Editor's Note: I spoke recently with Jake Armstrong, a film student at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, about his short animated film "The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!" which was awarded the Outstanding Achievement in Traditional Animation prize at the school's 20th annual Dusty Awards ceremony May 9.



By Adam Scott

entertainment editor



pop: What's the plot of "The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!"?

Jake Armstrong: Basically, it's really simple. A space bounty hunter travels to a lonely planet to kill a terrible monster. Once the man finds the monster it turns out to be maybe not so terrible, but terrible things do happen.



pop: What's your connection to Norman?

JA: I actually lived in Norman for 21 years. I was born there, grew up there and after three years at OU I transferred up here to an animation school because they just don't offer that much in the way of animation there.



p: How long did it take to create your short film?

JA: A lot of time is saved nowadays but you still can't avoid, with a movie like this, drawing it out by hand. I had to draw probably three to four thousand drawings for it.

I guess from the very beginning, thinking of characters, plot and design, then roughing it out, then getting smoother, finishing it, animating it ... Computers help but it still took about 10 months total.

The animation and design took probably eight months of that and I spent pretty much all of that time sitting in front of a computer and drawing nonstop.



p: Does a history of visual arts run in your family?

JA: Yeah. It's interesting because most people I know actually don't have that much of a family background in that.

My mom's a painter in Norman, Carol Armstrong ... so yes, I've got a background in it.

My brother and I tried to rebel against it but in the end, what you're good at and what makes you happy, that's what you come back to.

He went into sculpture and I went into making films, both of which I think have a lot of ties to the fine arts painting kind of thing.



p: How did it feel to win the Outstanding Achievement in Traditional Animation award at the Dusty festival?

JA: Felt really good. It's really nice after you work for so long on something to be rewarded for what you did ... But also, all the films at that festival were really good. So it felt really great to have all those other works along with mine. It felt really good.



p: What do you feel is the role animation plays in society?

JA: Honestly I don't think there is much right now. It's much of a problem. It needs to grow as an art form.

I grew up watching cartoons and I can say for the most part, the cartoons that are made are made by people who only watch cartoons.

I feel like the medium needs someone who watches films and is a filmmaker ...

But I think that there's an important movement right now where a lot of people are trying to make cartoons that are more serious and artistic, to push it more as an art form.



p: What are some of the ways technology has changed the way in which animation is done in the last several years?

JA: It's basically just the introduction of the computer that did it ...

We used to draw little drawings on sheets of acetate and you had to do each one five or 6 times and photograph it with a camera and it was really time consuming.

I was drawing on a kind of computer, a special tablet that captured what I drew. I only needed to do each drawing only one time to get what I needed. It made it possible for what would at one time have taken a whole good-sized studio to do, even though I had a couple of people helping me on a few parts,

I was able to do it mostly by myself, like 80 percent of it. And obviously using programs like Flash there are some little tricks that make some processes go incredibly quicker.



p: How was it working on "Superjail!"?

JA: Well it was a really fun project to work on. Yeah, I did in-between and cleanup, which is pretty much the lowest level you can work at in animation, but I did something on pretty much every part of the first season, which was made over about 10 months.

I saw how it all worked in a studio, a small studio -- everything that happened in making the show was in this one small space in Brooklyn.

I ended up taking pretty much all of their methods in the end to do my thesis. It was great to see how it was done and be able to use that to maximize what I can do.

Plus, it was great to meet a lot of people that I love their work within this industry.



p: Weird question time. If you could go into the universe of one cartoon, any cartoon, for any length of time you wanted, what would it be?

JA: It's hard to actually imagine. I guess first off, I'd have to think of a good cartoon. I suppose it would have to be "Yellow Submarine," that would be wild ... Or also, there's this other cartoon, "Allegro non troppo." For either of those, being in a universe where there are basically no restrictions in style or even in the physics of it, determining what you can and can't do, that would be wonderful ... They obviously push the limits of reality and would be so much more fun to play around in.



p: Are you finished with school now?

JA: Yeah I actually finished my bachelor's so I'm trying to shop my thesis film around to film festivals, see if I gain some notoriety. But mainly I'll be shopping around, seeing who might be interested.

I know I'll be doing a little bit of stuff with Augenblick Studios -- they're the ones that I worked on "Superjail!" with -- but right now I'm mainly just looking around. It's kind of a bittersweet thing when you graduate school and you kind of ask yourself, "All right, now what next?"



p: Are there any dream projects you'd like to do someday?

JA: I don't know. That's something that's kind of always changed as I went along. Right now it's to make a comic, make comics and also do some things for TV shows. Right now, I just want to make cartoons and travel.



p: Do you have any advice for aspiring animators?

JA: I guess for any artist ... going to school, that's an important thing, that you go to school, be around lots of different people you can observe and learn from.

But really, it's how much you teach yourself in the end, how much you push yourself to learn and do.

A lot of animators, they don't push themselves, they figure "what I'm doing's easy" so they don't push themselves. In the end they wind up making something that nobody really wants to see and it's a shame because the effort that they did spend on it, that's kind of wasted.

It's just, get up there. Read. Watch everything you can. Work hard. You've gotta get up there and do it.

I kind of hate saying that because I like being like a kid with it, but whatever you do, pretty much, you've got to push yourself hard at it.

That, and there's definitely more out there than "Looney Tunes." I find that a lot of people watch nothing but that all day and it doesn't do anything for you.



Adam Scott

366-3533

pop@normantranscript.com