Animation Director Dante Buford at J1-Con 2018
At J1-Con I was able to meet Dante Buford a Director and an Animator. I never understood the behind the scenes of creating an animation and all the work that goes into creating animation. There are so many people that work together in creating an animation. There are storyboard artists, animators, artists, voice-over actors, and many other different positions. With all the work from everyone, everything comes together it is visualized into the animation we see. I sat in the panel because I was curious about what the panel was about, I was able to learn a lot about the behind-the-scenes in developing an animation.
Dante has done a lot of work in different animation studios. He has worked for Titmouse, Disney Interactive, and he is currently working for Cartoon Network. Dante worked for Titmouse as an Animation Supervisor, Animator, Story Board/Layout Artist, and other jobs from July 2013 to present. While he worked for Titmouse he worked on BallMasterz 9009, Big Mouth, Black Dynamite, and The Story Of O.J. Music Video from Jay-Z’s album 4:44. I have watched Big Mouth which is more recent and you can find the series on Netflix. He has done work for Cartoon Network on the animated show OK KO, He also worked with Adult Swim on Metalocalypse: The Doomstar Requiem – A Klok Opera. Dante also has done some independent work as well, being an animator is not a simple job.
As an animator, the artist creates multiple frames (images) that make the object viewing appear that it is moving when shown in a rapid sequence. The object is drawn in 12 to 24 frames per second. Dante used an example of Kirby bouncing up and down, each frame shows Kirby moving up and down. Dante started it off with Kirby squished and another image of him in a perfect sphere shape, then he stretched out the image of Kirby to appear as he is moving up. The angle of the face changes as Kirby goes up the face is pulled up, and the face pulled down as he goes down. When the images are displayed rapidly it appears Kirby is bouncing up and down. This job is extremely demanding and a lot of work is required to create one image, this is the type of animation needed depending on what the series calls for.
The panel was very interesting and I learned a lot more about animation then I did before, being an animator takes a lot of time and work to make the animation appear as it does. Creating multiple images to make a character appear as they are moving in a scene is a lot of work. Dante Buford has done a lot of amazing work over the years as an animator and I’m looking forward to seeing more of his work in the future.
That is a pretty cool profile!!! A lot he accomplished
Yes he is really skilled surprise not a lot of info on him on the web