Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1475854
D E PA R T M E N T 25 KEYFRAME In the U.K. in the 1980s, James Baxter assumed he would have an animation career in London. Hollywood hadn't established British outposts yet, and he figured he'd most likely work on commercials. Then Who Framed Roger Rabbit came to town. Baxter quit art school for the opportunity to work on the movie. The Roger Rabbit crew included several Disney animators from California. One of them, Andreas Deja, recommended that Baxter head to L. A . and try to get a job. By age 21, Baxter's animation career was off and running as he started work in the U.S. as a character animator on The Little Mermaid. For Baxter the excitement of coming to America paled compared to the chance to "really go to the source," he says. "I think more than anything, it was about the opportunity to be able to learn the craft at a place where the knowledge was available. I went to Disney so I could get to the animation research library. So I could get those drawings out of the morgue and flip through them and try and understand how they were done." Baxter knows that his approach to learning isn't a conventional one: "I'm a little weird in that I didn't seek out my elders that much. I don't think it's bad advice. It's great advice, actually. But I'm pretty autodidactic. I tend to learn by osmosis rather than by sitting down and going, how do you do this? I do it by just analyzing the work." This doesn't mean he's a lone wolf, though. One of things he advises for those farther along in their careers is connecting with younger people in the industry. " When I started reaching out to younger creators whose work I admired, creators 10 and even 20 years my junior, it opened up whole new avenues for me," he says. "[You can't] keep yourself insular and say, oh, all I've done is this and that's all I'm going to continue to do." Another way he avoids resting on his laurels is finding the lesson in each project. Leading a crew of animators at the age of 23 on the main character in Beauty and the Beast, he learned confidence. Doing CG on How to Train Your Dragon taught him to appreciate working on a film with a really good story. Then there are the lessons Baxter proactively sought. "I went into Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron intentionally with this idea of trying to learn something. Because I knew I didn't know all I should know about quadrupeds," he says. He was guided by something he'd learned about the making of Bambi in 1940: "[That crew] was the one that led the studio for the rest of their careers. It was the animators and artists that went through that boot camp of how to do that kind of animation, that level of study, that set them up for success in Lady and the Tramp, 101 Dalmatians— anything that had an animal in it from [then] on, they were masters. I looked at Spirit as my opportunity to do that deep dive." As his career continues skyward, there are times when things can feel stale, and Baxter says it's important to "get back to that core passion and that core inspiration that got me into [animation] in the first place." He does this in a few ways, including seeking out people he wants to work with. "For me it's as much about the other artists I want to be around and learn from and collaborate with as it is the movies themselves," he says. When he moved from Disney to DreamWorks for example, it was because he wanted to work with the French animators at that studio. And while leaping from studio to studio isn't always easily done, he has a more achievable suggestion. Reenergize yourself by simply going back and watching the shows that inspired you to get into the industry in the first place. His go-to? Bambi. While Baxter acknowledges that everyone has their own approach to learning and working, there are two qualities he believes every single artist in the animation industry needs. Number one: "Be good at what you do. There's innate talent, but there's also the passion to do the work," he says. "Whether it's painting or designing or animating or writing or storyboarding, get as good at your craft as you possibly can get. That's going to carry you." While he admits that it sounds overly simple, his second piece of advice is to "be nice to work with. Animation is a team sport. It has to be collaborative. Be a good colleague, be generous artistically, just [don't be] a pain. It's actually really important. I learned that more over time. I was a little bit grumpy at the beginning because I was very idealistic, and things would upset me. I learned to deal with that better as I got older and still stand up for what I believed in." As a result, Baxter feels fortunate to have what he calls "a consistent career" in a field that continues to hold him in its sway after nearly a quarter of a century. "I enjoy the magic trick of it," he says with the passion of someone just starting out. "I like the medium too much to want to do anything else." FALL 2022 25 TEACH THYSELF James Baxter "Be good at what you do. There's innate talent, but there's also the passion to do the work."