Channel Frederator Blog

Animation student Jonathan Holt graduates this Friday! Woot! His thesis film, “The Dog and The Butcher”, is quickly becoming a Channel Frederator fan favorite. Here he chats with us about what’s next!

Channel Frederator: Where are did you study animation?

Jonathan Holt: Ringling College of Art and Design, also studied animation at Lansing Community College, prior to Ringling

CF: Is there a particular teacher who really helped you with your work?

JH: First Keith Osborn, my faculty advisor, Helped more than I can say with every part of this film. He is an amazing teacher and mentor, his eye for spacing and concern with authenticity is awesome. Second is Billy Merritt, who was my instructor for story, and has an amazing aesthetic, design and animation eye. I’ve learned almost all of what little I know from those two people.

CF: What has influenced your style the most?

JH: I’m not totally sure, I think my main influence was paper cut-outs, in particular Megan Brain’s stuff. I really like the old UPA style and sense of design. Mary Blair and more recent artists such as Lorelay Bove (huge fan) have been big inspirations for color, design, style etc. Also obviously a lot of 101 Dalmatians. Oh! there is also this really awesome Donald Duck cartoon from back in the day that was highlighted on John K’s site, “Donald’s Diary”, I really learned a lot from looking at that. There are many more such as Annette Marnat, Erwin Madrid, Jon Klassen, Wallace Klakenwski, Ben Butcher… and many others I’m forgetting…

Really what I was hoping to do was create something new with this, something that wasn’t exactly like anything before, not quite traditional not perfect CG either. I think my guiding phrase when it came to the style was that it should all look like a human being was making the decisions and not the computer. Everything should have that imperfect human touch to it.

CF: What gave you the idea for this film?

JH: My dog, Mocha! Even from the first drawings I always referred back to the source really hoping I could capture some of the feeling of the original.

Though the story shifted a lot as I developed the boards for it the phrase that I really liked, and I hope I was able to keep, was, “the day in the life of a dog”. I also kept the phrase, ” an homage to the dog” cycling through my mind as I worked on stuff. I think that doing that, having some sort of mantra that you constantly refer back to, can really help you remember what the core of what you are trying to achieve is.

CF: What do you plan to do after graduation? *or* Can you tell us about any upcoming projects?

JH: Hopefully get a job somewhere doing interesting stuff with cool people! As far as other projects go, I have ideas for other styles, both visually and animation-wise, that I would like to develop. I think that there are many ways for animation to look and move that have yet to be explored and every one of those have possibilities for expression that the others are not as well suited for.

Well said! Congrats on making it through school in one piece, and good luck!
You can check out Jonathan’s film, “The Dog and The Butcher” right here on Channel Frederator!

-Bailee DesRocher