Raman Hui
FIRST CONTACT Growing up, I never thought being an animator was a real job. It was something that you heard of as being done in Hollywood and places like that, so you never got a sense that you could do it too. But while I was studying at Hong Kong Polytechnic, I came across a Rostrum camera. It's a camera made specifically for animation and I thought it would be interesting to use it for a project. I made a short film called Wings of the Mind about a guy who sinks into his bed, sending him to an alternate universe where he's got a pair of wings and is flying. It's all very surreal and I have no idea where that came from. It was probably from some subconscious teenage angst and a need for freedom. I had lots of fun doing that but even then, I didn't think it was something I could do for a living.
CROWNING MOMENT I call my introduction to the animation industry my 'Miss Hong Kong' moment. When these girls are asked why they joined the competition, the answer is usually that their friends nominated them. I was working as a graphic designer in the advertising industry when a teacher from the polytechnic called to tell me he was starting an animation studio in Hong Kong - Quantum Studio. Like Miss Hong Kong, a friend took me to see the place. Watching them, I thought it was really cool and decided to give it a shot. The first characters I was given [to work on] were the Vita Chocolate Milk pig and cow.
NO MORE DIRTY WORK When I started, everything was done by hand, not an easy task when you have to do 24 frames - that's 24 different images - for just one second of moving image. When computers were introduced, everyone was, obviously, really happy as it made the process so much faster. I had other reasons for being happy, though - I didn't have dirty hands anymore. They used to be covered in black ink every day from all the drawing and I had to spend ages scrubbing them.
PICK 'N' MIX The job makes you more sensitive. You're more observant of all the little things; mannerisms, movements and interactions. That's why I never base my characters on any one person - they're usually a mish-mash of people I've met. That way, when the script calls for the character to be in a particular situation, I can remain objective and not think about how the real person behind the character would react but how the character itself, as an individual, would deal with it.
A PIECE OF ME A flexible face - that's the best skill to have as an animator. I always work with a mirror and when I need to give a character a certain expression, I pull it with my own face and draw what I see in the mirror. It helps to see what moves and what's involved in that look to make everything as real as possible.
The first animated film I watched was Walt Disney's Pinocchio, so it was a nice twist of fate when he became one of the characters I had to animate as supervising animator in the Shrek series of movies. People have said that my characters usually have something 'very me' in them - a tell-tale trait. One of them is this one raised eyebrow and a smirk that I supposedly do all the time. It's not a conscious effort on my part but I guess we all put a piece of ourselves into the work we do. Gingerbread Man from Shrek and Z from Antz are probably the characters I would say most resemble me. Gingey is small like me but he's got a much bigger character than I have. Z was a character I worked on a lot for that movie, so there's a big personal connection there.