Drew Roper is making a big slash in the UK with his latest production “At-Issue”. In a wonderful article written by Kristy Bosley for the site Exressandstar.com (Article Link), Drew Roper gives his take on coming up in the business as an errand boy who set up and tore down productions, to making coffee, and then to becoming an animator with a dream.
“I learned the importance of taking the bins out, making tea and ensuring there was enough sugar in the sugar pot. After animators have spent all day leaning over a set, and all they want is a cup of tea and they can’t have one, it’s a disaster, trust me! So I went for a job to do that. . . didn’t get it. I thought ‘oh God, I didn’t get that?’ I kept applying for assistant animator jobs, junior model maker jobs and didn’t get them either.”
His hard worked paid off and he locked funding for his production, but it just wasn’t enough to finish his project.
“I didn’t get credited on all of the feature films I’d worked on before, but they set me in such good stead. When we started to make At-issue, we held off because we ran out of funding. We have £30,000 but we needed at least a quarter of a million to get what we wanted done.”
After 3 years of chipping away at making his film and securing other jobs to pay for his film the hard work paid off and he completed his film “At-Issue”.
“It took three years to finish this film, and a lot happened in that time. We grew without me realising it. It’s been a lovely whirlwind of a trip! We’ve had some great responses from people, and we’ve just got to build on this now. It’s been a good start to the year, I just hope we can do some more cool work in the coming months.”
Read more at http://www.expressandstar.com/entertainment/2016/02/22/real-life-from-tea-making-to-dream-chasing-animator-drew-roper-is-the-next-big-thing/#JfbQdpCQ34dwwj1P.99
