What inspired the tale of JILLIAN DILLON?
The music of Robert M Charde. He wrote the song and asked me if I would animate to any of his music and I fell in love with ‘Jillian’. What came first – the concept of turning perceived flaws into attributes to champion or wanting to do create a character like a “hippoplatypus”? For me, it was the hippoplatypus turned champion. Explain the animation technique. Why did you employ that specific approach as opposed to another form of animation? I’m a puppeteer (which if you ask me is the oldest form of animation there is) and I think puppetry encompasses a lot of unused techniques, which are powerful, and I wanted to show just how powerful they are. We make no effort to hide rods, strings, in fact, the puppets are 2 dimensional in a lot of ways, toy-like, but you are entranced the entire time. I think a lot of professionals have reservations about working with puppets but it amazes me because they call computer animation “traditional” at this point. Computer animation is relatively new an
