Animators that changed my life. (pt.2)?—?Alvise Avati

I established that this series of posts will be about Animators that changed my life one way or another, whether they know it or not. I want to share these posts because I believe that everyone must know who these people are.

The first part was about the amazing Arslan Elver, an animator who played a big role in my animation Journey. In a similar way, in this second part of these series of posts I would like to write about the comic genius and breathtaking work of Alvise Avati.

I hope Alvise doesn’t mind me sharing his work and my personal story about how he helped me develop my animation skills and motivated me. 

“Maybe he will punch me in the testicles if he meets me on the street.” But I believe it’s still important for anyone who is interested in animation to know his story and maybe it will help them as it did me. Therefore I’ll do it anyway. “I don’t mind a punch in the testicles, actually I like it.” :)

Alvise comes from Italy and a family of directors and writers. He decided to follow his passion with animation and the journey wasn’t easy. He was born to share stories one way or another. This is Alvise as a baby.

He is a great storyteller and he demonstrated this with his work as an animator, writer and director. Over the years I’ve heard a lot of people mention him in different situations as one of the best creature animators in the world.

Alvise had his first experience as an animator on a feature film working on Peter Jackson’s King Kong at Weta Digital. He was 31 years old when he got the offer as a junior animator. For 2D animation you have Disney’s Nine Old Men portrayed as the masters and for CG animation we have one old man, Alvise. This of course is just a joke, because he was old when he started working in films. This turned out to be a very important fact for me personally.

After three and a half years working at Weta, he took a position with ILM in San Francisco and worked on Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen. Then after almost a year, he wanted to move closer to Italy, so he took a job in London. He worked at Double Negative on Andrew Stanton’s John Carter. After that he worked for MPC and Cinesite, ILM before working for Framestore, where he is currently a lead animator.

He worked in a lot of creature related projects. Some of the films are Guardians of the Galaxy — Volume 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Edge of Tomorrow, The Seventh Son, 47 Ronin, Wrath of the Titans, John Carter, The Sorcerer Apprentice, Transformers 2, Avatar, Eragon, The Water Horse, King Kong.

I personally discovered Alvise by mistake… or maybe it was fate. It was a Monday night and, after a weekend shift at the factory I worked for my income as a student, I was working alone, late in the university class trying to improve my animation (dialogue exercise). I was very frustrated and felt like giving this whole thing up. All the other students lived a student’s life, which is very tempting and I felt so much pressure because I knew that this was it for me. I took this big step moving abroad with no one to support this decision except for me. Almost everyone was 18 and I was 23 with already a possible career as a graphic designer down the drain.

I wanted to do this right and also loved the idea of being an animator. Especially after meeting Arslan. Anyway, that fateful night I googled animation tutorials and I found the hilarious examples that Alvise has previously made.

These made me laugh and it reminded me that animation is fun and shouldn’t be stressful. This guy was having fun, being silly and enjoying his journey in animation.

The next day, after class I stayed late again and googled more on Alvise Avati. What I found changed my perspective in a big way. No, it wasn’t porn stuff. I found a talk Alvise was giving for an animation conference titled “How to be an animator and still be happy?” (since then I have watched this probably 1000 times)

He is really humorous and yet serious when it comes down to animation. In this talk he addresses his journey, mentions his struggles including his age and shares the importance of ghawadyos (go home after work and do your own stuff).

That made me realize that age is not important if animation is what you want to do. I am currently 27 and I am still trying to get to the movie industry animation level. I will never stop because I know I can eventually get there even if I get my chance at 32.

As I mentioned Alvise is more than just an animator and this talk is mostly about his short, fake commercial which he wrote, directed and animated in with Cinesite. Awesome creature animation in a story about astronauts who chose the wrong food. Beans!!!

Everything is based on one old and universal joke. Farts. That’s it I thought, this man is a Genius.

About a year later I found the second part of this first talk that changed my life along with more shorts he created as his ghawadyos.

I would like to share all of his work but this post is already full of videos. Anyway , back to the story…

When I got my break in the industry, I came to Finland and wanted to keep learning. I saw that Alvise was teaching a course with animation mentor. It was the first time I had an opportunity to save some money and try to do that. I remember after completing the application, I was counting the days until I can start learning from him.

Alvise was amazing and all his feedback was pure gold. Every single time during the Q&A calls he was positive and his usual humorous self. Having him as a mentor was a blessing. I got so much from him that after I finished the course I am sure that I can create better shots, now that I have this knowledge. Things that now seem obvious but I couldn’t see before. I learned about the layered approach and how every part affects another. How important offsetting parts of the body, how to track spacing and many more. I still watch the critiques that he gave to me but also the ones he still gives for others on AM. Here is a demonstration of his workflow. 

“Fantastic! Not the animation but in general, Fantastic!”

Over the years and in the process of researching his animation career, I was introduced to other amazing animators like Atsushi Sato, James Bennett, Kenny Roy and many others.

I love his work and who he is. I am sure that everyone who works or has worked with him in the past can confirm that he is the best. I would love to work with him and produce some crazy creature shots. So, while we’re working on getting better, follow him on social media and check out everything I haven’t shared here.

I’d better get back to Maya… oh… Merda!

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