Ryan McCulloch Interview
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Give us a brief bio of your self:
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Throughout high school and college, I was moonlighting as an independent clay-animator. Last year, after I graduated from the Academy Of Art University in San Francisco, I came out to Florida to help start up the animation branch of Tertiary Productions. Tertiary Productions produces high-definition original video content for its clients. It's the sister company of MOLI.com and the exclusive provider of high-definition video content for MOLI."
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How did you originally become interested in stop motion and what age where you:
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When I was probably five years old, my dad started showing me simple video tricks. He'd have my sister and I star in little magic shows where he'd videotape us, stop the camera, have us leave the shot, and start shooting again. When we watched the tape, it looked as if we had just disappeared into thin air. When you're 5 years old and you grasp that kind of knowledge, the whole world seems to open up to you. A few years later when I was old enough to handle the camera myself I started experimenting with stop-motion, making my toys move around the room, shooting pixilation of my friends, even doing some traditional 2-D animation. I played with clay a little, but not much. I usually just did little blob monsters, and there wasn't much story involved. It wasn't until I was 14 and I made the short “Without You,” in '97, that I really decided to explore clay animation to it's fullest.
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What would you regard as your biggest achievement to date:
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Wow, that's a hard question. I would say getting a job in the industry, which most people know is next to impossible. It's not only a job, but it's fun too. I am constantly being challenged and learning new things. But most importantly I am able to create, and all artists thrive off of creating.
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What do you do for inspiration:
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The world is SO full of inspiration; you hardly need to walk out your front door (but you should). Travel, see the world and other cultures. So many of my ideas, my style, my views, are based on the things I saw during the time I lived in Italy, and the experiences I had traveling through Europe. I stop and look at all the wildlife around me, they have so much character. There are so many amazing things in the world that should be giving you ideas. God was the original artist, the original clay-animator. He was the first to build someone out of the dirt and breath life into them. We should take cues from all the beautiful things he created for us.
I get ideas from the people I love and spend time with, and the people I meet in passing. They inspire the characters I write, and the situations they get into. If we base our characters on real life people, they won't seem too flat, or stereotypical.
I look at art. I love art. Not just animation but fine art, music, and performing art. I try not to let too many other animations influence my own, at least current animation, because I don't want them to be too similar. I prefer to be influenced by paintings I love or live-action films. I come up with lots of ideas sitting through boring movies.
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Have you any new projects in the pipeline:
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I just wrapped up my first clay-animated series, Fox & Calf. It's a 5 episode series about two friends, their various misadventures, and the people they come in contact with. The humor is pretty out there, but I think it reflects my sense of humor more than anything else I've ever done. It's colorful, the colors are so vibrant, and bold. I made some choices with the palette that I never would have done before. I think moving here to Florida, and being surrounded by all these pastels and neon colors, inspired me. In a lot of ways, stylistically, you can see the influence The Disney Afternoon had on me growing up. Lots of it looks early 90's. I'm really proud of the series; I can't imagine the process going any smoother. I think they all transferred well from the script to the screen, which is not always the case. Especially with humor as abstract as mine. It has been a long and personal project, and I am really excited to be able to share it with others. It's been getting some amazing feedback so far.
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What has been your toughest challenge with stop motion and how long did you spend on it:
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Hmmmmm, I waited a long time to make the jump to lip-sync, and an even longer time to create armatures to walk. The key was jumping in and just doing them. Neither were as hard as I thought, I had just built barriers in my brain. Water will always pose a problem, I think, for clay-animators. And with that you just need to look at what's needed for the shot, how realistic you are going for, and then decide. Will it be clay water, cellophane, CGI water (I hope not), Christmas Tree tinsel? There's a lot of problem solving involved.
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Where do you believe the future of stop motion lies:
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I think it looks better than it did 10 years ago. Now that the novelty of crisp, clean CGI is wearing off, I think audiences are going to be looking for more gritty, primitive animation like stop-mo and 2-D. They are going to want to see something that has been touched by human hands. Over the next 10 years I think we will see a lot more stop-mo. And if the studios do it right, give the films and shows quality stories and characters, we should see even more after that.
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Have you any tips for new comers and beginners:
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Just make your animation NOW. Too many animators waste too much time in pre-production and production trying to make the perfect epic that they will never finish. Just make it (and make it short, under a minute). And finish it. Then with each new short, step up the quality and the tech just a little bit. Don't overwhelm yourself trying to learn it all at once. Your first film should be silent and simple, eventually you experiment with lip sync, after that you learn how to make an armature to walk. After that you figure out how to remove rods in post-production so your character can sit in mid air. The key is to always finish your films; it is very powerful to accomplish something.
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Given a unlimited budget what would your dream project be:
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I'd love to do a feature with clay-animated characters mixed with real people. Not a Ray Harryhausen monster film, but more like a clay version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? That would be fun.
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