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Wonder Woman We chat with acclaimed animation auteur Joanna Quinn about her brilliant new short Affairs of the Art, as well as life and animation career.
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f you’ve been following the world of indie animation over the past few decades, chances are you have fallen in love with the work of Joanna Quinn. The British animator and director introduced her wonderful and relatable everywoman character Beryl in the 1987 short Girls Night Out, which took home three prizes at Annecy. Her 1996 short Famous Fred and 1998’s Wife of Bath were both nominated for Oscars, and her 2006 short Dreams and Desires: Family Ties was the winner of the grand prize at Zagreb’s Animafest. General audiences will also know her for her acclaimed hand-drawn animated ads for Charmin, Whiskas and United Airlines. This year, her latest animated short Affairs of the Art, which was made with her partner and husband, writer Les Mills, catches up with the wonderful, eccentric and hilarious character Beryl. Quinn was kind enough to chat with us since her NFB (National Film Board of Canada) produced short is also featured at Annecy this month:
ters that are multifaceted and unusual. We’ve made three films with Beryl as the main protagonist, so in Affairs of the Art we wanted to explore other characters. Enter her family: Ifor, Beryl’s husband and muse … mostly naked; her ambitious sister, Beverly, who’s fascinated by death — and the complete opposite of Beryl; geeky son Colin, obsessed with technical details like railway signalling systems and screw threads. Beryl actually has the least screen time in this film, but by showing her family we get a deeper understanding of her character and relationships. What are the pluses and minuses of living and working with your writer/producer? The pluses are we never have to go to work and can make plans lounging on the sofa with cups of tea, but the minuses are that we never stop talking about work. It drove our daughter out of the house at age 17, and she vowed never to have anything to do with animation! She became a vet.
What kind of budget did you have? Was it a lot more than your previous short? The budget for Affairs was around £24,000 ($33,340) per minute, which was similar to our previous film, Dreams and Desires: Family Ties. How did you like working in digital 2D? Affairs of the Art is actually animated on paper and colored in TVPaint. I originally animated for six months on my Cintiq, but I realized I wasn’t enjoying animating digitally and my animation became quite stiff. I loved exploring the TVP software and it’s great for coloring, but I found it hard to replicate the fluidity of animating on paper. I think it’s because I’m very intuitive when I animate and I get lost in the mark making and enjoy making mistakes, which might take me in different directions. I’m also very physical when I animate and use my fingers to smudge and soften the pencil marks, which is just impossible on the Cintiq. Anyway, I reluctantly shoved my Cintiq to one side and set up my dusty lightbox again and
Animation Magazine: It’s so good to catch up with Beryl and her family again in your new short! How long did it take you to make this latest chapter in her life? Joanna Quinn: Well … Les [Mills] wrote the script way back in 2010, the storyboard was finished in 2015, and I began seriously animating in 2016, so the actual production took about six years. Waaaaay too long, and very glad to be on the other side now! What do you love about Beryl and her family? We love Beryl because she is a joy to animate and a great character to write for. It’s fun to subvert the audience’s expectations of an ordinary middle-aged woman. Les and I are great observers of people and love to create characwww.animationmagazine.net 26 june|july 21
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