Meet Adrien Liv | Animator/Lead Animator at Dreamworks

We had the good fortune of connecting with Adrien Liv and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Adrien, why did you pursue a creative career?
As far as I can remember, I’ve always watched cartoons. It was a tradition for kids growing up in France. I started watching Japanese anime when I was a kid. I was fascinated with the way they portrayed their characters, huge eyes, puffy hair and a very limited movement on the lips. I spent my early childhood drawing and copying Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, and later other mangas like Hokuto no Ken and Slam Dunk. My early notebooks were filled with these. I was also a big video gamer and spent hours playing Zelda on Nintendo. My childhood dream was to become a manga artist, but I also entertained the idea of becoming an animator because I learned to appreciate animation more as I grew up.

During high school, I learned that one of the best animation schools in the world was Les Gobelins, located in Paris but the entrance exam was extremely competitive, only one out of fifty people can make it.I tried right out of high school, and failed, so I went to an art training school and tried one more time only to fail again.

I decided to take the exam at the EMCA, a traditional animation school based in Angoulême in France, the city famous for hosting the Comic Strip Festival. I ended up spending 2 years there learning the ins and outs of 2D animation. One AHA moment was when I made a 2D animation of a bouncing ball, it felt alive and real and that feeling was so strong that I never wanted to do anything else. The camaraderie and immersion in a city that lives for Fine Arts just made me more conscious about my future vocation.

After graduating, I did an internship in Madrid, Spain at a company called Fanciful Arts. We worked on a 2D animated feature film called El Cid the Legend. After I moved back to Paris to get closer to my family, I decided to follow my friends who were passing the Gobelins 3D animation program test and got accepted against all odds. I previously had a lot of assumptions about 3D and considered it cold and un-appealing. But I soon fell in love with it. “I had no idea that 3D animation could be so addictive and so creative. »

I have always had a passion for animation. For me it encompasses many other art forms : drawing, sculpture, timing, rhythm, emotions, storytelling, it fulfills in me this urge to create. It’s also embedded in all aspects of human life, when there’s life, there’s movement. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I am an animator, which consists of manipulating a virtual puppet in space and time to create the illusion of movement. After my 3D diploma in hand, I joined a video game company, F4, where I did a bit of everything, modeling (creating 3D geometry), rigging (creating a virtual skeleton) and animation.

After 2 years, I wasn’t very fulfilled artistically and I left to go work at Mac Guff, which is known for the Despicable Me franchise.
We started by making the TV series Pat and Stan and switched to making the Despicable Me film. I worked on the two first Despicable Me and Minions and decided to cross the Atlantic and work at Sony, Framestore, and Cinesite where I directed the animation on Riverdance, the animated adventure.

One of the challenges of this job is that you have to travel, which is exciting and exhausting, but it is refreshing to discover new lifestyles, mindset and people.

What I like about my job is that it is always new and I can challenge myself with learning new animation styles and techniques on a very broad range of genres. I also like to change my workflow.
One of the animation techniques is called ‘pose to pose’, we create an animation one pose at a time and it creates the illusion that it moves over time.
This technique has the advantage of being design driven, but it is easy to be attached to them and it is hard to get rid of them when you have to make changes.

Today I prefer to see my work as a draft and embellish it as I go, like a sketch that I add details to, I noticed that it creates more room for spontaneity, uncalculated and unexpected things.

Another comparison of my work is that I like to see the plans I make as a puzzle. I like to move my pieces around, and it changes a lot and sometimes I have to go back, to finally get something coherent and beautiful. I think that this way of working allows me to make my work always pleasant to do and to look at.

I have been at Dreamworks for over 2 years. I started on Puss in Boots and had the opportunity to animate almost all the main characters, Puss, Kitty, Goldi, Jack Horner and Wolf. It was truly a one of a kind experience as I was learning the tools and artistic style of the movie. But the camaraderie and excitement made it one of my best experiences.

I then moved on to Trolls 3 as the Lead Animator on Clay (one of Branch’s brothers), I really like the Second Trolls and was happy I was able to work on such a great franchise.

As a Lead, my task was to build a library that includes the phonemes, hand poses, walk cycle, and character performance test to determine how he could move in a specific way and differently from the other brothers. I was responsible for the ‘ Fanboy Clay’ and ‘Serious boy Clay’ dance moves in the movie.

Most recently I just finished on Wild Robot, which is a true masterpiece. I can’t wait for the world to see it. I love that Dreamworks is a artist driven company that thrives to make the best movies. It has been a pleasure to perform at the highest level.

I am also a speaker at the KWANTLEN POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY graduation show talking about the future of the industries.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I wouldn’t be where I am today without the help of my parents, who didn’t have any artistic education, and let me pursue this career path nonetheless. My family has been all over the place, my father immigrated from China to Cambodia for greener pastures, then to France. We found ourselves without a penny and my parents worked hard to give me an education, they showed me hard work and resilience pay off. They have ingrained this into my soul.

I also want to credit my wife and kids for being a constant inspiration and reminder of why I do what I do. I love my team.

Website: https://vimeo.com/soyty

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrien-liv-082516/

Twitter: https://x.com/adrien_liv

Other: https://80.lv/articles/take-a-look-at-early-animations-for-dreamworks-movies/