Thursday, July 18, 2013

Start: Matt Walker


Studio:  Sony Pictures Imageworks
School:  Ex'pression College for Digital Arts
             Animation Mentor






Before becoming a professional animator, I was a preacher at a wedding in a town that was about to be attacked by a pack of savage house cats!

Wait, WHAT?

That’s right… you heard me. I was five years old when I helped make the first film I would ever be a part of. Me, my older sister, my cousin, and his friend; we made a horror movie called Cats. My role in the film was to act as the dead body in the opening sequence, before we did a flashback to the wedding where it all started. I had no lines, but man, I was hooked! I had so much fun with them, creating this unbelievable story with stuffed toy cats flying from off screen to attack their victims. Granted, we were all under eleven years old, so the film wasn’t brilliant, but it was ours.

As you can see, being a filmmaker was instilled in me very early on; how you could create a story and tell it visually, and it would move an audience. After that film my sister and I tried to recreate the Goosebumps story, “The Haunted Mask.” Then, around age 8, I figured it was time I was the one in control of the story, so a friend and I made a movie about a couple members of the SWAT team and their new mission. It was just the two of us and a tripod. We had no means of editing, so we had to edit in-camera. Anytime we wanted to cut, we would have to add in a clever story moment that got one of us off camera so we could cut.

“Hey, why don’t you look for the bomb over there?”

Walk off camera.

Cut.

As I got older, I think other things became a priority over making films. But that’s okay; you have to live your life in order to know what kinds of films to make. Besides, if you have a true love for this stuff, you’ll always come back around.

I was about 18 when I got back into film making via an internship at a local production house, who specialized in making casino and toy commercials. I learned everything from setting up lights, to building sets, and digitizing tapes. I learned a ton, but I figured if I really wanted to get good at this stuff, I needed to go to school.

I enrolled at Ex’pression College of Digital Arts. I would walk the halls and see the movie posters of Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc., and I would feel like: THAT is the stuff I want to be doing. But I was enrolled in the motion graphics program. Animation, to me, was the medium through which you could tell ANY story. That’s what I had been looking for all along. So I switched to the animation program.

A little ways into my time at Ex’pression, I was able to really hone in on what exactly I wanted to do — be a character animator in a feature film environment. I wanted to tell stories that would last. I also found out that those major studios wanted specialists; that is, someone really good at one thing. Ex’pression was a school for generalists; people with a rounded knowledge of all facets of a production pipeline. So I left Ex’pression and enrolled at AnimationMentor.com. I just felt at the time that while I had a blast at Ex’pression, AM would give me more of what I was looking for.

A couple years later, I got my first job in the industry as a specialized character animator. Was it on a major film? No, but it was for television, working on “The Penguins of Madagascar” for Nickelodeon. And it gave me a chance to spend a couple years living (newly married) in beautiful New Zealand! Not too shabby for a first job. I have to say that it was probably the perfect first job. Working in TV gave me a lot of practice fast! I was able to sharpen my skills because I was forced to be exposed to so many types of shots: broad, cartoony, dynamic, subtle. I believe that if it weren’t for New Zealand and the people I worked with, I wouldn’t be the animator that I am today. I learned so much there.

From there, I moved to Portland, Oregon and got a few short jobs in commercials. Again, very different from TV and learning new things all the time. I even had my first experience with live action plates.

After a few months in Portland, I got the call to move up to Vancouver, Canada to work at Sony Pictures Imageworks on my first feature film: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2!! I actually just finished working on it, and it was an amazing experience! I got to be a part of a film that I hope will be something special to people all over the world. The crew on Cloudy 2 was unbelievably talented and every day, I would see something in dailies that blew my mind! And it was amazing to watch the directors make decisions about the film. Every time I watched Kris and Cody make a call on something I would ask myself, “Okay, why did they decide that?” “What is being pushed forward with that decision?” I was trying to learn to be a better film maker every day. I would look at lighting and ask myself why they would be doing what they’re doing. Basically, for the last seven months, I’ve been a film sponge. And I’ve loved every minute of it!


Honestly, I don’t know what my next adventure will be, but I’m okay with that, because I know it’s going to be something I didn’t expect, and something I’m going to learn from. I’m going to be able to tell stories, and add my own story.


Advice for future animators:

1. Be prepared to continue your own studies.  School and work won't be enough, and it shouldn't be enough if you truly have a passion for this medium.

2.  Be prepared to move around a bit at the beginning of your career.  I've been working for about 2 1/2 years, and I've worked in three countries.  It's not easy and can be very, very stressful.  But if you look at it with a positive eye, it can be amazing.  I've lived in areas people dream of visiting.  That's quite a blessing :)

-Matt Walker

(I did the last shot with Steve and the Shrimpanzee :)

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