NAOMI LYNCH
Special to The Leader
On Thursday, Oct. 2, internationally acclaimed animator Yves Geleyn visited Fredonia as the first artist of the 2014-15 Visiting Artists Program (VAP). Geleyn has worked with various companies, including Zune, BBC Radio 6 and Toyota.
“Animation is about four things,” Geleyn told the crowd, “story, characters, sound design and technique.”
Geleyn said animating is more than what is seen on the screen. He explained that half of the work is what people don’t see on screen — building the sets for the animation — which takes a meticulous amount of work to prepare in a limited amount of time.
“We often do not have the opportunity to bring in outside artists,” said Jill Johnson, head of VAP. “This seemed to be an extraordinary opportunity to introduce the students to an international artist who was an animator working both commercially and independently.”
This is Johnson’s first year hosting VAP after a seven year hiatus.
Geleyn spent a majority of the talk explaining his career path and utilizing samples of video animation from his portfolio. Geleyn’s first animated work was completed in 2005 and is called “Eclat de Suie,” which is French for “soot giant.” The animation shows a large, fuzzy ball of soot roaming around a city, without a care in the world. At the end of the day, the ball of soot explodes into sparks of light.
Although he premiered his work in 2005, Geleyn didn’t make his big break until three years later in 2008, when he was offered the opportunity to work for Zune, Microsoft’s now-defunct iPod competitor.
Animating wasn’t the first option for the English, German and French digital artist. Originally, Geleyn began as a rugby athlete, then moved on to culinary school and graphic design school before he decided that, after all that hard work, animating was the right field for him. After the success of the Zune commercial, he was offered the job of creating an interactive web experience for La Gaite Lyrique, a digital arts and music center in Paris. With La Gaite Lyrique, a bigger production required a bigger team that took months to complete.
After graphic design, the animation and illustration program is the largest program in the visual arts and new media department at Fredonia.
“I think students enter the program because they love popular forms of the media such as Disney, Pixar, anime and the resurgence of comics and graphic novels,” Johnson said. “It is a thriving field but extremely competitive.”
For most of his pieces, Geleyn documented the production process, showing audience members the “behind the scenes” magic for his animations.
“You don’t need to spend hours on a storyboard,” Geleyn stated, stressing the importance of getting the ideas down before beginning to flesh them out.
One of his favorite projects was the BBC Radio 6 commercial he created last year; BBC Radio 6 is a company similar to Pandora or Spotify. There is a lengthy and often complicated process to acquire music for a production. However, since the BBC Radio 6 had been around for a very long time, the company had the rights to a lot of music which made making a music commercial much simpler.
Most of Geleyn’s work has a humorous tone, but earlier this year he created a television commercial named “Monster in the Closet.” This short depicted a young boy who was afraid of the monster in the closet and — since his parents wouldn’t listen to him — he went into the closet, where his parents kept their loaded weapon, and accidentally shot himself. Gun violence has become more prevalent over the past few years in the United States; that’s why he was commissioned for this commercial to be made.
Johnson hoped students could learn from Geleyn’s diverse career path.
“I hope his trajectory proved illuminating,” Johnson said. “He began his studies in sports [rugby], moved on to the culinary arts, received a degree in graphic design, then began animation work on his own. That animation work garnered attention, clients, and [solidified] his current path.”