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

Hi Anton, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
Creativity has always been a part of me, although like many, I didn’t fully appreciate it until it hit me in the face.

I was born into a family that was about as far from the artistic world as you could imagine. My dad was an engineer, and my mom aspired to be a doctor but instead focused on raising my brother and me.

I remember in elementary school, my best friend and I would dream up toys based on our favorite cartoon characters from Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers and TMNT, but we couldn’t afford to buy them. So, once my dad bought a VHS recorder, we’d record episodes, pause them, place a sheet of paper over the screen, and trace the characters’ outlines. Then we’d color them in, cut them out, and stick them to cardboard to play with as a toy!

That experience taught me how lines can become a nose, or a circle can make a mouth. That’s how my interest in art began.

In high school, I started working at a small print shop, vectorizing images into cut-out patterns for store signs and truck decals. It was extremely boring, so I soon started taking my first steps in creating my own art.

Unfortunately, there were no good art schools in my area, so I went to study computer science at an engineering university. In my first year, during a lecture on computer design, the professor asked if anyone had experience in the field. I nervously raised my hand and showed her some of my work. It was stressful sharing my art, but the professor not only gave me great feedback, she also became a mentor during my studies, nurturing my artistic talents. She introduced me to animation in Macromedia Flash, which changed my life.

During university, I worked as a web designer and animator at a local agency. I also tried teaching animation classes.

Over the last 20 years, I have explored different roles, including VFX artist, composer, director, cinematographer, photographer, and even creative director.

About 7 years ago, I had a mental crisis because I felt that I couldn’t decide what I really wanted to do for the rest of my life after all those years of doing something. I went to a therapist to solve this, and on our last session, he suggested I conduct a short experiment by opening a website where I usually save things that inspire me. It was Vimeo. He asked me to open a page where I save everything I like on Vimeo because when we like something, we often do it subconsciously. “Let’s see what your subconscious loves,” he said. What was a huge surprise for me was when about 10 pages were fully covered with animation spots. That was an answer, and this is how I founded PAPATON Studio.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
PAPATON is a boutique animation studio where imagination runs wild, where characters and stories come to life on screen. We produce animated content for commercials, explainers, and opening titles and work with globally recognized brands.

After spending more than 20 years in various media roles at different companies, I founded PAPATON Studio as a place where everyone could express themselves and share their passions and ideas with the world. Our philosophy is all about never giving up on experimenting and challenging ourselves with each new project or task.

To make our philosophy more than just words in a presentation, we established a space called PAPATON Lab in 2019. This space allows everyone to share their best ideas, and as a studio, we help turn those ideas into reality. In this time, we’ve created tons of great ideas and are currently developing three short films and two TV series based on the plots from our amazing teammates!

Animation isn’t the only thing we’re experimenting with. We are also discovering and exploring other industries. That’s how we created Baselance.co (http://baselance.co/), a platform that helps creative teams manage and organize their database of independent artists.

We also created Papaton Shadow Theater (http://papatonkids.com) – a playset for kids to create shadow shows at home with a mobile app – with my unaltered partner in crime and wife Ann.

Admittedly, the journey to get to where we are today was challenging and wouldn’t be possible without our incredible team.
Finding the perfect candidates for our studio took a lot of time and effort, especially because we are a boutique studio focused on character-driven animation. When discovering new candidates, we look for more than just skills – we want great personalities!

Creativity is at the very core of what we do! But we always create animation for clients and audiences, so from our very first project as a studio, we’ve asked ourselves and our clients what problems our animations should solve and what messages they should deliver.

Even after years of working together, we constantly learn new things about each other during our quarterly feedback sessions. In our last one, our social media manager shared her dream of becoming a producer! We now have an incredible new producer and are looking for a new social media manager 🙂

“P” stands for passion, and for PAPATON 🙂

 

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Water has always been my power spot, so I highly recommend visiting the ocean, especially Laguna Beach and Treasure Island Beach.

 

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
– My parents, for always being supportive and never forbidding me to try new things in my childhood. – My wife Ann, for always believing in me and trusting in everything I do, no matter what.
– My children, Diana and Danila, for always reminding me of the importance of being a kid, even at almost 40 years old.

 

Website: http://papaton.studio

Instagram: instagram.com/antonten or instagram.com/papaton.studio

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonten/

Image Credits
Sofia Ershova

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