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Kenny Roy:

My pursuit of character animation resulted from a "perfect storm" of influences. My father was an editor and cut many of the Disney behind-the-scenes pieces in movies ranging from The Lion King to Finding Nemo. For my birthdays, we'd go to early screenings at El Capitan, and the producers would give me crew shirts and soundtracks as gifts. My older brother was a computer genius who, in high school, endeavored to make a video game for PC, and for lack of a better word, forced me to learn a 3D program to generate assets for the game. I'd been performing all my life in theater and improv, loved to draw and paint, and was fascinated with film. At one point, I simply began teaching myself a simple 3D program (Truespace), and as I taught myself to model and texture, light and render, I always kept my eye on character animation as that final, insurmountable obstacle that I had to master. Finally, my father bought 3D Studio Max 2.5 for his studio, and I went in every day one summer to sit and learn how to do character animation. It was through trial and error, reading anything I could find on the subject, and the support of online forums that kept me going. A lot of it was intuitive, and I think it was beneficial to have all the facets of character animation such as art, directing, acting, etc., as well-developed interests of mine before I started animating.

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Kenny Roy:

Certainly making my first short film was a major milestone that made me say to myself, "maybe I can do this." The film is so bad that I can't even watch it without cringing, but I can still remember the feeling that I had actually completed something -- something that didn't exist before I'd thought of it. Until then, I didn't realize how many things I'd started and never finished. A lot of animators run into this when they are learning, and the first thing you complete is very cathartic and, more importantly, it is a jumping-off point for even more improvement.

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Kenny Roy:

Oh man! So much! I am tempted to say I would have only focused on character animation in the beginning but having applied that knowledge in running a studio, I would not have done that differently. As far as specifically growing as a character animator, I would have been much better off undertaking many small projects. Focusing on 5-8 second dialogue tests instead of 15-30 second short stories would have helped me to improve. I started a lot of those when I was learning because everything always had to have a twist for me. For one's fastest growth, it's better to repeat the entire process from concept to polished animation. I would have saved myself a lot of time by biting off smaller shots for practice. This is advice I give often; don't stretch the limits of your assignments as far as frame length or number of characters.

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Kenny Roy:

I currently run a boutique character animation studio in Los Angeles called Arconyx Animation Studios. I started my shop after working in features for a few years at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Rhythm & Hues and Weta Digital. My studio's client list includes Disney, SyFy, Cartoon Network and Mattel. I play creative director in-house and sometimes director on certain projects, but I also have a hand in all aspects of the projects from concept to compositing, boards to broadcast. I try to spend most of my day animating, so it's a constant balancing act managing clients, bidding projects and setting keys!

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Kenny Roy:

This may sound weird, but it was this Honeybee voiced by Joan Rivers for the Audubon Society Insectarium in New Orleans. I can't remember her name – it might just be Joan. There was something about Joan's voice that just had this natural rhythm and cadence to it that made animating her character so easy. It was such a pleasure to animate this character. Animators all know that the dialogue performance can have a huge impact on our work. I've animated characters voiced by Bill Murray, Brad Garrett and Jay Leno, but none of them could hold a candle to Joan. I also love how she has a very Phyllis Diller-esque raspy, raunchy tone to her as well. Lots of fun.

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Kenny Roy:

The first job I ever had in animation was being a "dustbuster" on an animation called Marco Polo: Return to Xanadu. It was animated overseas and the film that had come back was scratched and destroyed horribly. Some frames had full-on rips and tears through the middle of them. Now normally, a dustbuster has a program that is a beefed up Photoshop clone tool, and all they do is go through frame by frame removing one or two little scratches or dust in the frame. I realized much later that having to spend hours repairing entire sections of the film meant that I was actually doing a little bit of in-betweening. For example, there were some frames in which an arm would be completely missing and I'd have to frame forward and back to figure out the in-between and repair the frame. And all I had was a clone tool!

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Kenny Roy:

Without a doubt Jenn Emberly, formerly of ILM, now animation director at Image Movers Digital. I was brought in with the apprentices from CalArts one summer and was given a desk outside her office. Jenn was extremely graceful about the whole thing; even though she was extremely busy, she gave me lots of things to do and always took a second to look at my shoddy animation and try to steer me in the right direction. When she'd look at it, she would never criticize the work. She would calmly make me go back to whatever simple concept was off in the piece, and work from there again. I learned my dedication to workflow from Jenn.

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Kenny Roy:

The energy of the students is the most invigorating thing to me. Every single semester, I am amazed at how committed my students are to the craft and to breaking into the industry one way or another. I just can't imagine having a full-time job in a completely unrelated industry like some of my students, and on TOP of that, spending 20-plus hours a week working on assignments. Especially the students with families to take care of, I take my hat off to you. The amazing outpouring of energy keeps my batteries charged at all times. I don't think I'll ever get sick of the school, or the business!

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Kenny Roy:

I didn't go to an animation school so I don't really have a good reference for comparison. But it doesn't take a genius to see that when my students log in from places like Iceland and Beirut, that Animation Mentor has granted access to people for whom this was a near impossibility. That reason alone sets the school apart. Animation Mentor really does make dreams come true.

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Kenny Roy:

I'm tempted again to say "seeing your name in the credits" or something along those lines, but those moments are fleeting examples of a much deeper satisfaction that this industry provides. I'm talking about the camaraderie that working on something for months to years create. You feel like you are in the trenches with these people, and at monthlies when you look around and see all the shining faces watching each other's work, the feeling is totally overwhelming. Coming back from New Zealand after King Kong was like coming back from a tour of duty in a way (not to downplay the armed forces in any way, of course.) But when I walked around SIGGRAPH that year and saw people who sat down the hall from my office, who played hacky-sack with me when the sun peaked out during those cold Wellington winters, who patted me on the back in the kitchen when I finally finished my Bronto shot, there was an unspoken understanding between us. You nod, they nod. You just know.

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Kenny Roy:

I have a slew of links that open automatically with my browser that I like to skim each day to stay abreast of news. I'm on mailing lists of software and hardware companies, and when I can, I peruse forums like those on the Animation Mentor student site and 11 Second Club. And of course, I watch every animation that I can, usually in theaters but at least on Blu-ray. The great thing about character animation is the fundamentals will never change, so as long as you are constantly focusing on your performance, you are always current.