Featured Mentor Morgan Kelly
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Animation Mentor:
What inspired you to become an animator?

Morgan Kelly:
Firstly, it was creating characters through drawings and thinking about their back-stories – what makes them who they are, how would they stand, what are some reasons for their expressions? I felt like I could draw a character and then imagine how they would move, talk and act on the page. Animation really brought those ideas into a reality for me. And then it was movies, and how they have that ability to draw us in. I remember watching ET in the theater and being freaked out when Elliot tossed his baseball into the garden shed, and a moment later it mysteriously rolled back out. It made me think, what the hell is in there? Also the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park –when I saw those I was sold. Animation just seemed like the perfect medium that combined both of those interests.

Morgan Kelly:
I’d have liked to have polished and completed more of my early animation, and gotten more feedback from peers and my professors during the process. At CalArts I didn’t really start to feel like an animator until I finished my 4th year short and had it screened along with other classmates’ films. Witnessing people react to the short made such a difference to me. It’s a thrill because you feel like your ideas are communicating and not just moving anymore. And when it plays in front of a live audience you know for sure whether it does that successfully. When it doesn’t it’s miserable, but when it does it’s unbelievable because the animation seems to have a life of it’s own. You forget about the hard work and all the choices you made – acting decisions, timing, poses and expressions. It becomes alive. Before that my traditional and 3D animation assignments just felt like tests.

Morgan Kelly:
It was animating 2 characters with 3D Studio Max for an online videogame at a small company in Valencia, Ca. This was during school and it was a great place to cut my teeth because of the opportunity to work on many projects, different styles, varied responsibilities and generally to work with only a few animators. I felt like it was a great microcosm of art and business that helped to prepare me for the madness of the larger studio environment.

Morgan Kelly:
Line Andersen is a fantastic animator who I learned a lot from during Bee Movie and Monsters Vs Aliens. Serguei Kouchnerov is a great inspiration who always reminds me about the artist in animators. James Baxter is very cool; I’m inspired by his drive to push the medium further and achieve a high-level of quality through technique and thought behind a character’s actions. Also, Jeremy Cantor and Pepe Valencia’s skill and enthusiasm were very influential with my early computer animation education.

Morgan Kelly:
Hammy from Over the Hedge was fun; he’s so innocent and honest with his emotions and desires. Moments with a character get me really excited to animate more than who the character is. I did some shots with Ken and Barry in Bee Movie when they were sitting across from each other over dinner at Vanessa’s apartment. There was a subtle love triangle between them which created some great comedic tension in the animation.

Morgan Kelly:
Interacting with Animation Mentor students locally and from countries all around the world through the Live Q&A tool is a trip. It’s such a great experience. Where else can you hold a live group video-chat with a student on a laptop in their backyard in the English countryside, a French student up at dawn with a coffee, or an east-coast student with his wife cooking and kids running around in the background? It’s really cool to imagine how students are coming together from all around the world to be a part of that Q&A experience held for one hour, once a week.

I’m continuously impressed by their enthusiasm and motivation to create quality work …so there’s a lot of pressure to make it a good Q&A too!

Morgan Kelly:
The way the eCritiques are displayed with the mentor video and student work side by side is fantastic. It’s great having the opportunity to act out ideas on camera and then also be able to use the drawing tools to illustrate poses, help with stage direction, arcs, or timing. This is such a visual medium and without those tools the critiques would not be as helpful as they are.