Idan Gilboa is a graduate from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, specializing in Visual Communication.
With a focus on stop motion animation and illustration, he furthered his skills at SVA New York during a student exchange.
Balancing his passion for animation with a career in the creative industry, Idan serves as an Art Director and Creative Manager at leading advertising agencies and gaming companies.
DIRECTOR’S FILMOGRAPHY:
‘Deadline’ is Idan’s debut Short film.
Though Idan has created video clips for some top list local Israeli bands as the: ‘Dag Nahash’, and ‘Izabo’, and directed some TV commercials.
1. Was there a particular event or time that you recognized that animation is your way of telling stories?
All my life I’ve been loving animation, since I was a kid. Then in my adulthood I figure out that there is a whole world of animation that is made for adults, and I thought that it is SOOO cool. I started to study in Bezalel academy of art and design in Jerusalem and on my 3rd year went on for an exchange student program in new York where I first studied Stop Motion animation and immediately was charmed by it.
2. What exactly is the job of an animation director?
The main job is to tells a story by using 24 frames per second, from here it gets more complicated, It is about making a lot of decisions on the way to make that happen, how to tell that story? What is the right form of animation for telling that story, and why, how will the characters look alike, what would they sound like, does the design of the characters will help to tell the story, how can we make it into the budget in terms of number of characters/ shots/ background / level of animation and so on.
3. How many people are involved in creating an animation like yours? And could you tell us a bit about their roles, the flow of the team?
In the End, because the budgets of the project were not very high they were only a few people that worked on my film in key roles,
First of all there is the Development phase, where we were 2 screenwriters – Shahar Fux and Myself with some help from Ido Mymon and Orel Bitan as Script advisors and editors – that pitched the idea in order to get some budget to make an animatic and character design out of it, after we won the development budget I started to work with Storyboard artist – Amir Porat on the animatic, and started to build the puppets with a lot of help from colleague – Galia Osmo, who later was one of the main animators and cat puppet fabricator and helped and consult me a lot during the Post production phase.
In the Set design phase I worked mainly with Adva Santo, Galia Osmo and Tamir on building all the backgrounds and accessories, with some help from friend: Adi Sharon, Michal Fish Gilboa (my wife),
Tom Zaeger, Tom Prezman, 2hermanas Studio, Or Gedaliah, Chilik Smadar and of course Ali Express.
There was Lee Klein who was the Lights man on the sets and sometimes consulted online.
Then we started the animation phase, mainly animated by Tamir Aharoni and Galia Osmo, and later by Myself with some help from Renen Adar and Liron Narunski on the more difficult shots.
Meanwhile at the same time Musician Ben Azar started to work on the music, and Eran Barkani started to work on the Sound design and recorded folly sounds
And live actors – Sefi Yanko, Yoav Sarig, Himself and me.
Once we finished animating and editing, Tom Kouris started the Postproduction phase, compositing and covering all my filming mistakes and then coloring and combining all the shots together. With some help from Or Kantor and 3d Blender artists Ori Kagan and Yaron Zarfati.
This phase was stretched on a period of more than a year.
At that time Ben Azar already finished composing the music and recorded live accordion player – Amit Harel, and recorded himself on the guitars, Bass and drums. And Eran Barkani combined it to the film sound design. While afterwards Yoss Applebaum mixed it all and fixed some bugs for the DCP surround version.
And then the festival distribution phase has started and still continues until now.
4. What was the most important lesson you had to learn that has had a positive effect on your animation? How did that lesson happen?
Consulting and hiring people better then yourself as much as you can afford.
During the process you get to know and learn so much from colleagues.
but also be very carefully because every 2 people have 100 different opinions, and you won’t get anywhere by following every advise on the way, at the end you should consider everything and make your own choices and stand behind them, even if sometimes other people think it is wrong ( and sometimes they will really be wrong) it is better to be always on the move and try to fix mistakes later on then listening to many opinion and get confused and not do anything.
5. What is the process in creating an animated character?
First thing is thinking, exploring, and finding references I like. Second thing is trying to forget it and sketch something new and different, then if there is a sketch that I like I start to sculpt the head of it,
Taking in consideration the size of the puppet’s rig.
Then trying to base the style upon that design and making all the other characters based on that style.
Then figuring out that the last puppet looks much better than the first puppet and making all the puppets all over again from the beginning.
6. 2D Animation vs. 3D animation what are your thoughts on this endless battle?
I Don’t think that it is a battle at all, each technique has its own pros and cons and they are all good as long as they serving the purpose of the story.
7. What does your animation workflow look like while animating? Tell us a little about the tools that you are using. What are your preferences? Methods? Plugins? Techniques?
I use to animate on DragonFrame, it is the most advance program for Stop Motion animation.
I usually strat with shooting blocking with timeing keyframes of the puppet, and once I feel the timing is alight I start animating all the sequence using the blocking as a reference, I prefer to animate in a raw and funny style rather than realistic movement , I feel the snappy unrealistic animation helps the puppets to be more puppets so the grotesque effect works better in deadline, so I improvise a lot while animating. But Sometimes if there is a harder animation I’m using a video reference that I shoot or find on youtube.
8. What do audiences want? And is it the animator’s role to worry about that?
I don’t think this should be the question for the animator. The question should be what would I like to watch if I was in the audience, I believe that this is a much better motivation for creating animation.
9. What role have film festivals played in your life so far? Why are they necessary? How do you get the most out of them?
I’m not so sure about it, Since Deadline is my debut film I’m new to this experience and I have to say I really like it so far. I wish I could attend more festivals but as an animation creator I cannot afford it,
I wish more festivals will be able to pay travel fees for attending filmmakers and animators specifically.
10. What is the most difficult part for you about being in the animation business, and how do you handle it?
Budgets, it is always hard trying to get them, competing in pitch contests against other incredible talented artists, and once you get the budget wich is usually very small you need to settle and compromise, changing the script, cutting characters and scenes in order to get it done.
I handle it by keep working as a freelancer designer/art director around 3 times a week on Ad agencies and I Gaming companies in order pay my bills and keep on creating animation.
