Joaquin Baldwin is director and animator from Paraguay, currently living in Los Angeles. His film Sebastian's Voodoo was nominated for an Annie Award in 2009, the most prestigious award in animation, where he competed with 4 other studio-produced shorts from Pixar, Disney, Aardman and Plympton. He has received more than 100 awards for his animated films Sebastian's Voodoo and Papiroflexia, including a Student Academy Award, and awards at the Cannes Short Film Corner, USA Film Festival, Angelus, Cinanima and Cinequest. His films have been shown in over 150 countries, in all continents (including Antarctica), and have a wide following of fans online with millions of views registered.
Joaquin learned the basics of animation independently while living in Paraguay, and later moved to Ohio for a BFA in Animation at the Columbus College of Art & Design. In 2010 he graduated from UCLA with a Masters degree in Animation. Joaquin is a proud recipient of a full graduate scholarship from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.
I started playing with animation when I was in high school, about 10 years ago. I did not start it seriously as a career until 5 years ago when I started doing narrative shorts.
Getting nominated for an Annie Award alongside Pixar, Disney, Aardman and Plympton was fantastic. Though my films received many awards, this nomination was still the most exciting thing for me.
I storyboard anything that is time-based. I first see it playing in my head, then in paper, then in the computer, and then it’s time to animate. Without the boards it’s hard to explore new ideas quickly, one starts to get too attached to shots or scenes that might not be the best for the film.
Nope, a wide mix.
Mostly Maya, After Effects, Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator.
Each has its strengths. I find Toon Boom exceptional for animating and doing cleanups, but I prefer After Effects to do the camera work and the texturing. Photoshop is always a must, and Illustrator fills in some vector gaps that Photoshop is still not the best for. And Maya is for anything 3d, even if it’ll be exported as flat 2D graphics.
Each project is widely different, but I’ll talk specifically about my latest one, The Windmill Farmer
I started with a simple idea, and a lot of different interpretations of a possible storyline. I knew the title, The Windmill Farmer and that would drive the concept in one way or another.
I always start by sketching on paper, I did a bunch of explorations on the character and tried to simplify it as much as possible, just keeping the essence. This would help me later since I had a tight deadline, so a more stylized approach was needed.
Then I did a quick storyboard on Toon Boom Storyboard and printed it out to see how the film played shot by shot. Once it was close enough to what I needed, I assigned each shot a number and started organizing what I’d need to create during production.
Production was pretty straightforward, I imported some video references in Toon Boom and animated in 3’s using that as inspiration for the timing. Once the animation was cleaned up I exported it into SWFs that I brought into After Effects, allowing me to zoom in as tightly as possible without pixellating the image.
I do 2D and 3D, I think my strongest skill is in 3D but I enjoy 2D a lot too. I also do some motion graphics and compositing. I like working on shorts that are very condensed and carry a strong story in a short amount of time.
Mostly a mix of 3D and a motion-graphics-styled 2D traditional animation (though I don’t animate in paper anymore, I go straight for a Wacom tablet and work digitally from the get go)
in Toon Boom Storyboard Pro:
in Toon Boom Animate Pro:
Mostly their ease for drawing frame by frame, which is what I truly use the products for.
Yes, skipping the pencil drawings and scanning was the greatest benefit, I love drawing directly in the computer and having a vector image all ready to go.
I think so, but I like how complete the toolsets are in Toon Boom.
I’d recommend them for 2D animation.
I looked at the tutorials one time and it was pretty much all I needed. I didn’t use many of the advanced tools, just the basics was enough for my project.
