I’m excited to share this interview with Marc Bouyer, a character designer and director at feed me light based in London. Marc works along with his brother Denis Bouyer as directors at feed me light studio(http://www.feedmelight.com/marc-denis-bouyer). This interview is in specific to the graduation film “Salesman Pete” directed by Marc Bouyer, Max Loubaresse and Anthony Vivien. This team of directors and artists formed the STEAK animation www.steakanimation.com. I hope you find this interview with Marc knowledgeable. But first, for those who haven’t seen their amazing short “Salesman Pete” Please have a look…
How long have you been in the animation industry?
I graduated in 2010 after 5 years of study. I worked in Lille, Paris, Sydney and now London. I was a character designer first and now am trying to get more and more directing jobs. Always been freelancing.
What does it take to become an animation director?
There are many useful qualities and skills that can make you a good director. I would say the main two in my opinion would be that you need to be able to communicate your vision properly (through oral and written briefs) to the many artists that will help you bring your vision to life, and the second would be to trust your initial vision and accept that because it’s a team process, it will not look exactly the way you imagined it first and that’s okay. It links with another good skill which is to keep an eye out for designers, art directors, etc so you can bring the best people in to help you drive a project. I’m a fan of many many artists so when a new project comes up I can quickly decide who might be the best suited to give me a hand.
Do you have a favorite project that you have directed other than Salesmen Pete?
My portfolio isn’t really long, but I would say the Kiehl’s project because it was the biggest one since Salesman Pete and also “Fucking Neighbours” because it was fun to do a small project where we could focus on every part of production and make it look exactly the way we wanted it to look.
How long was the duration of the whole production for “Salesman Pete”?
Production took 11 months with 3 people on the project.
What software and render engines were used?
We used Photoshop, 3Ds Max, After Effects, and Premiere pro. Was rendered in Scanline (the default render software from 3DsMax).
Why did you decide to drop out of school to continue this project?
Before the last year of studies, each student has to come up with a personal idea for a graduation movie. The teachers review them and pick one idea out of three students, meaning it creates groups of three people (2 people who didn’t get their idea chosen have to join another project).
My friends and I didn’t get a project chosen at all but we wanted to work together for a very long time and knew we wanted to make the same kind of stupid gratuitous project. So, we told the school that we wanted to work together and they refused, so we left ^^
At the time it felt like the thing to do: we knew what we wanted, teachers didn’t have anything more to teach us, and we didn’t have to pay last year.
How did you bring a 2D effect to the whole short?
We loved 2D animation for a lonnnnng time, and you can see that in our movie as we tried to make it 2D as much as possible. making the FX completely 2D was just following that. Also, it’s easier to do without too much technical knowledge and it just looked good. We bought a 2D FX book with a lot of examples and tips for animation and we just followed that (even copied in some parts). Integrating them was pretty easy, you just project them on a 3D plane in your scene if the camera is moving, or you add them in After Effects if the camera is fixed.
That is all folks, I know.. I know.. Those are just 8 questions! But bare with me.. There’s more to come!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-bouyer-1b26a923/
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4161756/
Website: https://feedmelight.com/about
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