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Home > Design and Technology > Innovation and Emerging Technologies > Design and Design Practice > The making of Kelman to the Rescue

Answers for activity

1. What inspired Nathan to purse a carrer as an animator?
   Nathan had always been in love with cartoons and still watches the shows on ABC Kids whenever he gets a chance. He feels that animation is a natural extension to a static illustration, especially if your exisitn style lends itself well to being animated. Nathan seriously got into animating about five years ago when he was playing around with some crude stop motion stuff using paper.
   
   
2. What impacted/ influenced Nathan's style of animation work? 
   Nathan is a big fan of Miro (Spanish, surrealist painter and sculpter) and Jim Flora ( American artist with a cartoon like style). Miro diversified into so many areas, he's a real inspiration. Jim is just plain cool! Miro's simplistic but very graphic style is a great inspiration not only to me but to many illustrators who have a retro feel to their work. Jim Flora was probably one of the first guys to combine the whole miro/pop art thing into his album covers for Jazz records and the mix of the two created a fresh and lively look to all his art ... this was the kind of thing I wanted to do.
   
3. What is Nathan's process for creating an animated piece?
   "Lots of thinking, pencil sketches, storyboard thumbnails. The first thing is probably character design as it's the most fun and really gets me going. Once the storyboard and characters have been finalised everything is worked up in Illustrator and later imported into Flash to be broken up into arms, legs, head etc. Background usually come last. Sound sort of happens during the entire process."
   
   
4. What kind of collaborations does Nathan use?
   Nathan work with others the help with the sound. He usually has ideas about what he wants (and even lyrics) but sometimes he just leaves it to the professionals. E.g. like his brother, Luke who just finished the music for an ABC animation Nathan had been working on. Nathan even occassionally uses other people to help withe the animation of his products. The only thing he is particular about is the look and feel - Nathan has to be in total control of how it's illustrated and so therefore does all that side himself.

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