Channel Frederator Blog

Give us a quick bio of yourself.

My dad’s a fisherman and I grew up close to the sea; the famous Belgian seaside. Spend a lot of my childhood on the beach … and saw a lot of “things” there
According to my parents I started drawing, like every other child at the age of three.
Influenced by my grandfather, who painted in his spare time, they told me I’ve not stopped since then. He taught me a lot about painting and drawing, the use of colors etc…he even told me that he didn’t believe you could make a living out of it. He past away just before I went to Art School to study Animation, so I never had the chance to prove him wrong. I studied ( and partied ) in Ghent, at KASK, the oldest school for traditional animation in Europe. .. I left early in my third year but stayed in Ghent. After that I did a bit of everything: started a company with 4 classmates and we tried to create a series .. obviously never got it out there :), freelanced for a while, .. and finally started working for Grid-VFX. ( To see some of these previous projects: www.thurist.com) Gradually, the managing duo behind Grid, Jan Goossen and Frank De Wulf, and I started to get enthusiastic about creating our own content. So about a year ago we decided to start a new company Tinkertree, a studio that only concentrates on creating and developing idea’s … and it is exactly my cup of tea -). At this point we cannot make a living out of it, although I hope that day will come soon, but right now it’s more like a part-time or after hours effort. Today we are still working very hard to get our projects in production and until then I just keep on having fun with PlanktonInvasion.

*The first image made of PlanktonInvasion, with the characters in their early stage*

What are some projects you have been a part of?

The biggest production I was ever on, was Les Triplettes de Belleville. I worked as a character animator on the race sequence, animating the CG runners and their bicycles, the cars and motors. For Grid VFX, I did animation work on several commercials and movies throughout the last few years. For example: on Sharkboy and Lavagirl, animated the CG characters, I drew storyboards and did animation sequences for Belgian film productions, small commercials, and so on.. Recently I did the CG for a Belgian bank commercial; Centea & the super sperm.

Can you describe your techniques (or creative process)?

I always start with either having an idea or searching and struggling for one And like with most people the best ones often come to me in the middle of the night. Once I’m happy with the idea I start writing, making decisions on the storyline, the characters, .. normally it takes about a week or so to get the first draft right, you know, rewriting .. rewriting .. rewriting
Then I start drawing, modeling and shading the main characters and create, in only a few days the first images of the idea. Just to visualize everything I have written. The next step is to go talk about it with my partners, friends, family, .. and so on, to get feedback and reactions. When you feel their reactions are promising, the next step is to rig a character, write a gag or a little story and create a short animation. Then we are ready to talk business, I set-up a meeting with my two partners and talk about the new concept, exchanging feedback, possibilities, strategy and so on, to decide where we go from there. In some cases we start further development, involving more people in the process, make a pilot episode, and so on… Some projects are now practically ready for production, co-production …
With Plankton Invasion it is a different story, this time I wanted something that could be produced without fundings or expensive production pipelines, something that I could work on semi - after hours and bring directly to the public through the Internet. Off course not without the help of friends, who let me use their music or people I work with such as the dude from the sound studio ‘Temple of Tune’ who helps me with the voice-recordings and sound fx. In the end we naturally hope that the project will get picked up, get funded and find its way to a larger audience, but for now I’m just having a great time doing it completely independent.

What do you do to help fight creative blocks?

Depends, if the deadline is breathing down my neck; I just stop with what I doing for example drawing and switch to something else like animating, or rigging or writing. Anything but the thing that is blocking my creative flow, if you want. When this doesn’t help, I take the car and drive to my hometown at the seaside, where I to take some more background pictures for the series. If there is no deadline in sight; .. partytime, eh

Do you have a favorite type of project to work on?

Plankton Invasion is incredibly fun to work on and people love it … I ask for nothing more

Is there a different part of the animation production process you have always wanted to try?

Yeah, .. finding big fundings and signing contracts, that would be nice

Writing is my weakest point so I try to work on that as much as I can, everything starts with a good story eh!

What is your favorite cartoon, animated film, or animated commercial SEQUENCE (not the movie or piece itself, but specific sequence of animation)?

That’s a difficult question, there are so many good things out there ..
If there is one scene that sticks, I have to say it’s the 2D animation sequence in Natural Born Killers. It has been a while since I last saw it, but I still remember how impressive it was.

What was one of the worst jobs you had before you got into animation?

Washing dishes in a restaurant to pay for my studies at the Art School

Our thanks to Joeri Christiaen and the rest of the “Plankton Invasion” crew!
-Floyd Bishop