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'Flushed Away' With Supervising Animator Jason Spencer-Galsworthy

Bill Desowitz talks to Jason Spencer-Galsworthy about supervising the Toad on Flushed Away and working at Aardman, PDI and DreamWorks.

Flushed Away's supervising animator, Jason Spencer-Galsworthy.

Jason Spencer-Galsworthy was in an ideal position on Flushed Away, having worked at Aardman Animation and then getting his feet wet in 3D as a character animator on Shrek 2. He could impart his knowledge of Aardman-style stop motion and help solve the best hybrid solution. He worked on early character development for Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and began his career at Aardman as a model maker. Stage Fright, the short by Steve Box, provided a break, allowing him to expand into rigging, assistant animating and, eventually, key animating. He subsequently served as a key animator on Chicken Run.

Bill Desowitz: Talk about the challenge of marrying the two styles.

Jason Spencer-Galsworthy: I learned a lot, actually, coming to DreamWorks. It was amazing to work with the 2D-trained animators because they have a different style and a different approach to it. They treat timeline in a different way. We do it frame-by-frame and cant get back. Well, you can but its tricky. They put in a bunch of keyframes and then fill in the gaps. They also have a certain fluidity to their style, and you can see it on Flushed Away. You can really see the influence of both 2D and CG.

BD: What was the learning curve like and what were you able to add to your arsenal?

JSG: I think the fluidity thing is the biggest, actually. The way they embellish poses. There is some fluidity in our work at Aardman, but the style here is a bit more embellishment between poses.

BD: But having worked at PDI on Shrek 2, youve had previous experience with computer animation.

JSG: Yes. I left Aardman to specifically learn something new. So I did have a go at CG animation on Shrek 2, which was my apprenticeship.

BD: What is the major difference you found between pipelines at PDI and DreamWorks?

JSG: PDI works with EMO and DreamWorks works with Maya, though this will change after Flushed Away, with DreamWorks adopting EMO. This is a tech pipeline whereby your 3D software interacts with a database and other departments, such as lighting. And that was all put together by PDI. Over the Hedge was the first project done with EMO. It handles the way your work fits in with everyone elses.

BD: So because of your background at both Aardman and PDI, your contributions must have been invaluable.

JSG: I used to a model maker too at Aardman so that gives you a background as a sculptor as well. So I was brought down to help with that and to try and spread the wealth around. We brought in the puppets and studied the style and distilled the essence of it so we could translate it into CG. As a supervisor, I was able to help with the post pose style. What was interesting is how the style evolved because we never intended to mimic the Aardman style. It developed into a hybrid and then it grew. It was influenced by 2D animation, as I said, and by CG, with a lot of finessing.

This is a brief excerpt from the interview with Jason Spencer-Galsworthy. You can view the rest of the interview at the exclusive Flushed Away site.

Bill Desowitz's picture

Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.