ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.01 - APRIL 2000

Creativity After Hours: The Visual Evolutions of Michel Gagné
(continued from page 5)

Finding the Balance
Does Gagné's extracurricular activities hamper or improve the work he does for studios? "I think it makes it better," he says confidently. "It makes it better because I constantly discover things. I constantly improve my skills as an artist and I conceptualize a lot better. I can design better because I'm always stimulating my brain with new ideas, and I'm not stagnant, and I'm not learning within the context of my job. When the job is finished, I'm still going out there and researching ideas for drawings and concepts. It helps me to be autonomous and not depend on anybody. I can take the initiative a lot because of that."

Feature animation studios frequently demand overtime from employees to meet production quotas. It is an issue that Gagné faced as Special Effects Sequence Designer for The Iron Giant and Special Effects 2D Supervisor on Warner Bros.' current project, Osmosis Jones.

"I don't do a lot of overtime," Gagné admits. "I say that publicly even to people at the studio because I have no choice; I have to keep doing my own creative stuff. It's like breathing. Every time I do overtime I keep thinking," he exhales forcefully, "it's an hour I could have been doing my own stuff." On the other hand, he says, "When I earn the money from overtime, it allows me to be more independent, self-publish, and invest in my own art. So it's a balance.

The Great Shadow Migration is more than an illustrated book for children. © Michel Gagné.

"After The Iron Giant, I took four months off. I was creating full-time but after four months I was getting really empty. There were no more ideas. I realized I needed the input of other people. I was itching to go back to work. So going back to Warners was suddenly a new wave of creativity, because I was surrounded by all this artwork from all these really good artists, and it inspired me for new things and the cycle started again.

"Interestingly enough, my latest book, The Great Shadow Migration, is all about balance. It's funny that I realized this when I was finishing that book after The Iron Giant. So my books are very much reflective of 'where I'm at' at the time."

Gagné has to balance his time between work, creating for himself, and caring for his family. How does he do it? "Well, first of all, you need an understanding wife," he says with a chuckle. "It's definitely the first thing. My wife is that. She's very understanding. I will tell you, I do sleep eight hours a night, at least, so it's not like I work all night.

"Working, for me, is almost like praying. I go home and do a little bit of work each night. I work when I'm inspired, and when I'm inspired things really happen a lot. You work 20 minutes a night but if you work at that peak of inspiration you can do the work that you would otherwise do in five or six hours and it wouldn't even be as good. So you have to find out when those peaks are and work within that. I think I have that down pretty good.

"So I maximize my time that way. I really don't work as much as a lot of people think. But it's very focused time. Very focused.

"It's my theory in animation as well," Gagné adds. "It's why I'm not keen on the notion of overtime. As you increase the amount of hours, you decrease the amount of creativity that people have. So you start paying more money -- time-and-a-half -- for getting half or a quarter of what you would get during regular hours. If you work your eight hours and you're really focused, you don't need to have overtime."

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