Case Study: Joanna Quinn

Since graduating from college Joanna Quinn has gone from strength to strength in the field of animated shorts. She's best known for creating sassy plus-size heroine Beryl and has even named her Cardiff-based production company in her honour. Beryl is currently appearing in Dreams And Desires: Family Ties, which is scooping gongs like full-fat ice cream on the festival circuit. It marks the first instalment in a five-part series.

In this interview Joanna discusses her route into the industry, the animation process and how she funded her shorts with toilet roll ads...

First interest in animation...

"I always loved to draw. I was an only child so I spent quite a lot of time alone and just drawing, drawing, drawing. I didn't really plan to be an animator. It wasn't until I went to Middlesex Polytechnic and did a graphic design course that I was introduced to animation. Then of course it just seemed so fitting. When everyone else was going, 'Oh my God, how many drawings?' I was going, 'Yippee, thousands of drawings!' It just suits the way I work."

Starting on shorts...

"I made a film while I was at college called Girls Night Out but I didn't feel it was absolutely finished. I thought it really needed a proper soundtrack and stuff, so when I left college I got some professional people in to do the voices and finished the artwork.

"I had moved to Wales after college because I was told there was quite an energetic film workshop in Cardiff and they were just starting to do animation. The workshop had encouragement and support from S4C, the Welsh Channel 4 who bought Girls Night Out and showed it on television.

"The film was shown at the London Film Festival, which was very exciting. It also went to Annecy, which is the world's biggest animation festival, and won three prizes. Going to Annecy was the big thing really because I didn't even know there was this whole animation world going on. I thought it was just Disney and me and nothing in between! When I went to Annecy I saw animation films from all over the world…and there were buyers there, so we sold Girls Night Out to loads and loads of countries to be shown on television. Then S4C and Channel 4 encouraged me to make another film with the same character Beryl in it [Body Beautiful], so it all started off then."

On funding in the UK...

"It was brilliant in the late 80s and early '90s because funding wasn't a problem - there seemed to be a lot of money around. When Channel 4 set up, they spent a lot of money encouraging independent filmmakers so I was part of that flow. It was a great time, but now it's completely different. People are buttoning their purses up and there doesn't seem to be the same amount of interest in creating 'art' projects. There seems to be more money in features because animation features have become big money in the last few years. With our last film we couldn't get the funding for it so we put half the money in ourselves and the other half came from S4C. Now the reason we could afford to put some of the money in is because we also do advertising [most famously for Charmin toilet paper]. So, the adverts we do help to pay for the films. In terms of tips on how to get funding, I suppose you just have to remember that the people with the money are human. If they are sent a good idea, they won't chuck it out. If you are going to present an idea, though, you have to keep it really simple and don't send it to someone who really hasn't got any time and is just ready to hate it. It's almost like you have to get it all on one sheet of A4 paper to get them hooked!"

Making a career in shorts...

"I would say it is pretty difficult to make a career in shorts, unless of course you can adapt the style. For my next film we were talking about simplifying the animation a bit because my work is extremely painstaking and long and laborious. It costs a lot of money because it takes so long and other people are involved, so once you get into that ball game you need money - you can't do it for nothing. But if you've got a very simple style and you design the film so that it is done economically, then there is no reason why you can't make it cheaply. And if it's sellable, you can sell it afterwards to television and there are DVD rights and all of that sort of stuff. There are sales options. Unfortunately if the film costs a lot to make then it never quite pays for itself."

Moving into features...

"The main problem with moving into features is that the more detailed the drawing, the more expensive it is. First of all, story is everything and I work with my partner [Les Mills], who's the writer. My drawing and Les' writing go hand-in-hand and I think that's why people like our films. Now if we were to do a longer format, either I'd take 20 years to do it so that it looks the same as my short films, or we'd have to compromise. You have to compromise somewhere, but we would never compromise the story. That means finding a more economic way to do the artwork... we're keeping our options open at the moment trying to work out which direction to go in."

On the animation process...

"I love the actual act of animating, drawing and seeing things move. I love it when I've got some dialogue, or I've got some sound and you put the image to the sound and it matches. When it actually works and comes to life, that's really exciting. I spend a long time storyboarding and that's probably the most painful bit for me. And the character design. I'm bad at doing all the preparatory work. I just want to get stuck in. I'm really obsessive about the drawing, though. If I work with anybody else I'll go over every single drawing. The thing about animation that people say is that you don't see the individual drawings - 12 drawings will just fly by so it's pointless doing the detailing on every single one - but I am obsessed with that. I do the detailing on every single one just in case somebody freeze-frames on a really ugly drawing - I couldn't bear it! Perhaps that's an area where I need to be a bit more economical really. In terms of the modelling for characters, I do it all myself. I've got a full-length mirror and so I just prance about! And I've got a mirror on my table for facial expressions. With the last film [Dreams And Desires: Family Ties], because it was a video diary, there were shots like when the camera was put on the dog's back at a wedding, so there were different angles that I had to animate. I used my mobile phone at low angles and used that as reference. I use a lot of reference and I've got a lot of observational drawings in lots of sketchbooks."

Advice for budding animators...

"I think the most rewarding thing for a budding animator would be to take a couple of weeks out of your life and get some work experience at a company, or with an animator - somebody you admire. That way you can see how the filmmaking process works, and it's just really fascinating. I think the trouble with animation is that it is so popular, a lot of people want to get into it, but then they don't realise exactly how time-consuming it is - and often boring. It would be good to get a taster before you decide. Of course the lovely thing about animation is that you can make a film on your own. You don't need a huge team of people helping you, and lighting and all that. You can just do it in your bedroom. That's the wonder of it."

Stella Papamichael | Published 25 May 07