Seattle's Indie Animators
| By Brangien Davis , Dana Standish |
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Seattle Animation Funatcular Explosion
Thursday (3/4) · Seattle animators are bucking the computer animation trend, using lo-fi techniques to create lovely little films. See for yourself at the (free!) Local Animation Showcase, featuring work by the artists profiled in the March issue of Seattle magazine (Stefan Gruber, Tess Martin, Britta Johnson, Webster Crowell and Clyde Petersen) as well as a few fellow animators.8 p.m. Free. Zeitgeist Coffee - 171 South Jackson Street, Pioneer Square. 206.583.0497; filmandscissors.com
You need only look as far as movie marquees to know that high-tech animation is hot in Hollywood. But in Seattle, a talented and tireless group of artists is rejecting computer animation in favor of making short, animated films the old-fashioned, stop-motion way. (Think Fantastic Mr. Fox without the 20th Century Fox budget and crew.) Calling their work experimental (as opposed to commercial), these filmmakers have earned critical acclaim and multiple grants for their stunningly creative work, crafted one frame at a time.
LINE LIBERATOR
Stefan Gruber takes his flights of fancy from yard to yard
Spend even a brief time in Seattle’s short-film animation scene and you’ll soon be able to recognize the work of Stefan Gruber—sweet, cartoony, hand-drawn films with telltale musicality and colorful dreamscapes populated with pulsating creatures that flap, float and fly with an appealing wiggle. “I like the short animated film format,” Gruber says, “because it’s a more potent vehicle for a message.” In his case, the message is often “the liberation of human emotions,” which manifests itself in oppressed creatures that are eventually freed by an external force.
Gruber, 34, has received numerous grants to make art and is a bit of an organizer among fellow animators. In 2002 he founded the Seattle Experimental Animation Team (SEAT), a group of animators working on artistic projects that meets weekly to inspire each other to keep at it. (Animation is notoriously slow-going: “Working for five hours can get you a couple seconds of film,” he notes.)
As a kid growing up in Green Lake, Gruber (now based in the Central District) was exposed to art early. His mother, a modern dancer at Cornish College, took him to rehearsals—an influence evident in the fluidity of his films and in his collaborative dance/film projects with several local modern dance companies. His mother’s dance partner was also an oil painter who taught him how to draw. At age 12, Gruber saw the animated short Accident, by Jules Engel, in which a dog drawn in charcoal runs in a loop, getting progressively erased. “It was the first time I really understood how animation worked,” Gruber recalls. Years later, Gruber enrolled in the California Institute of the Arts’ Experimental Animation program—founded by Engel, who soon became his mentor.
Exuding a kind, generous nature, Gruber says experimental animation (rather than animating for a movie studio or corporate client) sustains him (“it’s its own vitamin”), but it’s also “kind of a homeless art form.” So perhaps it’s appropriate that he’s spent the last two summers traveling across the country—with little more than a laptop, a projector and a bed sheet—holding small-scale screenings of his films in friends’ backyards (35 last year!) and passing a pink hat for donations. “My films don’t feel complete until I’ve taken them on the road,” he explains.
Currently in his ninth year of teaching animation classes at Seattle’s Nova alternative high school (which he also attended), Gruber is now at work on a film called Both Worlds, which will run 30 minutes—his longest ever. (At present he’s about five minutes into it.) “I want it to be a holiday special,” he says, “for my own made-up holiday that we celebrate once a year.” His motivation? Watching A Charlie Brown Christmas as a child and knowing kids all over the country were watching it at the same time.
NATURE NURTURER
Britta Johnson brings a biologists eye to animated art
Animator Britta Johnson is talking about one of her favorite subjects: bugs. “They’re little fanatics,” she says, the velocity of her speech increasing with her excitement. “They’re automatons. They have this really closed set of gestures with only minor variations. Honey ants just eat honey until they explode! They have such clarity of purpose.” Johnson, a 34-year-old petite blonde from Wisconsin, says this with total respect for insects—facsimiles of which have appeared in several of her films, their bodies crafted from old buttons, eyeglass stems, wire and other flotsam and jetsam. Johnson confesses that she can relate to the bugs: “I find pleasure in repetitive tasks, and animation scratches that itch.”
A freelancer based in West Seattle, Johnson subsists on a variety of animation gigs—teaching for Coyote Central at 911 Media Arts, making music videos (e.g., for musicians Mirah and Andrew Bird), doing commercial animation (recently for Microsoft and BBC) and winning art grants. “It’s been a nice year for grants,” she notes, having been awarded project money from both 4Culture and Seattle Public Utilities (which commissioned a film for its water stewardship series), a City Artist grant from the mayor’s office, plus an Artist Trust fellowship.
A science fan from an early age (“more the visuals than the reality”), Johnson grew up fascinated by natural history museums, the PBS show Nova, diagrams, Time/Life books and microscopes. “There’s not that much difference between the practice of science and the practice of art,” she explains. “They both involve trying things out and seeing how they work.” After graduating from Carleton College as a studio art major focused on printmaking (where she took a video production class and made her first animated short), Johnson decided against graduate school. “It felt weird to go to school to be an experimental filmmaker,” she says. Accordingly, many of her artistic animation skills are self-taught, though she credits a post-college job at Seattle motion graphics firm Superfad with giving her the technical skills to do her commercial work. “But,” she advises, “you can’t look to the commercial world to provide you with creative satisfaction.” Hers comes instead from her artwork, which allows her to examine natural processes and re-create them via found objects and leftovers—playing scientist and artist all at once.
Read the rest of Seattle mag's Indie Animator profiles:
Indie Animator: Clyde Petersen
Clyde Petersen operates on multiple planes
Indie Animator: Webster Cromwell
Local artist Webster Cromwell proves that creativity travels at the speed of 12 frames per second
Indie Animator: Tess Martin
Filmmaker Tess Martin gives new meaning to paper cuts
Originally published March 2010
Thursday (3/4) · Seattle animators are bucking the computer animation trend, using lo-fi techniques to create lovely little films. See for yourself at the (free!) Local Animation Showcase, featuring work by the artists profiled in the March issue of Seattle magazine (Stefan Gruber, Tess Martin, Britta Johnson, Webster Crowell and Clyde Petersen) as well as a few fellow animators.8 p.m. Free. Zeitgeist Coffee - 171 South Jackson Street, Pioneer Square. 206.583.0497; filmandscissors.com
You need only look as far as movie marquees to know that high-tech animation is hot in Hollywood. But in Seattle, a talented and tireless group of artists is rejecting computer animation in favor of making short, animated films the old-fashioned, stop-motion way. (Think Fantastic Mr. Fox without the 20th Century Fox budget and crew.) Calling their work experimental (as opposed to commercial), these filmmakers have earned critical acclaim and multiple grants for their stunningly creative work, crafted one frame at a time.
LINE LIBERATORStefan Gruber takes his flights of fancy from yard to yard
Spend even a brief time in Seattle’s short-film animation scene and you’ll soon be able to recognize the work of Stefan Gruber—sweet, cartoony, hand-drawn films with telltale musicality and colorful dreamscapes populated with pulsating creatures that flap, float and fly with an appealing wiggle. “I like the short animated film format,” Gruber says, “because it’s a more potent vehicle for a message.” In his case, the message is often “the liberation of human emotions,” which manifests itself in oppressed creatures that are eventually freed by an external force.
Gruber, 34, has received numerous grants to make art and is a bit of an organizer among fellow animators. In 2002 he founded the Seattle Experimental Animation Team (SEAT), a group of animators working on artistic projects that meets weekly to inspire each other to keep at it. (Animation is notoriously slow-going: “Working for five hours can get you a couple seconds of film,” he notes.)
As a kid growing up in Green Lake, Gruber (now based in the Central District) was exposed to art early. His mother, a modern dancer at Cornish College, took him to rehearsals—an influence evident in the fluidity of his films and in his collaborative dance/film projects with several local modern dance companies. His mother’s dance partner was also an oil painter who taught him how to draw. At age 12, Gruber saw the animated short Accident, by Jules Engel, in which a dog drawn in charcoal runs in a loop, getting progressively erased. “It was the first time I really understood how animation worked,” Gruber recalls. Years later, Gruber enrolled in the California Institute of the Arts’ Experimental Animation program—founded by Engel, who soon became his mentor.
Exuding a kind, generous nature, Gruber says experimental animation (rather than animating for a movie studio or corporate client) sustains him (“it’s its own vitamin”), but it’s also “kind of a homeless art form.” So perhaps it’s appropriate that he’s spent the last two summers traveling across the country—with little more than a laptop, a projector and a bed sheet—holding small-scale screenings of his films in friends’ backyards (35 last year!) and passing a pink hat for donations. “My films don’t feel complete until I’ve taken them on the road,” he explains.
Currently in his ninth year of teaching animation classes at Seattle’s Nova alternative high school (which he also attended), Gruber is now at work on a film called Both Worlds, which will run 30 minutes—his longest ever. (At present he’s about five minutes into it.) “I want it to be a holiday special,” he says, “for my own made-up holiday that we celebrate once a year.” His motivation? Watching A Charlie Brown Christmas as a child and knowing kids all over the country were watching it at the same time.
NATURE NURTURER
Britta Johnson brings a biologists eye to animated art
Animator Britta Johnson is talking about one of her favorite subjects: bugs. “They’re little fanatics,” she says, the velocity of her speech increasing with her excitement. “They’re automatons. They have this really closed set of gestures with only minor variations. Honey ants just eat honey until they explode! They have such clarity of purpose.” Johnson, a 34-year-old petite blonde from Wisconsin, says this with total respect for insects—facsimiles of which have appeared in several of her films, their bodies crafted from old buttons, eyeglass stems, wire and other flotsam and jetsam. Johnson confesses that she can relate to the bugs: “I find pleasure in repetitive tasks, and animation scratches that itch.”
A freelancer based in West Seattle, Johnson subsists on a variety of animation gigs—teaching for Coyote Central at 911 Media Arts, making music videos (e.g., for musicians Mirah and Andrew Bird), doing commercial animation (recently for Microsoft and BBC) and winning art grants. “It’s been a nice year for grants,” she notes, having been awarded project money from both 4Culture and Seattle Public Utilities (which commissioned a film for its water stewardship series), a City Artist grant from the mayor’s office, plus an Artist Trust fellowship.
A science fan from an early age (“more the visuals than the reality”), Johnson grew up fascinated by natural history museums, the PBS show Nova, diagrams, Time/Life books and microscopes. “There’s not that much difference between the practice of science and the practice of art,” she explains. “They both involve trying things out and seeing how they work.” After graduating from Carleton College as a studio art major focused on printmaking (where she took a video production class and made her first animated short), Johnson decided against graduate school. “It felt weird to go to school to be an experimental filmmaker,” she says. Accordingly, many of her artistic animation skills are self-taught, though she credits a post-college job at Seattle motion graphics firm Superfad with giving her the technical skills to do her commercial work. “But,” she advises, “you can’t look to the commercial world to provide you with creative satisfaction.” Hers comes instead from her artwork, which allows her to examine natural processes and re-create them via found objects and leftovers—playing scientist and artist all at once.
Read the rest of Seattle mag's Indie Animator profiles:
Indie Animator: Clyde Petersen
Clyde Petersen operates on multiple planes
Indie Animator: Webster Cromwell
Local artist Webster Cromwell proves that creativity travels at the speed of 12 frames per second
Indie Animator: Tess Martin
Filmmaker Tess Martin gives new meaning to paper cuts
Originally published March 2010
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