Rusty Mills has worked in the animation industry for over 25 years producing, directing, storyboarding, animating and timing.
After attending CalArts he trained with Eric Larson (one of the famed nine old men) at Disney. This led to animating on projects such as An American Tail and Sport Goofy: Soccermania. He spent several years animating at Filmation Studios before landing at Warner Bros. He's best known for his Directing and Producing at Warner Bros. on Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain for which he won five Emmy's and a Peabody.
His knowledge in digital production has been used in various productions from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse to his current work on the upcoming Pink Panther and Pals airing on Cartoon Network. He also finds time to produce and animate various independent projects and also teaches digital storyboarding classes at Studio Arts in Glendale. You can find more of his work at his website, www.rustymillsanimation.com.
Over 25 years
Produced and Directed Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain at Warner Bros. Animation Storyboards on various projects for Disney, Warner Bros., MGM, Scholastic etc.
I first used Toon Boom Studio v1 on a Pilot I did for Disney. When Storyboard Pro came out I started using it and became the main teacher for professionals in the Hollywood Animation industry. I also used Digital Pro (now Animate Pro) and have taught paperless animation using it.
TV series, independent short films, commercials and features.
No
I also use Photoshop for background painting, Maya for some props and backgrounds, Adobe After Effects for certain effects and Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere for editing.
I choose my products to achieve certain a style that depends upon the project.
I design characters and style using a sketchbook. Sometimes the script already exists, if not I write the script. After recording the dialog I create my storyboard and animatic using Storyboard Pro.
I do traditional 2D all hand drawn. I do most of my work digitally directly in Animate Pro but often work with other animators and cleanup artists who only use paper. Animate Pro allows me to combine these two seamlessly.
Paperless and traditional.
in Toon Boom Storyboard Pro:
textured pen, layers, draw behind, dynamic camera, animatic creation
in Toon Boom Animate Pro:
x-sheet, camera, palette, effects, import/export
Being able to create an animatic right as I'm creating the storyboard helps communicate to all those involved what the plan of production is. From my storyboard I can save off just the backgrounds for the BG painter to paint from. I do that even if I am the one who is going to paint them. I also use the storyboard as my layouts for animation. I can import directly to Animate Pro for paperless animation or print them for traditional animators.
Once the animation is in Animate Pro I am able to resize and position the animation to get the best composition and motion. I am also able to use the camera in a multiplane fashion which boosts the level of professionalism in my work.
I am able to create animatics from my storyboards faster using Storyboard Pro because I can create it as I go. I can also make the storyboard more accurate to the dialog since I have it in Storyboard Pro as I'm working.
The Ink and Paint and compositing process in Animate Pro is so fast I am able to have a scene done in a matter of hours rather than days. This includes any effects I place on the characters such as shadows and highlights.
Camera mechanics can be planned early on so there is no guessing once the animation is done. It also helps keep me from doing extra drawing that might not be seen.
Some work I do involves a mix with live action and being able to import the frames directly into Animate Pro is extremely helpful by allowing me to easily animate directly to the live action.
Absolutely. When I began in animation, the ink and paint process required days and weeks not to mention high costs for the paint and cels. Once digital production came I was always having to find ways to work around the limitations of the software to get the look I wanted. Even storyboards were still being done on paper and it was extremely time consuming to scan in the storyboards and separate the panels in order to create an animatic.
Now I am able to do these things in a fraction of the time. And with some of the tools available such as Camera and Effects I am able to put more into my productions.
It might be but with a lot of extra work. Because Toon Boom products have tools based on the traditional animation process (such as the x-sheet and 3 dimensional camera) it is easy to know how to accomplish a particular look.
I like them and they are a major part of my creative arsenal.
I have always been a quick learner when it comes to software. If there was something I didn't know I would look for it in the manual or go to the online forums to ask about it. I used a couple specific tutorials when I first started using the programs but mostly I learned by doing.
Dual Core PC with Windows XP professional. 4 gigs of memory, Two 300 gig drives
