Interview with Animator
Alexandre Boyer Creator of
"Fore"
Watch it now!
We love Fore because it contains all the necessary elements to make an entertaining animation: it's a creative concept, it has good timing, is beautifully designed and it features a Panda! How can you resist an animation with a Panda?
Background: I drew a bit when I was young, but I started taking it seriously kinda late, by the age of 17. I had to decide what I wanted to do with my life. I was pretty good in math and science, but somehow decided making videogames and movies was a much cooler way of spending my time. That was a really immature way of seeing things, but in the end, it put me on the right path.
Alexandre's Portfolio
So I studied at Cégep du Vieux-Montréal, which has a very nice 3 year public animation program with amazing teachers. I was supposed to do 3d animation, but after a year, I switched to 2D because I fell in love with the more intuitive approach.
Influences: I'm influenced by many things, from comics to animation. When I did my film, I was mostly into japanese animation, but nowadays, I basically like anything that's good. The style doesn't matter much. I love Claire Wendling, Robert Valley, James Baxter, Glen Keane, Leinil Yu, Sean Galloway, Lesean Thomas and so many other solid animators/draftsmen. Of course, real life is the best inspiration anyone can get.
Inspiration: The story really built itself little by little. It started out being mostly about a fight and became a bit more original by adding funky elements here and there. I'm glad my film came out a year and a half before "Kung Fu Panda" by Dreamworks so that it's clear the similarities are pure coincidences.
Watch "Fore"
Technique: I animated and cleaned everything on paper (except for a few tiny parts that were cleaned on the computer) and colored and composited it in
ToonBoom.
Time Required: It took about one year to produce while also doing my other classes.
Challenges: There were huge challenges. The first being that I was simply not very good back then, so I had to improve a lot during my film in order to bring what was in my head to the screen. I wasn't really able to draw girls right and my coloring skills weren't very good. But getting out of your comfort zone is one of the best way to improve beside effort and talent.
Thanks for taking the time to look at my film and read this article. I know there's a lot of flaws in it. It would benefit so much by having 2 or 3 more shots here and there to make things clearer, but I hope it still made an entertaining 75 seconds of animation.
Watch "Fore"
Go to Alexandre's Portfolio