Patrick Giusiano started out in animation in Luxembourg in 1999. Two years later, he was animation supervisor on the first French CGI feature Kaena: The Prophecy, following on in 2004 by supervising on Skyland and a bunch of shorts like TinkerBell‘s music video for Disney. He began directing at Studio Hari in 2009 and then joined Double Negative in London. He has done animation in films like Paul, Scott Pilgrim and John Carter of Mars.
In this interview with AnimationXpress.com he speaks about his memorable projects and journey so far.
Which has been your most memorable project till date?
I think every project I‘ve worked on was my favourite at that point. Paul was a fantastic experience because of this family we kind of built in the animation team. I made a lot of very good friends on the show, and all of them are amazingly talented. Anders Beer our Supervisor creating a brilliantly friendly atmosphere, which made the team really strong in the will to achieve the best possible work. John Carter of Mars is certainly now the best movie ever I‘ve worked on. We are surrounded by fantastic managers like Eamonn Butler and Steve Aplin and working hand in hand with Pixar is a great honour.
How different is it to animate for completely CG features in comparison to live action features with heavy CG and VFX?
I think it depends on the show. There can be more freedom in a CG feature, as you are not constrained by live action or live characters. You can cheat with the animation a bit without thinking too much about the real incidence in a real set. The way the character moves can be very creative in a CG feature but on another hand it is very challenging to work on characters that have to look as believable as live actors.
What were your different experiences working in Paul and Iron Man that you spoke about at Annecy 2011?
I wanted to expose these workflow differences between these two movies. The first explores the artistic choices and the dedicated work flow within an action movie. The second outlines the work methods completely dedicated to acting and performance. This includes everything from the choice of our tools, riggings, softwares to the pure creative process.
Which is your all time favorite piece of animation and why?
My favourite animation if I really have to choose would be a sequence in “The Incredibles”, when Syndrome, the bad guy in the movie, captures Mr. Incredible. I love how the character mimics a fragile girl walking to annoy the hero. The animation is very well crafted and fantastic at showing the inner workings of the character and I love the physicality coupled with strong emotion.
What advice would you like to give to upcoming animators?
Practice as much as you can! Develop your own projects from home and ensure you highlight in your work the kind of productions you would love to work on in a professional environment. Always challenge yourself to learn new techniques and styles that you‘ve never done before.
I‘m working on John Carter of Mars, a movie inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ books and Andrew Stanton (Wall-E, Nemo) is directing the movie.
