thenewfilmmaker: How do you develop in general the stories for your animation shorts and how did you develop in particular the story of L’autre ? What is the story around the sock?
Tanya Aydostian: I have a particular interest in the “split personality”‘s subject and on all the different faces, “masks”, humans’ can wear… I try to develop and show my personal point of view of these facts through my animations. When I develop a story, I always have the main ideas and the main subjects I want to show in my animation before a long time but I have some difficulties to develop precisely the whole story… so, I try to speak about my stories’ ideas to the people close to me ; their reactions help me to improve my ideas. For the story of “L’autre” I had the principal topic of the story and some atmospheres in mind. I shared with my 2 colleagues my wishes and we detailed the story together. The story around the sock is the other personality, face, of the man… the “bad” one… It’s a kind of split personality. I wanted to use a sock to speak about this subject, because it’s a harmless thing (in appearance) and without life. So, it’s thanks to the man that it develops himself and take more and more importance on the man’s mental condition. And all just begins with a play !
thenewfilmmaker: Can you describe how do you use the different Animation software? Which steps do you do with Photoshop, 3DS Max, and in Fusion ?
Tanya Aydostian: First, before using any software, I drew all my ideas to communicate its to my colleagues. Then, we worked on 3ds Max for the modeling, setup, skinning, animation, lighting… In parallel we worked on the textures on Photoshop. Then, when all the frame had been rendered on 3DS Max (in Scanline rendering), we made all the compositing in Fusion. The question is not asked but I’ld like to speak about the result we had for this film and if it met our expectations… For my part (and I think for my 2 colleagues too), I’m quite happy by the results, compared with the time we had to make the film (3 months to modelise, to make the setup, the skinning, to create the textures, to animate, to composed the final renders and to edit the film) and knowing that it was our first time making a film. But, in reality, the animation don’t reflect at all my style ; I wanted it to be more expressive and punchy ! For the visual aspect, I’m pretty happy of the results, moreover for the backgrounds and the man’s designs (I just wanted it more deformed on the face and the body), but the “bad” sock’s design changed completely by mine (which was more mad and laughable than “frightening”). But this was a graduation film, made with 2 others student and this is the game to make concession to have a movie with the reflect of all filmmakers 😉
thenewfilmmaker: There are different ways of filmmaking. Feature, documents, animations ect. Why did you choose, to make animations?
Tanya Aydostian: I choose to make animation because I think we have more “liberty” to give life to our ideas. I’m very interested in the visual side of a film and in animation I can create all kind of characters, environment …
thenewfilmmaker: “L’autre” is your graduation film. You went to the EMCA Angoulême School in France. Can you give us an introduction to this school and could you please tell us about your time there?
Tanya Aydostian: The EMCA has now changed. On my time, my 3d training was only in 1 year (but we had to own an artistic background) and we had only 3 months to make our graduation film. We had a lot of hours but our teachers had been competent and we learnt quickly ! Now, the school is in 3 years, with 2d animation and 1 year to make the graduation film.
thenewfilmmaker: You did a teaser for the singer Ana Dess (record “Mise en scène”) Was the story around the girl in this animation given or did you develop this character?
Tanya Aydostian: For the story around the girl, the artist Ana Dess gave me all the main ideas (for the story, the character design…) and I’d been free to concretise the entire project ! For this project, it had been more easy to develop the story because I was telling about her sings’ stories. Moreover, the artist has the same main interest than mine.
thenewfilmmaker: Who influenced your animation style? Do you have favourite animation artists or comic artists?
Tanya Aydostian: I can’t tell precisely who influenced my animation style… When I was a child, I loved the Disney’s animation like the “Sleeping Beauty”, all the Tex Averys’ cartoons… I think I’m attune in some dark and mad atmospheres ! I also appreciate Tim Burton’s, Henry Selick’s and Terry Gilliams’ films and animations. I also read a lot of children’s illustrated books and I’m interested in all kind of Art (The Expressionism above all)
thenewfilmmaker: What would be your advice for a first time filmmaker, who would like to do such animation videos like you?
Tanya Aydostian: My advice ? … try to do what we love as more as possible, shared ideas and be attentive to all reactions ! Also, to not be afraid about the time spent on the projects…For the last question, I think some mad people can … 😉
