Sue Loughlin.

British animator Sue Loughlin always knew she would have a career in the world of art. Even as a child she believed she was destined to bring the beautiful images in her mind to life. However, the piece in the puzzle she didn't see as a child and even as a young woman, was that she would make a living by making those images move. "Art was my favorite subject in school and I knew I would end up doing something art based. But when I went to the Liverpool Art School I initially wanted to do illustration. I only discovered animation by attending a lecture on animation history. For me, it was like a revelation."

Loughlin had always thought of animation as "comic" or for children, but after that lecture, after she saw that animation could also be theatrical and moving, she was hooked. "I left it thinking, 'God, that's so brilliant. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to animate.'"

To Give Something Life
And animate she did. After completing her Bachelor's of Fine Art at Liverpool, she went for her postgraduate degree at the United Kingdom's National Film and Television School. There she learned the traditional skills of an animator, working as she says, mainly with pencil and paper because the price of cels was simply not within the limitations of her small student budget. She remembers those first years at the school, learning and experimenting with the medium, as a mixture of ecstasy and tedium. "I couldn't believe I was allowed to spend the whole day drawing. It was heaven. No one was going to say I had to do other things. On the other hand, it seemed weird that it took so much time to create animation. It's so labor intensive. But the quicker you worked, the quicker you could see your character move on the pencil test machine. And once you've seen something move, even though it flashes by quickly, you want to rush back and do all that work again, simply because it is so amazing to give something life."

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While in school, Loughlin kept exploring the medium of art. She studied artists from different ages, how they approached their work, the progression of their personal style and the materials and tools they worked with. She was attracted early on to the leader of the Fauvists, Henri Matisse and his experiments into the very essence of images, or Expressionism.

Grand National
Her first short film, Grand National is almost an homage to Matisse's strong lines, but it is also a send-up to Picasso, which is seen especially in the strength of her horses. Yet, Grand National, is much more than the influences of great artists on Loughlin's style. The piece has a strong personality all its own, reflective of Loughlin's own wit and passion.

Growing up in Liverpool, the home of the Grand National, Loughlin remembers going each year as a young girl, looking through the great gates, watching the attendees file in and wishing she could afford to go. "It was such a personal event for me," Loughlin said, "It was the only major event in our small town each year and it lasted for three days. The rest of the year it [the stadium] was closed. One year, my Dad bought me some tickets for my birthday and I got to see the horses. When I went to art school I thought I definitely had to make a film about the race."