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Interview

Elisabet Ýr Atladóttir p3

Elisabet Ýr Atladóttir talks about studying at The Animation Workshop which is based in a former military barracks in Viborg, Denmark, and directing animated movies...

READERSVOICE.COM: What would a typical week involve while studying at The Animation Workshop?

ELISABET YR ATLADOTTIR: There are no typical weeks in The Animation Workshop! The weeks at the Animation Workshop were chopped down into different subjects. Most often they had something to do with a long-term project we were working on, so at the beginning some amazing character design teacher would come over from his job and teach us for a week, to get down our designs for the characters. Then we would have a teacher come over to help us with the modeling process, teaching us techniques along the way. Then after that would come a rigging teacher, who would help us with the more technical side of all this animation business. And then we would have a compositing teacher, who would help us with the creative and technical aspects of putting it all together and making it look great. This is describing the CG line of course, the animation line were much more concerned with animation than with anything else. Sometimes teachers would be with us for a week, sometimes they would be with us for four weeks. It was different depending on what we were doing at any given time.

RV: When directing animations, what are the important things to know about managing projects and people making the movie with you?

EYA: Communication is everything. If you can’t communicate, you’re unable to manage a project of any given size (unless you’re alone of course, then communication isn’t really necessary). As director I had to talk to people all the time. I had to make sure everything was happening according to my vision, but at the same time I had to be aware of time constraints. It’s important to remain in control of the situation even if there is a high level of stress. You also need to be aware of how the people in your team work, people can have very different methods of dealing with things and one must be able to find the best way to direct this person. It comes pretty automatically if you just pay attention to the people you’re working with, but it’s necessary especially in small teams to keep up morale by being sensitive to how people work and how they deal with stress themselves.

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– copyright Simon Sandall