Here’s the result of a 2 week dialogue course with Pixar animator Rich Quade. The voice belongs to Vincent Gallo, from the movie Buffalo 66.

Wendy Balsom from Andreas Qassim on Vimeo.

It has been two incredibly inspiring weeks. One reason is Rich’s amazing experience in the business. He was the fourth or fifth animator to be hired by Pixar in the early nineties. When he came aboard, preproduction of Toy Story was underway, but the company was still a small one, and 3D animation as we know it today was still in it’s cradle. Pixar’s amazing journey from the success of Toy Story and onwards, Rich has experiencced from within. He was Directing Animator on Toy Story, Supervising Animator on A Bug’s Life and Monsters Inc., and he animated on Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and Toy Story 3 (which will be out this summer).

The second reason was Rich’s lectures. He would go into detail about blinks, eyebrows, lip synching. But also about more abstract concepts like believability and timing, always with clarity, easy to understand. He’d demonstrate his points with video clips from mostly old movies, when acting tended to be more physical than today, discussing gestures and body language. He showed us examples of good animation (often from Pixar films), and bad animation (most often non-Pixar ones).

The third reason was his feedback on our work. He had this ability to immediately see what you were trying to do (after two or three viewings of the scene), analyze why it didn’t work, and suggest changes that would get you where you wanted. He was very generous with his time. He always had something useful to say, and he definately managed to get everyone to lift their scenes to another level.

Rich left for California early this morning. We miss him already. First thing on his schedule when he gets back: attend the wrapping party of Toy Story 3…