Interview with Travis Blaise

Recently I had the chance to interview a man by the name of Travis Blaise. In addition to having an awesome last name he also has awesome work experiences. So to begin the interview I started with the standard question. Could you tell us about some of your prior work experiences?


Little did I know what was to come. Travis told me that one of the first movies he had worked on was Beauty and the Beast, then moving on to Aladdin, Lion King and Pocahontas. In between which he worked on a Roger Rabbit cartoon as well as the Aladdin and Lion King video games for the Sega Genesis console. After that he moved on to animate Frollo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, villains in Mulan, Kerchek and others in Tarzan, characters in Lilo and Stitch, Koda from Brother Bear and Goofy in a cartoon.

After the Disney animation studio had closed down Travis went on to animate George in the movie Curious George as well as nearly 24 music videos for the cartoon series Class of 3000. These days Travis is a free lancer doing commercials, pilots for some television shows and working with friends he had made in the industry.

I went on to ask him if he ever considered body language when drawing and animating. Travis said, "I think body language is extremely important, especially in animation. It's the art of story telling without saying a word. In a lot of my practice over the years I have been observing. I have a gift to see things, see it in my head and then put it down on paper. To me it comes down to observing life. In traditional animation and 3D animation it's about the posing."

Interested in his thoughts about networking I continued the interview by asking for his thoughts on the importance of making contacts and networking. To this he responded, "I think it's vital, in any industry you're in. Really trying to meet people on a friend level. Most of the people in my network are friends. It's like friends first, then let's see what we can do later."

As usual I decided to finish off the interview with a question that I like to ask because I find that it informs us of things that we would normally have to learn by experience. I asked Travis if there was one thing that you would tell an aspiring animator, what would it be? He replied, "Just enjoy your life. Really just observe and try to have fun with what you're doing. Even if I don't have any money, I don't care because I love what I do. Find your passion and keep it."

After the interview was over I thanked Travis repeatedly and then bid him to have a good day. I hope you enjoyed this article and have gotten something from it. So, in the words of Mr. Blaise, "Find your passion and keep it."

References:
Koda: http://www.animatedheroes.com/koda.html
Kerchak: http://wdfanimation2.tripod.com/kerchak.html
Frollo: http://www.movievillains.com/archives/2004/06/judge_claude_fr.html
Goofy: http://disneyexclusiveonline.com/content/Mickey_-_Friends.htm