Nicolas Ménard

Nicolas Ménard is a Canadian artist and

animation director who makes short films, GIFs,

illustrations, and interactive art. His animated

short films have been screened in festivals around the world; his original short, Wednesday With
Goddard, won Best Animated Short at the 2017

SXSW film festival.

nicolasmenard.com

I've been interested in animation since high school, when my brother installed Macromedia Flash on our family PC. I also enjoyed drawing very much. That’s mostly what I did during my classes. Every class was an opportunity to start a new drawing, or finish one. At 17 I applied to a graphic design course at Collége Ahuntsic in Montreal, even though I had very little understanding or knowledge of the field— coming as I did from a small village of 5,000 people where culture wasn’t exactly blooming. At school I discovered the world of visual communications. It wasn’t exactly how I imagined but I was taken by it immediately!

I studied graphic design for 6 years in Canada, with a multidisciplinary curriculum. We learned about printmaking, graphic design, book design, publishing, typography, photography, and so on. My first job was when I was 18, working a for big product company for the summer. The next year I got a job at a TV channel, where I worked four years on and off—mostly during summers but occasionally overlapping with school. It was a hectic experience but I really enjoyed it. I learned very different things on the job than at school but they were all within the same field.

I completed my studies with a two year MA in Animation at the Royal College of Art, in London. Before that animation was something I learned on my own, on the side, thanks to the internet and various friends who studied or worked in animation. At the RCA I met people from very different backgrounds. Sometimes I found that people with backgrounds unrelated to animation had a more interesting take on the medium than classically trained people. No matter one’s background there’s a place for everyone in this field.

Studying the work of animation masters is very useful to develop a personal language towards motion. One can do that by scrubbing through any film frame by frame. I recommend the short films of Osamu Tezuka. Scottish Canadian animator Norman McLaren also did a series of essential videos on the basics of animation which can be found on the website of the National Film Board of Canada.

The works of photographer Eadweard Muybridge are an inspiring look at motion in the world surrounding us. Finally, a classic textbook one will find in most animators’ bookshelf is The Animator’s Survival Kit, by Richard E. Williams. Its basic principles remain forever relevant.