, dealing with producers, managers, etc. I only wanted to see the final product and talk about animation. Now, I see the "not animation related" parts of the process as part of the entire process too. Something clicked in me that made me realize that they needed to co-exist. One would not be there without the other. What I like best about my job is to have animated stories, projects, and breathing characters. Animation is in my blood and understanding that great productions need to have several non-animation processes has been pivotal to my growth.

Mario Pochat:
In one word: Imagination. As animators, we are able to have an impact in other people's lives while sharing our point of view and give them food for thought, making them feel good in some way – usually with a laugh. I like to see when people are all smiles.