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Technical Animation

After my rocky start into classical animation I thought I’d try animation that had a hint of technical in it. I could use some of the maths and sciences I’d learned about at Guelph and combine it with my 1st year of character animation. 

Believing my parents, I was determined to succeed. My dad told me that in order to succeed I had to be at the top if my class. I switched to technical animation. My teacher was Dietrich Friesen. He often told me that I do really nice work. 

Mention him teaching us to paint the class would be a live demo, mention that his buddy from LA came as a guest speaker, and wrapped in of a trash bag pulled out a painting of a Star Wars planet. It was the 80's in the middle of winter. But I recall that it was Ralph McQuarrie, who had painted the now famous concept art for the original Star Wars trilogy. 


He pulled a large painting of a Star Wars planet out of a trash bag and put it out on the table for us all to see.  

Years later while working at ILM  I asked Jay Shuster who knew Ralph McQuarrie, If he had visited Dick Friesen's class at Sheridan College in the 80s. It had in fact been him.



I realize now that these were Mentors. They went above and beyond to create opportunities for us to learn and be inspired. And they were my first big break. I’d found so many things I loved doing, painting, storyboarding, animating under the camera stand.


I loved painting, and what a gift to learn it from Dick. I soaked everything up like a sponge. Having actual people from the industry coming to visit our small class room meant the world. It lit a spark in me. Dick would tell me things like "you should apply at Cal Tech’ Everything helped boost my confidence . 


In fact my grades were high enough that the school allowed me to enroll in their brand new 2 year post graduate course in computer graphics, without first completing my 3rd year of animation and short film .


 6 months into it,  I saw an ad for a CG company called Omnibus. I applied. 


The ad said they were looking for a Unix C programmer. I wasn't sure what that was. I asked my previous teacher to do a letter of recommendation for me. Dick shook his head, and said "You have to get the job on your own. Take everything you’ve got, put it in your portfolio and go nail the damn job.” 


 That traditional animation blended with a hint of technology. My job interview consisted of (Will Rob Marinic Doug M and Dan) 3 programmers and an art director (ask Dan Philipps if he was there) probably the PL 1 programming and math from my time at Guelph. combined with my art from Dicks class put me over the edge. I brought everything. 16 mm film of a water drop gas flame excercises, my traditional animation exercises from traditional animation, background paintings, storyboards. Even printouts of my PL1 programs that I'd done during my time at Guelph. 


I put it all out on the large coffee table in front of us.  They picked up the PL1 programs and started flipping through them ‘wow look at this.’ I wondered what I was getting into. I left Sheridan 6 months short of a degree. My start date at Omnibus was Jan 2 1984. 


I would get up in the cold snowy mornings and stand on the platform in downtown Hamilton to take a one hour train ride to Union Station in Toronto then get on the subway and ride north for a half hour to Eglington street.  On the afternoon shifts I would drive my Volkswagen Beetle for my 4 pm to midnight shift. The shifts alternated every couple of weeks (ask Dan) which was handy because driving home at night I was really struggling to keep my eyes open.


During the training I wiped out my account.


The robot walk.


Logo Animation.


Dick had told us in school "When you're out in the working world nothing that you have learned here will apply. When you're faced with a problem get out a piece of paper and a pencil, and figure out what you need to to."

I was given a photostat of a logo and some graph paper. So I started plotting the Cartesian coordinates by hand and then typed them into the computer using a data entry 'ap.' 


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