http://www.jakobhjensen.blogspot.com/

Jakob Jensen, after working 11 years at DreamWorks Animation,  is currently working at Imagi Studios in L.A. on the movie  Astro Boy as animation director….

Q. Can you tell us a bit about who you are, your background…

Well, I was born and raised in Denmark in the suburbs of Copenhagen. I remember wanting to become a comic book artist, but I didn’t have a clue what it meant and what I needed to do to become one. My mom let me ditch school once when my hero Will Eisner came to town to give a talk at the Academy of Arts. I was absolutely mesmerized by his eloquent and passionate ways of describing his process.
When in ninth grade it came time to have a week of what we called “Work experience” I tried phoning a little studio I had read about in Copenhagen. It was basically the shared workspace of 3 comic-book artists. I asked if they would take me for a week to which they promptly turned me down. My hopes and dreams were shattered.
There was a great TV Show about Comics, Games and Animation, which I watched religiously. My dad called the host for some advice as to what to do with me and my peculiar dreams and he agreed to meet me to check out my artwork (which at the time amounted to copies of my favorite comic books and meticulous renditions of Playboy Playmates).
Towering over me, both literally and figuratively (he was the closest thing to a celebrity I had met at the time) he greeted me at his home, attentively flipping through my “portfolio”. He figured that I should go and talk to the boys down at A-Film whom he had once worked with on the animated feature “Valhalla”. Although I had seen it many times I had for some reason never imagined that a film like that could have possibly been produced in little Denmark.
With a trembling voice I called the studio to ask for an audience, which was granted by one of the owners.
I was sold! From the minute I stepped into the studio I knew this was my calling. The smell of pencil shavings alone still haunts me to this day as the first hit of heroin forever haunts an addict (I imagine!). They were working on one of Don Bluth’s later pictures at the time being one of his few outsourcing liaisons (most of the guys at A-Film had started their careers at the Sullivan Bluth Studios in Ireland). While deliberating with the rest of the bosses, he sat me down in front of the TV and popped in ‘The Secret of Nihm”. I still remember the feeling I got watching this for the first time. I was in heaven!
Long story short, they agreed to take me in for a week.

That was the beginning of my romance with animation. The next year they took me in for a week yet again and the year after that, while I had somewhat reluctantly begun the first year of the most common of higher education in the country, they actually offered me a real job. To my parents credit they let their 17-year old son quit school to pursue his dream for which I am forever grateful. It was March of ’93 and we were in the middle of production on the studio’s feature length “Jungle Jack”
On a trip that summer to London my friend and colleague Rune Bennicke and I visited a real “big-time” studio, Amblimation. They were about to start production on “Balto”. My friend was the real talent (although he will vehemently deny it), but I had brought my portfolio just for the hell of it, never imaging getting a job so far away from the pond. Well, they eventually hired the both of us.
It remains the most inspiring and formative year of my career. It was here I met the “frenchies” (a great deal of the studios workforce was supplied by the immense talent pool of the Gobelins school in Paris: Kristof Serrand, Rodolphe Geunoden, William Salazar, Nico Marlet to name just a few) all of whom became my professors and great friends.  In fairness it wasn’t just the French, but people from all over Europe which made up the fabric of the studio, making it a truly rich experience for a young impressionable animator-to-be.
Eventually the studio shut down after production had ended with the intent to return back to the States. About 100 artists were invited to join, myself included. All of a sudden London didn’t seem that far away from home. America! I had always fantasized about living in the good ol’ USA. Here was my chance.
Amblimation was brought over to LA and seamlessly merged into DreamWorks Animation where I spent the next 11 years.

Here, I was introduced to yet more incredible talent, veterans of industry as well as “newbie’s” like myself, your previous interviewee and my very good friend Simon Otto being one.
I also had the great fortune of getting to work under James Baxter, whose mentorship was a true gift. He, more than anyone, taught me how to harness my ideas into clear statements, helping me understand how to apply proper physics to my work and more.
I worked on all of the studios traditionally animated features, ‘The Prince of Egypt”, “The Road to El Dorado”, “Spirit-Stallion of the Cimarron” and “Sinbad-Legend of the Seven Seas”, becoming a Supervising Animator on the last two.
Just as I was beginning to feel comfortable with my craft the entire industry pulled the plug on hand-drawn animated features blaming their failures on the craft itself and not on the fact that our movies were becoming stale in their attempt to replicate previous successes.
We were all trained in the new art of CG. Honestly, it took me a good while to embrace it as I was lamenting my dream of drawing until retirement like so many of my heroes had been able to. But I eventually took to enjoying it very much, after realizing that I could apply the very same skills I had learned in 2D on this new tool. Although 2D will always remain my first love I have to admit that it’s the thought behind a performance that has always intrigued me and less the execution of it.
Still at DreamWorks I worked on “Shark Tale”, “Over the Hedge” (mostly as a character designer), “Madagascar” and “Flushed Away”.
I then decided to take a well-earned break from what had been my home for the past 11 years, taking a few commercials and working with my friend James Baxter on Disney’s “Enchanted” at his studio, returning for a moment to 2D.
It was then that the folks at Imagi Studios offered me a job as Animation Director on their upcoming Animated Feature “Astro Boy”. Like me, many of the people at the LA office (Imagi’s Headquarters are in Hong Kong) were DreamWorks alumni, including the films director David Bowers, our producer Maryann Garger and the Character Designer Luis Grane, a long time friend.

Q. About the difference of 2d and 3d animation.
It seems it will be hard for you to change. What is for you the most important difference about 2d and 3d animation?

I often say that in 2D you’re only a slave to your own limitations, whereas in 3D you’re as slave to your own and everyone else’s limitations, because it takes a lot more crucial steps to fully realize a 3D character. This demands an incredibly symbiotic relationship between many departments and calls for a clearly defined objective. If successful, this can be a very gratifying experience. If not, well, then it’s much easier to blame someone else! In 2D, it’s your ass and no one else’s.

Q. Do you think that changed your way of thinking about animation and the creative process?

Certainly, when it comes to the creative process I am slowly beginning to recognize limitations as a gift rather than an obstacle. It makes for a much smoother and more pleasant experience as well as creative.

Q. You are working as animation director. What is the big difference about 2d and 3d when you have to manage a team?

There shouldn’t be a difference at all if you think about it, at least to me there isn’t. I approach it exactly the same way I would in any other medium. My role is to help bring a cohesive performance to the screen. You do so by casting to people’s strengths, by communicating as clearly as you can the dictate from the Director in terms of the character-descriptions and basically making sure that everyone knows what they’re working on and how it fits into the big picture.

Q. What are your references, your inspirations when you create animation?

Well, at the risk of sounding highfalutin, the goal should always be to tell the truth about whatever moment you’re working on. But I believe you can actually enhance the truthfulness of a moment by tapping into the vast reference library of your memories, be they from real life, movies, art etc. We all copy each other in real life whether in speech patterns or gestures. We just don’t realize it.  The danger in art is that you copy something that you know has worked before without examining why it worked. It’s extremely tempting. So, the trick to me is to know the history of my craft enough to use it as a stepping-stone to create something fresh. Again, it’s far more gratifying when it’s your own idea that works great.
I’m personally a big admirer of the work of Milt Kahl very much for that reason. He always went the extra mile to fully explore all possible approaches to a scene, never cowering from doing it the hard way if it was the most entertaining way.
Also, it didn’t hurt that he could draw the socks off any of his contemporaries!

Q. What kind of animations or movies do you like?

I often revisit “The Jungle book”, “The Aristocats” and “Sleeping Beauty” because they contain so many great examples of the craft at its highest level.  As I explained earlier, I also have a special affinity for “The Secret of Nihm”. When it comes to live action the list is too long. I have an attraction to anything dark and somber, probably because of my Scandinavian upbringing.

Q. Can you talk about Astro Boy production a little more?

Well, it would be terribly foolish of me to even pretend to know more than your readers about the cultural impact Osamu Tezuka’s story has had over time.
Our production tries to stay true to the core of the origin-story, taking a few liberties necessary for the drama to function in a feature length format.
Ours is an intercontinental production utilizing talent from our main offices in Hong Kong and our Los Angeles unit. Feature production of this size is relatively new to Hong Kong and therefore Imagi chose to recruit a good deal of industry veterans from LA. It has had the wanted effect of marrying the very different but compatible sensibilities of our two worlds into a hopefully fresh peace of work.
As I said earlier, the film is directed by David Bowers and produced by Maryann Garger, the director/producer team of “Flushed Away”. Sharing with me the title of Animation Director is Kim Ooi, a veteran of the Hong Kong office and with him in Hong Kong is my long time DreamWorks colleague Tim Cheung who now takes on the task of Vice President of Animation at Imagi.
You can take a sneak peak at our teaser trailer here:
http://www.astroboy-themovie.com/

Q. Do you decide the animation with precise storyboard or animation tests?

Well, the rhythm of the shots is predetermined by the storyboards as far as the story beats go. It then has to go though the process of Layout where sometimes a sequence (especially action) is reinvented to play more dynamically and to follow any established cinematic rules of the film. In essence it remains the same as the storyboard, though.

Q. Do you use 2d animation before beginning  3d animation?

I have on occasion tried something out on paper before going ahead on the computer. It’s been a while, though. It has the disadvantage of getting you carried away into poses that the actual rig may not allow.

Q. How about the animation workflow? How many animators are on the film?

Our department is presented with new sequences as they come out of our LA-based Layout department headed by our DP Pepe Valencia, previously from Sony Imageworks. David, our director, gives us a general launch of a sequence, discussing with us the broad strokes of the acting beats. This is done over a Video Conferencing system so that we are at least virtually in the same room.
Individual shots are then cast to the animators (we have about 60 animators, the majority in Hong Kong and five, including myself here in LA). From here, the life of a shot is no different from anywhere else that I know of: The animator blocks out the shot, quickly throwing in the basic staging of the characters, whatever is necessary for it to read. We then review it in context with other shots and discuss any changes that may enhance the performance. Once approved in blocking it is then a matter of putting the proper flair and love into the actual execution of the animation. This often takes the longest. After it is approved it is sent on to the next link in our production pipeline.

Q. You are the animation director but are you also working on the animation yourself?

Yes, I’m fortunate enough to have enough time to animate as well. It’s challenging at times but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Q. As animation director, what is the best way to separate animation between the animators? By characters or sequence?  Can you explain why?

This has been a tough question ever since I transitioned from 2D to 3D. In 2D we always followed the tradition of character based supervision, since learning to draw more than one character would prove too big a challenge for most animators as well as getting familiar with the specific movement patterns of several characters.
Even if the challenge of “staying on model” was seemingly lifted as we began working with 3D models I was still in favor of having character teams, but for many reasons this proves challenging in most 3D pipelines. Both methods have their strengths and weaknesses, of course.
As an example, in a sequence-based system the animation can quickly become quite general, if you’re not careful. Conversely, in a character-based system, if inventory of a specific character is low you’re stuck with animators sitting around waiting for shots with their specific character to hit the floor. This is not very efficient. So, we try to still cast our different teams to their individual strengths, thereby creating a sort of hybrid system.

Q. You are working in LA. Do you have a special inspiration from the place you are living in?

It isn’t exactly Paris here, you know? But, in a way I suppose LA offers it’s own kind of beauty. It’s a place filled with contrast.
You can find unbearable pretentiousness and awe-inspiring humility, riches and poverty and an obscene amount of superficiality contrasted with a fair amount of wisdom (If you look long enough!).
In that sense, LA may actually pose as an indirect source of inspiration. I think it forces you to make a choice about how you view the world, which I think is a prerequisite for being an artist.

Q. For people learning animation, Can you talk about what is important in animation or give some advice?

In my experience what is crucial in your “formative” years as a young animator is to determine whose work you respond to as being extraordinary and then do your very best to figure out why you think it’s great. If you are lucky enough to be around someone whose work you admire, try to pick his or her brain as much as you can. Don’t be shy! They obviously weren’t. If not, study the masters. There’s so much material out there, in books, on the Internet etc. Get you hands on Richard Williams’ book “The Animator’s Survival Kit”. It is by far the most comprehensive book on the craft out there. But most important of all: Observe real life! Any art form is a means to reflect on your point of view about life.

Q. Is there some Japanese artist that you like? Or are there Japanese animation artists that influence your work?

To me, there’s a general aesthetic in Japanese art that attracts me. It must have to do with the search for simplicity, I suppose. This rings very true to my own ideals in what I try to do (emphasizing the word “try”!). But I must admit that I know very little to talk in length about it.
I am of course a big fan of Hayao Miyazaki’s work. I find that his sense of storytelling is nearly unparalleled in today’s market. I was also completely stunned by the work in “Ghost in the Shell” when it came out, as well as the more recent “Tekkonkinkreet”, although its director isn’t actually Japanese (but I think it still counts as Japanese).
In terms of graphic art, I have for a while been a big fan of Tadahiro Uesugi’s work. It’s extremely bold, I find.
Of course, I feel I have learned a great deal more during the course of the making of Astro Boy, particularly in working closely with our character designer Luis Grane. He truly immersed himself into not only the world of Tezuka but Japanese design sensibilities as a whole, taking inspiration anywhere from Hokusai to Noguchi.

Q. Are you interested to come to Japan to present your works or making conference?

I would love to visit Japan, of course! It’s on my list.

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