Meet René Daigle | Animation designer and rigger, and comic making enthusiast.

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

Hi René, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
It’s hard to think of one specific decision or event that rises above all others as the most important to my success. But one that does keep coming to mind as an important factor is when I decided to fully devote myself to my art. You really need to put a lot of time and energy into bettering yourself if you want to get somewhere in this, and any other artistic industry. I moved to Ottawa, Canada, in late 2005 and decided then and there that I would put some hobbies aside for a bit and work on understanding the ins and outs of some of the animation departments that really peaked my interest. They may look like small sacrifices on the outside, but sometimes saying no to social events to stay home and work on character designs can be fairly significant. And then there are bigger moments like how my wife and I decided early on that we wouldn’t have children and put that energy on our careers. That played a huge part in us both rising fairly quickly into supervising and directing positions.

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.
As proud as I am of my work, I can also admit that I have a lot of work to do to be where I want to. But something that I’m very happy of accomplishing is my ability to mimic styles. There was a time where I thought I was hurting my own career by not having my own, specific style. Looking at some of the great comic art and being able to pick out the artists by the stroke of their pens and brushes I thought was more important than anything else. Like a calling card, a way for people to be reminded that you are around. But I don’t work in comics. In animation we work on someone else’s projects and help them bring those to fruition. Because of this we need to be malleable and able to work in different styles to fit the specifics of the project. When I realized this I became much more comfortable with my ability to do exactly that. It’s worked very well at allowing me to keep going forward in my career.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
My absolute favourite corner of Ottawa is a section of the more southern part of Bank st. It has my favourite book store called Black Squirrel Books. It’s two levels of all sorts of old and new books of absolutely any sorts. I was on the lookout for a book that’s fairly rare outside of my home Canadian province of New-Brunswick called “La Sagouine”. Could not find it anywhere in our capital until I found it at Black Squirrel. I lucked out in finding some pretty amazing old copies of great books. And they also sell coffee, tea, and little treats to go along with sitting on one of their nice couches to read your new purchase(s). Two doors down from there is an amazing basement arcade joint that sells beer and some of the best pierogi in town. And when you’re full and played out, you can cross the street to enjoy a movie at a heritage movie theatre called The Mayfair. There you can end your day at my absolute favourite place. They play some great movies that lean on the independent side, but do play new movies too. I was able to watch both the colour and black and white versions of Godzilla Minus One in 2 days. It was great times. It probably helps that we’re friends with the co-owner and that he commissioned me to design and animate their current “coming soon” and “feature presentation” bumpers. Of all the things I’ve worked on, those short bits might be the ones that make me the happiest when I see them.

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?
I believe that we’re an amalgam of all the people and events that we cross during your lifetime, for better or for worse. And we go through a lot of those during our short stay on this planet. But the most important are the people. The things you can learn by surrounding yourself with like-minded folks can really open your eyes to new ways of seeing things that can really help you with a career like mine. I’ve had the same group of friends since junior high, which was over 30 years. We share passions and discourse on the things that peak our interest. I don’t think I would be where I am if I had not run into them all those decades ago. They made me see so many things that I wouldn’t have on my own.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rene-daigle

Other: The only other place I upload my artwork due to Meta stealing artists’ work to train their GenAI systems that are just around to steal our jobs is on Cara. This link is the portfolio section of my page.

https://cara.app/drawmonkey

Image Credits
René Daigle