The Best Animation Instagrams Of The Week: Award Contenders
Award season, like so much in the animation industry, privileges directors and producers: they get the nominations, they do the press interviews, and they go onstage if their film wins.
In the interest of balancing out the coverage — even just a little — our latest Instagram round-up spotlights artists who made a significant contribution to an animated feature in this year’s Oscar race.
Animators, character designers, art directors: these people won’t get much airtime this season, at least outside specialized categories at awards like the Annies. Yet, without them, these films wouldn’t exist.
Noah Klocek is a veteran Pixar art director who moved to production design for last year’s Onward. His Instagram features paintings from his films and side projects, and a series of atmospheric sketches of a somber fantasy world.
Shoko Takahata is an animator and designer at Science Saru, which produced Masaaki Yuasa’s 2019 feature Ride Your Wave. Takahata was a key animator on the film. She posts characterful doodles and sketches, some of which are inspired by live-action cinema — here’s a homage to Emir Kusturica:
Maria Pareja is a designer at Cartoon Saloon, where she got her debut as production designer on last year’s Wolfwalkers. On her Instagram, doodles and color studies alternate with concept art from her projects.
Aurélien Predal is a production designer and visual development artist who helped design the aliens and their world in Aardman’s A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon. Many of these designs have found their way to his Instagram, including this early exploration of Lu-La’s monster form:
Brittany Myers is a character designer based at Netflix Animation, where she worked on last year’s Over the Moon. Her Instagram is rich with early concept work from this project and others, including Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
