Australian animator Mark Osberg dropped this little Gilbert and Sullivan homage into the Flash Animators Unite Youtube group the other day. The audio slipage is a Youtube bug.
Let’s give it up to the next generation of Flash animators. They’re starting younger and younger these days, and I felt like the ‘tweens who tween’ deserved a little shout out as they head back into the second half of the school year. Keep your eyes on guys like Dave Logan, the ‘Bloodmobile’ animator, and Hye-Min Kim…
He’s an animator focusing on Flash up at Vancouver Film School. 
His short, ‘101 Chickies’ is full of that wacky pop-culture insanity that tends to become viral. Hye-Min has a bizarre yet simple concept: draw 101 different types of chicks (the bird-type) and end on a self-portrait. VFS has been turning out some of the latest Flash animators on major series, including Benjamin Meinhardt and Nathan Keane, who both worked on ‘The Buzz on Maggie.’
Moving to the other hemisphere, Flash Classroom, an Australian education hub aimed at students P-12, 
recently held their Flash Classroom Awards. Taking first place in the ‘Best Flash Animation’ category was Tanya Pernase, a 10th year student at Innisfail State High School. Her award winning submission is titled ‘Spirit of Nature’ and according to the site, she used “guide layers, nested animations and traditional animation techniques.”
Congrats to Tanya, and the rest of the winners and participants in the awards. It’s great to see students of all ages getting exposed to the power of Flash animation.
The Flash Classroom site also hosts a variety of animation tutorials that any Flash beginner should take advantage of.
There’s nothing ‘little’ about ‘littleFoot.’ This morning, Adam Phillips delivered his biggest short to date - it’s 7 minutes long, full of lush, heavily rendered landscapes, and the story itself delivers several big moments. ‘littleFoot’ is the latest installment in Adam’s Flash-animated Brackenwood storyline, a series of shorts that’s burned up the festival circuit and dropped the jaws of millions of viewers around the world.
I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview earlier this week, 
and I was not disappointed. Adam has kicked it up a notch - again. His animation is even more complex and dynamic than ever, his character shading more delicate, and his sense of BG lighting has gone Jedi.
Adam joined up with Cold, Hard Flash earlier this year for an extensive 3-part interview, and now for the launch of ‘Waterlollies Part 1: littleFoot,’ we’ve teamed up again. Enjoy a moment with Adam, as he details his craft, his experience with Flash Professional 8, and the down and dirty on Bitey’s sexy, new makeover.
AARON SIMPSON: Over how many months did ‘littleFoot’ come together?
ADAM PHILLIPS: Two years ago, I started the third movie in the Brackenwood series called ‘Waterlollies’, but I couldn’t get the story working. In June 2004 I suddenly got the ideas for ‘Prowlies,’ so I shelved ‘Waterlollies.’ After ‘Prowlies’ I got back to work on Waterlollies and it soon blew out into something massive, which needed to be split into 2 - possibly 3 - parts. The animation itself in ‘littleFoot’ is around 10 weeks work, and the most recent 4 weeks were 12 hours per day. The final week saw me do 4 all-nighters, and the very last day of work was a marathon 36 hr stretch.. I think that’s the longest I’ve ever stayed awake 
AARON: How did the new functionality of Flash Professional 8 affect your production?
ADAM: Very much. In fact, I won’t be releasing a Flash 7-playable version of the movie because I’ve used so much of Flash 8’s blur and custom-easing. Flash 8 really is the best animator’s version ever, and you can now do things with it that look better, take less time and use a fraction of the file-size. ‘littleFoot’ is 7.7Mb, and if I were to make a Flash 7 version, I’m confident it would more than double the file-size (and production time).
AARON: If you output this short to DVD or VHS, will you be able to render out the blurs you’ve used?
ADAM: Yes, lately I’ve become a fan of using image sequences for exporting to DVD/video, rather than the old method of using the swf. The reason for this is that actionscript, blur, nested animation cycles, etc can be exported ?
as image sequences, .avi, .mov and .mpg using a nice little program called SWF2Video Pro. This has eliminated the problem I mentioned in my first interview on your blog. In fact, someone who had read that interview emailed me suggesting I get that program. It just so happened that I had won it in a competition but hadn’t yet installed it! It’s a gem, that’s for sure.
AARON: How did you produce the spider web ’short depth of field’ effect?
ADAM: You can probably see the joins in the web.. but I’ve cut it up and blurred each piece at a slightly different value, based on how far/near the camera it is.
AARON: It appears as if Bitey’s character model may have been updated. What did you tweak?
ADAM: I did a lot of extra work on his animation, but the different look is probably due to the fact that I added a lot of colours to his model. ‘Bitey of Brackenwood’ was the first Bitey movie.. in which he was a one-colour Bitey (one colour for each element, i.e. skin, hair, hooves). ‘Prowlies’ had a two-colour Bitey, but the ‘littleFoot’ Bitey is 3, 4, sometimes 5 colours. You can really see the depth in his hair and especially the ridges in his horns with the proper lighting.
AARON: Were there any new lighting tricks you’d been anxious to use that ended up in ‘littleFoot?’
ADAM: Yes, there is the animated light-beam effect in the moon-scene at the end which is a new Flash 8 thing. It could have been done in Flash 7, but it’s the blur, enhanced gradients and custom tween easing that makes it special, I think.
AARON: Did any of Sham Bhangal’s action scripting work end up in this short?
ADAM: Nothing new, but I did use his vCam a lot throughout the movie. Especially now that I’m not afraid to use it in movies I intend for broadcast. Being an actionscript effect, it exports perfectly through SWF2Video Pro.
Version 2 of the vCam had some features that I was keen to use, but it’s not quite finished yet. You can see the progress of it on Sham’s blog.
AARON: Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but it appears that your ‘littleFoot’ teaser shot didn’t make the final cut. How come?
ADAM: That’s true.. it was one of the very first scenes I did, and when the search sequence at the beginning was done, it didn’t seem to fit anywhere. I tried to fit it somewhere, but I don’t like trying to force something… so I decided everything would flow better if I just removed it.
AARON: Where will you be posting this short? Obviously on your own sites, but also at Newgrounds?
ADAM: Yeah much of Brackenwood’s popularity is thanks to Newgrounds, so I’ll remain loyal. Both Brackenwood movies that I’ve submitted to NG have more than a million views each now, and they’re both floating around in the top ten of all time, so there’s a lot of NG regulars waiting for new Brackenwood stuff.
AARON: Which freelance job was competing with ‘littleFoot’ for your attention?
ADAM: It was a special effects design job for a company in Germany. Unfortunately I had to resign before their project was finished, due to other commitments, but it did free up a lot of time for ‘littleFoot.’
A few days ago, the first half of the Cold, Hard Flash interview with Bernard Derriman was posted. Now we’re back with part 2. In this half, we dive into the world of ‘Arj and Poopy,’ the hit web series that recently won a major animation award…
AARON SIMPSON: Congratulations on the Net Surfers award at Annecy for ‘Long Distance Relationship.’ Did you fly over to France for the ceremony?
BERNARD DERRIMAN: Thanks heaps. I was in Annecy for the full week which was great - I also had a film clip (music video) in competition called ‘Everyone else has had more sex than me.’ I wasn’t expecting anything so it was a real buzz to get the award.
AARON: How did you team up with your ‘Arj and Poopy’ partner, Arj Barker?
BERNARD: I had seen him do stand up here in Sydney, and I thought he was the funniest comedian I had seen live. I came up with the idea of animating him, so I went to his site and downloaded one of his skits, took the sound file and made a little cartoon around it. I sent it to him and he loved it, so the next time he came out (he is based in California) we got together, created Poopy and recorded a whole bunch of episodes. You can see that first short here.
AARON: How has your animation process changed since the first ‘Arj and Poopy’ episode?
BERNARD: The episodes have become more elaborate, the most elaborate being ‘Unlucky in Love’ which had a lot of animation in it. 
I’m trying now to put out more episodes more frequently, and in order to do that I’ll aim to keep the animation a little simpler. But as far as the actual process is concerned, I do them now the same way I always have - the only difference being I’m able to reuse more and more stuff - rarely do I have to draw a new mouth for instance.
AARON: What can you tell us about the next ‘Arj and Poopy’ episode, ‘Yoga’?
BERNARD: Yoga is going to be a fun one, as it has a lot of Arj jokes throughout - not necessarily building to the one punch line like the earlier episodes. I think it will be one of the funnier ones for sure. But before that comes out I will be creating a little teaser for an all new character to ‘Arj and Poopy,’ which should be out soon…
AARON: Do you storyboard the ‘Arj and Poopy’ episodes before you record?
BERNARD: No, which is one of the fun things about doing this series. When we record, 90% of the time the situations don’t exist at all, so when it comes to animating one of the recorded jokes, I have the freedom to create any situation I like - I can have them talking on the beach, on the moon, or as in the latest episode, trainspotting in the country.
AARON: Have you considered releasing the ‘Arj and Poopy’ shorts on DVD?
BERNARD: Definitely, and that will happen eventually, but I want to get a lot more material before we do. I have been filming recording sessions, which would be a DVD extra at some stage, and I’d love to get together with Arj for some commentary. So maybe in another years time - I just need time to do some more episodes!
AARON: How did you find out about the TISM music video contest for their song ‘Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me?’
BERNARD: A good friend of mine told me about it, and I had always wanted to animate a film clip, so this was my chance.
AARON: How long did it take you to animate the TISM video?
BERNARD: I found out about the competition 3 weeks before the deadline, so that’s how long it took me to do it, ‘after hours’: a couple of hours in the evening, couple in the morning before work, and a few days on the weekends.
AARON: Between ‘Arj and Poopy’ and the TISM video, which project would you say has a bigger internet profile?
BERNARD: Definitely the TISM video. I originally submitted it to an online category of a little animation festival in Australia, and it screened on their site for a while, didn’t win, and then I forgot about it. But someone saw it, loaded it up on their website, then someone else took it from that website, and then the next minute it was all over the place. I’m just fortunate I put my name on the front, otherwise no one would ever know who had done it!
AARON: Your shorts employ a high drawing count, but you’re still leaning on re-use a bit. What’s the best way to achieve a full-animation look while still employing a stock method?
BERNARD: I try not to draw too much, and rely on quickly getting characters into strong poses. Having settling cushions after an action really gives simple animation a full animation feel - a good example is the whiskers on the bunny cushioning to a stop every time he moves - it’s a little thing but it doesn’t make those sharp movements of the bunny look so abrupt.
AARON: When you’re building your Flash character models, do you build the various eye and mouth symbols into the head symbol?
BERNARD: Not really, I just do them all on their own levels - and the only time I will combine them all is when I have to move the head around. But when it comes to technical stuff don’t listen to me - I’m sure there are heaps of easier ways to do it!
AARON: Do you sketch out new character designs, and then scan them in to the computer, or are you drawing straight into the computer?
BERNARD: I am always sketching character designs everywhere, but for anything on screen I draw straight into the computer using a Wacom tablet - I don’t own a scanner.
AARON: How do you balance your time between work and your personal animation projects?
BERNARD: It is tough, as work can be pretty hectic sometimes, and the last thing you feel like doing when you get home is go into the office and start animating again. The only time I seem to get things done lately is when I give myself a deadline. As a result I end up going berserk as the deadline approaches. To meet the deadline I set for myself for ‘Unlucky in Love,’ I was doing 2 hours in the morning, working all day at Disney, coming home and then working on it until early the next morning. That deadline nearly killed me.
AARON: You and Arj produced a live action short. Can you tell us more about this project?
BERNARD: How did you find out about that one?! I came up with an idea for a live action short film and got Arj on board as the star, and filmed it in a bar with about 100 friends as extras. It was a great learning experience (code for ‘it turned out a piece of shit’) but Arj was very funny in it, and it was great fun to do.
AARON: Are you working on any new personal projects - new series or shorts?
BERNARD: I am currently developing an animated series for television, and I hope to animate a short pilot for it later in the year. Other than that it’s all ‘Arj and Poopy!’
AARON: What animators and character designers have had the biggest influence on you?
BERNARD: I grew up watching the Warner Bros. cartoons, and when I look back at all my favourites as a kid I realise most of them were by Chuck Jones, so I’d have to say he is a big influence. Another big one would be Jim Henson and ‘The Muppet Show.’
AARON: What animated DVDs have you purchased recently?
BERNARD: I recently got a bunch of Miyazakis, part of the prize for the TISM clip, including ‘Castle in the Sky’ which is my favourite Miyazaki. I also got ‘The Incredibles’ which of course is awesome - the bonus Jack-Jack short was classic.
AARON: Do you regularly watch any Flash animated web series?
BERNARD: Not really, except ‘Brackenwood’ - but Adam puts out episodes less frequently than I do!
AARON: Your latest Arj and Poopy movie ‘Unlucky in Love’ has a very definite ‘Brackenwood’ feel to it. Are you getting more than just good conversation out of your weekly coffees with Adam Phillips?
BERNARD: He loves to think that, the little bastard!
AARON: I apologize for that last one. It was Adam’s idea. Thanks for the interview, Bernard, and best of luck with the next installment of ‘Arj and Poopy.’ Now get some sleep, for crying out loud!
Bernard Derriman toils away at his Disney animation post, plotting out a scene for an upcoming ‘Bambi’ DVD, pining for a night off. But it’s not to be. Instead, Bernard will travel from his animation disk in the city to his Wacom tablet at home, and settle in for another long night of posing and little dozing. It’s the life of an independent animator with a full-time animation job.
To what ends, you ask? Well, the long hours are 
surely paying off for Bernard. It all started back in the 2001 at the biggest short film festival in the world - Sony Tropfest. Bernard took first place in Comedy category with a film titled ‘Chopper.’ His 4-minute short twists the already twisted tale of Chopper Read, the notorious Australian criminal. Bernard’s animated version comes complete with a singing children’s chorus, and much like the feature, it’s easy to find yourself giggling through the bloodshed. 
But it was last year when things really got rolling. Bernard’s animated music video (or ‘video clip’ as they’re called in Australia) for the Australian band TISM took the world by storm. Titled ‘Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than me,’ the video was the winning submission in a competition held by the band, who hoped to uncover a catchy look for their song of the same name. The Flash-animated video that features a sexually frustrated bunny went on to become one of the most viral clips on the web, eventually picking up the People’s Choice Award at the Second Annual TGSNT festival. The subtleties of Bernard’s character animation weren’t lost on the selection committee for the 2005 Annecy International Animated Film Festival. It’s a major accomplishment, as Annecy is considered to be the world’s preeminent animation festival.
But Annecy held more in store for Bernard this year. He and Arj Barker, 
the California-based comedian, received the Netsurfers award for their ‘Long Distance Relationship’ film, which is part of the hysterical ‘Arj and Poopy’ series. This was perhaps the most gratifying moment for Bernard, as the 7-part (and counting) ‘Arj and Poopy’ series is responsible for most of his all-nighters.
As Disney has now announced the imminent closure of Disneytoon Studios Australia, we might just find ourselves with regular doses of ‘Arj and Poopy,’ but that all remains to be seen. What is certain is that Bernard will, before long, follow his good friend Adam Phillips out the Disney gates. While the events of the past few weeks have played out, Bernard put down his Wacom pen long enough to answer some questions for Cold, Hard Flash, and rumor has it, not long after, he quickly went back to animating.
AARON SIMPSON: Where did you first learn animation?
BERNARD DERRIMAN: I’d always flirted with animation as a kid - whenever I got my hands on a video camera at someone’s house I would be doing stop motion stuff, and all my school books had flipbook animation in the corners of every page. But it wasn’t until I started work at Disney that I really learnt animation, learning on the job.
AARON: What was your first assignment at Disneytoon Studios Australia?
BERNARD: I’m not sure I can remember - when I first got to Disney we were doing series work, I think it was the ‘Goof Troop’ TV series.
AARON: Where did you work before you landed the Disney job?
BERNARD: Nowhere. I was finishing high school and wasn’t enjoying studying much, so university wasn’t looking like a great option. My father saw an employment ad in the paper for Disney and I went along for a test and got the job, before my final exams. I didn’t do any studying after that.
AARON: Are you still working at Disney?
BERNARD: For the moment yeah, but as you know they have just announced they are closing the studio after the next project, which is a Cinderella sequel, so I will probably hang around and see that one through.
AARON: When did you first meet Brackenwood’s Adam Phillips?
BERNARD: Probably about 10 years ago, he arrived at Disney just after me. We have been great mates right from the start.
AARON: Did you and Adam ever work closely on projects at Disney?
BERNARD: Looking back, not really - I’ve always been a character animator, and Adam was always awesome at Special Effects, as you can see with all the ‘Brackenwood’ shorts. In fact, very early on he became the Special Effects Supervisor at Disney, so while we didn’t necessarily work closely together, I’m sure there are a lot of scenes over the years we’ve both contributed to.
AARON: Do the two of you swap Flash tricks?
BERNARD: Actually, not really. Well first of all, ‘Brackenwood’ fans should thank me for introducing Adam to Flash. I first got into it in 2000 and Adam saw some of my early shorts and then he began doing some too - classics like ‘Pokies.’ Now Adam is a freak with Flash, he knows just about everything and writes books on it. As it happens we don’t really swap Flash tricks as such, but Adam helps me with some of the technical stuff like actionscript when I need it.
AARON: Have you two ever considered working on a Flash project together?
BERNARD: We kind of have, but we’re both really involved with our own things - me with ‘Arj and Poopy’ and Adam with ‘Brackenwood’ - and on top of Disney, we haven’t really had the time.
AARON: Looking back at your Disney work - do you have a particular sequence you’re most proud of?
BERNARD: I did a scene during the end credits of ‘An Extremely Goofy Movie’ where I animated PJ, the big character, doing a dance, which some people remember. I also animated a lot of Pumbaa in ‘Lion King 1½’ which I really enjoyed doing, and while there’s not a particular sequence that comes to mind, I was happy with the animation I did on that film.
AARON: What led you to pick up Flash?
BERNARD: I once set up a website and created it with Flash, and it included some really simple animation. That got me started on it, and soon after I realised how much you could do with the programme, and that’s when I began animating little shorts.
AARON: What animation software had you used before you learned Flash?
BERNARD: I remember I once used a lame animation programme back in the late 80’s on my parents Mac, which I used to create pissweak 20 second shorts. But other than that, nothing - Flash was my first.
AARON: What does Flash allow you to do that you weren’t capable of on a traditional 2D project?
BERNARD: Heaps of cartoons! In ‘99, a friend of mine and I developed a television animation series idea and we decided to create a 3 or 4 minute pilot. I only knew traditional animation, so I set about doing the whole thing myself: old school. It ended up being pretty elaborate, and since I was doing backgrounds, animating, cleaning up and inbetweening on it, the workload was out of control. In the end it probably took me over a thousand hours,
and thousands of drawings, paper, pencils and dollars in post production. If I had done it in Flash, which I discovered a year later, I would have completed it in a fraction of the time for nothing, and somewhere a small forest would still exist.
That’s the end of the first half of the Cold, Hard Flash interview with Bernard Derriman, the co-creator of ‘Arj and Poopy.’ Come back soon to check out part 2.
‘Faireez,’ new Flash-animated series is gearing up to launch onto multiple international 
networks. The series, which is aimed at kids 5-7, is a co-production by Australia’s Moody Street Kids and Canada’s Funbag Animation. The show welcomes us “to the animated series Faireez, where four intrepid trainees – Gabby, Polly, Tucker and Tim - do their best to foil the plans of the bad-tempered, feckless and wet-blanket-baddie: Jumpalina.” You can see a few seconds of animation on the Funbag Animation website, but be prepared for the large download - 40mb. The show will initially air on the UK’s GMTV, Australia’s Network Ten and Nickelodeon Australia, and the B Wooding Media site has an October 2005 date for US market availability.
Welcome back to Brackenwood! Below is the last of the three-part Cold, Hard Flash interview with Adam Phillips, Mayor of Brackenwood. In this section, we learn about Adam’s next Brackenwood installment, his thoughts on other vector-based animation software, and what DVDs are in his player.
AARON SIMPSON: How’s ‘Waterlollies,’ your most recent ‘Brackenwood’ short, coming along?
ADAM PHILLIPS: Right now it’s quite slow, but occasionally I’ll get a free day and pound out a few scenes. I have most of it storyboarded now, but every now and again when I’m tired of storyboarding, I’ll create a few backgrounds and animation and get a scene or two working in full colour. (follow this link and scroll to the bottom to see a sneak preview)
AARON: Are you experimenting with any new types of effects animation in ‘Waterlollies?’
ADAM: There are a couple of new scripting ideas that I’d like to discuss with Sham for this new movie. The problem with scripted effects though, is that they only work in the Flash Player. To get those effects working for a DVD or video, they need to be created manually (unless we can figure out a way to ‘bake’ the simulation, like in Maya).
AARON: How long is the ‘Brackenwood’ title sequence going to be?
ADAM: I’m guessing between 30 and 40 seconds. I’m also determined to win awards with it, just like ‘Invader Zim’ did with their title sequence.
AARON: Have you considered assembling your ‘Brackenwood’ shorts into a DVD compilation?
ADAM: Right now, there’s not enough episodes to make a decent length DVD. In fact, if you include ‘hitchHiker’ 1 and 2, there’s only about 35 minutes of viewing. I’d hate to release something like that ‘cos I feel I’d be cheating the audience. Once I have about 8 ‘Brackenwood’ episodes, I’ll pad it with special features and really make it worth the buy.
AARON: Have you ever considered utilizing other 2D software packages like Toon Boom, Moho, Toonz and Digicel’s Flipbook?
ADAM: I have thought about using USAnimation, the Tab and Moho. In fact, in TGSNT2 I won both ToonBoom and the Tab, so I can now explore their capabilities if I need to. I can just see myself reverting back to Flash anyway, because it’s usually quicker than learning a new program. If only I had more hours in the day…
AARON: You’re practically royalty in the Newgrounds.com universe. How has your internet profile changed since you started posting your shorts there?
ADAM: Dramatically. The popularity of ‘hitchHiker,’ ‘Bitey’ and ‘Brackenwood’ just exploded after posting them on Newgrounds, and thanks to that, 
the traffic hitting my site has skyrocketed in the past couple of years. This has finally made it possible for me to earn money from the site, which was a factor in my decision to quit Disney.
AARON: You’ve mentioned before that you enjoy playing Unreal Tournament 2004 - what other video games do you enjoy?
ADAM: I love RPGs and I love First Person Shooters (particularly multiplayer). I particularly love FPS RPGs, like Morrowind and Gothic II.
While RPGs are my favourite, First Person Shooters are great when I want a half-hour break from animation. You can’t play an RPG for just half hour.
In my games library I have Unreal (the original), Wheel of Time, Gothic II, Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004, Splinter Cell, Morrowind, Quake 3 Arena, Doom 3, Deus Ex 1 and 2… blah blah blah.
AARON: What is currently playing in your DVD player?
ADAM: ‘Big Train,’ series 1 and 2!! That’s a sketch comedy show from the U.K. Brilliant.
AARON: Which upcoming animated feature are you most looking forward too?
ADAM: I’m really looking forward to ‘Howl’s Moving Castle,’ ‘cos I do like Miyazaki (probably not hard to see that in my work).
AARON: The recent batch of Disney’s animated feature sequels (in particular ‘Lion King 1 1/2′ and ‘Return to Neverland’) have been receiving a great deal of praise. To what do you attribute this increased appreciation?
ADAM: Both of those movies were animated at the Sydney studio which, at the time was Disney’s last remaining DTV (direct-to-video) studio. Our Canadian and Japanese counterparts were shut down, and as a result the Sydney studio got more money, more projects (in fact, all projects) and more people as artists and animators followed the work down to Australia.
The Australian director for ‘Lion King 1.5,’ Ryan O’Loughlin is an amazingly talented animator and a personal friend of mine. I attribute the success of the third ‘Lion King’ movie to his incredible attention to detail and his hard work in getting exactly what he wanted on screen.
I feel the same way about ‘Return to Neverland,’ where the story was kinda yuck and quite boring until director Kevin Lima was brought on board to make it all better. His changes made the audience care about the characters, where before, nobody gave a flying rat’s arse about what happened to Jane. In fact, she was a complete bitch. Early in the project, before Kevin Lima came on board, I hoped she would die in one of my scenes. One of the great things about working in FX is that you usually get to kill off the bad guys. I killed quite a few Disney bad-guys in my FX scenes - Zira, Forté, Morgana, the big bald guy whats-his-name in ‘Aladdin and the King of Thieves.’ I almost managed to kill the Mouse himself in ‘The Three Musketeers,’ but Goofy and Donald saved him.
Where was I? Oh yeah - directors like Ryan O’Loughlin (’Lion King 1.5′) Kevin Peaty (’The Three Musketeers’) and Kevin Lima (‘Return to Neverland’) make the audience care about the story and the characters. Those guys see the value of creating characters and stories that people won’t forget as soon as the credits roll.
AARON: Do you have any advice to animation students graduation this Spring?
ADAM: If you want success in animation, keep doing it until you’re tired of it, then do it some more. The thing that separates amateur from expert is experience and you only gain experience by doing. The more you animate, the better you’ll get, because improvement is an almost guaranteed side-effect of experience. Treat every mistake or bad drawing as a lesson learned, and in time your animation will reflect your level of commitment.
AARON: Thanks, Adam. Extremely interesting stuff. Congratulations on your awards this year, and best of luck on ‘Waterlollies.’ Can’t wait to see it!
