Nicolas Pochet is a belgian animator who was born in 1979. I met him a few times thanks to Retrotaku, my retrogaming association, who invited him on events during the development of his Dreamcast homebrew : Alice Dreams (a very cool game).
I interviewed Nicolas on January 2018, here is the translated transcript of those 50 minutes.
(Vous pouvez lire la transcription originale en français ici (sans images): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1isRit85PB5iplbM6JEEbvY7K1ikK7gSN/view?usp=sharing)
How would you explain your work? What are your daily tasks?
“Well, my profession is to animate everything that moves, mainly everything that are characters and animals or objects, less often when it’s racing games or stuff like that as it’s scripted, so I don’t interact with that kind of stuff be that game cinematics or ingame.”
What was your educational career?
“After my humanités, it’s the equivalent of middle school in Belgium, I ended up in technic of drawing and I had started a digital image schooling but it was a few years ago hence it was kind of the beginings, there wasn’t much digital image study in the schools you see? It was as much internet as 3D and a bit of everything but in fact it was especially a bit of nothing so there you go. And then I stopped and I did 6 months of unemployment training in the Web, that was cool.”
What is your career path?
I applied for jobs left, right, and center, I catched little jobs left, right, and center, it was either illustration or websites until the day I came into an animation company, a branch of Blue Spirit which is a parisian company quite known that has made a quite a lot of TV series.
A few years ago I worked quite a bit for an french animation studio that had open a branch in Brussels. I learnt a part of my profession there but they went back to Canada 5 years later for tax reasons and I went back to freelance, having clients left, right, and center. Now I’ve been working for a while for a game studio from Lyon (France), Old Skull Games. It’s multifaceted in a general way and it’s a milieu in which you adapt yourself to the demand of the guys everytime, like they call you one day telling you “I want to do a motion design thing” so you look a bit at how you can do motion design and you say to yourself “Alright I’ve got to learn how to use After Effects” and here it is, the job constantly evolves like this. Just like for example when I work with the guys in Lyon, they use Maya to animate, I didn’t use it a lot before working with them but here is is you start using Maya and you look at how it works and you adapt yourself.”
Where does your passion for video games comes from?
“I think the first person who made me play was my uncle who was a lot into micro-computers that he would often trade. He had the first Mac, the Commodore 64 and other stuff, and when I was a kid I was the oldest in my family, he had children but younger so he made me play when I might was 5-6 years old I believe.
What was your motivation at first for this job?
“At the begining I didn’t know that I would specifically make video games. I like video games a lot but I liked cartoons aswell, I liked drawing in general. Still, I believe that I knew early that I wanted to draw on computers. When I turned 15 I got my first computer and it was an era when everybody did not have a computer yet, the family computer was not widespread already. My first trials were on Mario Paint on the Super NES because at that time I didn’t have a computer so I didn’t have anything to draw in a digital way, it was the first thing that allowed me to do it.”
What do you like in your job, what is your everyday motivation?
“I think that what I like is to see various stuff. Since I’m independent I don’t have have the same day everyday except during certain periods but roughly my projects change, you’re not always asked to do the same thing, sometimes you’re asked to make realistic animation, sometimes more cartoon stuff. I have more affinity with cartoon but I like to change. Sometimes I do motion design or else, sometimes I’m asked to draw more and animate less and other times it’s the opposite. What is cool is that it changes, what is less cool is that I don’t know in the long term what I will become. There are contracts that last a week, a few days, sometimes a month, sometimes you know it lasts a little more. In the cartoon milieu projects used to last between 6 months and 1 year but as I’m not in it anymore my projects are even shorter than before. That’s the annoying side, when it drops it’s cool when it doesn’t…there you go.”
Is it a recruiting job?
“Yes, there is a way to find, but it’s not the thing in which there is the most employment in the world. It depends on stuff but a lot of companies that make you work will test you for a project, which is normal when you haven’t had a professional experience yet, which is less cool when you have one and you have a portfolio in which you can say you made which work and the guys want to test you again. You can be fired overnight if they don’t like it, those are daily contracts so they are free to do whatever they want and you’re not alone, there are others who are looking for work so you’re easily replacable and that you understand it fairly quickly.”
You don’t have any job security.
“No, but I never happened to me to get fired in the middle of a project. As soon as the people are happy with you most of the time they won’t bother to look for someone else while they already have someone.”
How much does a beginner earns? Are there evolution prospects?
“Ah that’s a very good question! [laughs] I think that’s the case for more and more jobs, you can assert your experience but you depend strongly on how much people are ready to put in and as there is not a host of opportunities you kind of have to accept what they offer you. So really in the end you don’t necessarily earn a lot more with the time. I have an example of a friend who worked on Petit Vampire, it’s a comic that exists since a long time and that works well so a company came up with a budget to make an animated feature film for the cinema and typically he is rather talented and he applied for that thing that isn’t paid well at all whereas it needs a certain level. When he told them that he found the pay really low the guys told him “yeah, but on your resume you don’t have 3 years non-stop of experience on feature films” which in fact means “we don’t care knowing that you’re skilled or not on the paper it’s not written so for us you’re like a beginner” but the guy isn’t begining he’s been in animation for years. It’s up to you to accept or not you see, the prospect of earning more with time let’s say it works if you have your own clients, if you work on a production you will not decide any of this, at least you can say “here is what I’m asking for” and it’ll be haphazard, if you manage the project you’ll be able to demand daily rates or a flat rate.”
What are your timatables? What is your work environment?
“What are my timetables? Well it depends on how I manage them myself roughly. In general I have a work to finish for a date more or less precise, I know there is a period, it’s up to me to define how many days it’ll take me and to be thorough in what I do, to see sometimes if I have to work on weekends or not but roughly I try to respect everyobody’s day of work, by the way I can actually work from anywhere I want, I used to work at home before but I got a little fed up with it so I went back in a company that I worked for already on small projects and I knew thay had room so I just squat at their place. It helps me a lot because I’ve got people around me that are also working, that are in a work rythm and so in my day I know that I’m at work, and eventually I set myself timetables that are between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.. I hang on strongly on that, if you’re thorough you’ve got the same timetable as any job, at least more or less, but yes you can become like the independents who work a bit non-stop because money’s got to come in.
What hardware do you work with?
“I work with a laptop, it’s an Alienware like my previous one, I like gaming PCs because you know that you’re going to be able to keep them for a long time and in spite of being laptops there is still a way to add RAM, to put several hard drives, you know that the graphics card that’s in will still hold on a few years. I just changed 6 months ago, my previous one I kept it for 8 years. I advocate quite a bit the portable side because thanks to this you’re not stuck at one place, you can go everywhere, for example it happened to me to go to Paris see some friends or even to Lyon and I take my machine with me, I stay a few days there, it’s half vacations to me, I work on the day like I would normally do, my friends go to work too, and then at night I’m in another city and I enjoy. It’s one of the benefits of the job, as long as you’ve got an internet connection you can work anywhere you want.
Other hardware that’s important to me in some cases is the graphics tablet, if I have to make 2D it’s essential. I have an old simple Wacom, anyway I think that at the time I bought it there were no models with screens yet. I confess that I never worked on a model with a screen, I know that everybody finds it better so I should try but I find the simple models quite nice because when you work you stay straight, you’re not leaned toward like when you’re on a paper sheet. When I bought my tablet I was working at home and I quickly put it to the right of my keyboard, so I don’t draw in front of me but on the side, and that’s later while working with other people that I realized that nobody did that and that everybody pushes his keyboard towards the screen to have his tablet in front him but then it means that your left hand is twisted, it’s a question of comfort. I have a friend who’s got a Cintiq, the models with the screen, it must be a 20 inches so it’s his real computer screen and he’s got serious problems with his keyboard because you still use it a lot when you draw on Photoshop and he tried to find a trick to put the keyboard above his tablet so he tires his arm. I should try, I’m sure Cintiqs are really nice but I like simple models.”
Does it still happen to you to do traditional drawing with a paper and a pen for your work?
“No, frankly it didn’t happen to me since a long time and when I do it I’m destabilized because I’m too much used to Ctrl+Z, hence it happens to me to make a line and not be satisfied with it, my reflex is to cancel it but no you have to take the eraser, erase it, and again. And another thing that’s very cool, you make a character with a pose and then you say to yourself “eh actually it doesn’t really have the angle I want, it’s not great it might be better in another angle” you don’t erase it and draw it again, you select it, and you rotate it and here you go. Same thing with the proportions “the face I drew I feel it’s a bit wide” you select it, you squish it a bit and you check and it’s very good like this, you don’t have to change a lot of things. But then I have friends who work only on paper and find it better because the sensitivity isn’t the same and so on. I think that a big flow that’s mine is that as I’m never sure of myself I have a tendency to erase and redo and as on paper it’s more annoying to erase and redo I think that with the digital you take confidence in yourself faster so you’re faster, you make your drawing a good time and we don’t care if it’s not perfect you’re going to draw a little over it and it’ll be good, no need to quibble.
What are the other professions you work with?
“Most of the time it’s salespersons because in general it’s them who find you and ask you the stuff. And then in the cartoon you’re confronted to storyboarders, the one who make the background, everyone from the cartoon overall, on a TV serie you are rarely directly in touch with the main director, often you’ve got the guys that are there precisely to check your animation work before sending it to the director, so those ones you don’t see them, like the producers we almost never see them just at the end when the thing is finished sometimes they come over to say hi and “thank you that’s great” and that’s all. Otherwise it’s a bit multifaceted as I’m skilled in various domains I can have somebody who needs a website, someone who needs an illustration and who comes from any milieu.”
What is the work atmosphere?
“This question is interesting! In an animation studio roughly very often you’re in a quite massive room with all the animators, at least it depends on the companies but well, and roughly you’ve got headphones on you’re facing your screen and there isn’t a word across all the room during working hours so you can bring someone in blindly and he won’t know where he is and I think he would be really surprised to discover that there are 20 people around him because you just don’t hear them. In the cartoon milieu especially you’re asked for a fast rythm so you don’t really have time to chat left, right and center, then it depends some are really talented and work really fast but so they become a problem for others because them they come have a chat left, right and center and you you’re not early in your work. You’re a bit withdrawn into yourself during your work. But then the atmosphere outside of this, I know that in France especially in Paris it’s not always the same thing, but I’ve got to admit that all the colleagues I already crossed in general it’s always people with whom I spend nice moments and you easily go drink with them, at least you share a lot of things. It’s still a milieu, at least in Belgium, in which people are happy to hang out together and to share their passion. I know that in France there are more rivalry questions, guys taking the post of others, a not so great atmosphere, I never lived that.
So you think it’s nicer in Belgium than in France?
“Well I never worked in France you see I don’t have a real experience. Right now I’m working for french people, I went working there and it was really nice but as a whole I still got the impression that it’s a passionate milieu and so there are still chances that you have a good contact with others. I think that one of the good exemples because of the fact that I’m Belgian you see is that there is a story of big rivalry between the Flemish and the francophones, the Waloons, and that’s funny because in my milieu nobody cares, there is no rivalry, and even if sometimes we have trouble to communicate because we don’t speak the same language we see that it really is the passion that comes first, wich isn’t the case in some other milieus. I’ve got a friend who’s a journalist and apparently there are a lot of cases where Flamish and francophones really don’t like each other.”
What are your current projects?
“Actually right now like I told you I work for Old Skull so it’s several projects, rather smartphone projects currently, 2D/3D, there is one that just came out on AppStore and Android, it’s called Paprika it’s for kids, it’s 2D, the other is a tycoon game with small stewardess, it’s a 2D view but the characters are actually 3D. Here it is for the work. Otherwise my personal projects well as I just finished the game with Julien [Desquenne], the game Alice Dreams, I’m currently thinking a bit about what I want to get into, I have other video game ideas in mind but otherwise also a comic project that I’d like to do but I gotta start! [laughs] I’m making an illustration for a retro video game box that sould come out, a Collecovision game, I did the visuals it’s called Bomb’n Blast, it’s a Tetris. I made the visuals and now I’m having fun making the cover illustration for the box.”
In all your career what are the realisations you’ve been the most proud of?
“Ah! Well…I don’t know! [laughs]”
One that you especially liked.
“But there isn’t one that I especially liked more than the others because everytime there are slightly different reasons. I’m very happy that we finished Alice Dreams on Dreamcast, it really was laborious and I got a little fed up but I’m happy because really it was a real personal project and it ended in and that’s really hard, you often get into projects and you never finish them so that’s really cool. Otherwise there are interesting experiences, I workd on something called Le Tableau which is a low budget feature film so I was happy still to work on a feature film but in fact when I had to work on it it wasn’t cool at all it really was a bad experience because it wasn’t well managed but I’m happy I worked on it because the finished product is still cool but for the work it wasn’t cool. On the other hand I had the opportunity to work on The Mysterious Cities of Gold, the second season, and in fact they put me on another serie which started a bit before which was Grabouillon, I don’t know if it rings a bell to you it’s a qui known thing for the kids. That thing I even did it thinking “I gotta eat” but in reality it was super cool because the animation was rather free, I had a storyboard saying “the character does this, it says this” but as it’s cartoon the character you can kind of make him move however you want and so you can really have fun with it, you can pull on the character, you can make him do bullshit whereas at first glance I didn’t care. Another cool stuff was working on Kung Fury, that was fun, It wasn’t much work I would have prefered that there was more but really it true that I happy to have worked on it.”
Can you remind me of what you did in Kung Fury?
“In Kung Fury I handled the sequence where the character gets killed and he is in a 2D cartoon world.”
Below is the full short movie, jump to 23:14 to see Nicolas’ work.
What is your creative process?
“When it’s about animation there isn’t really a process, guys tell you you’ve got to do that and then you do it. Then it’s like evrything I think, sometimes you watch some things and it has an influence even though you don’t even notice it. If it’s about illustration I do have quite a bit the tendency to look at a lot of things, I’ve got quite a lot of comics and Artbooks, for pleasure for a start because I like that, but hence it happens to me to ask myself what I’m going to do and then I go fiddle with my books and I say to myself “ah yeah that’s awesom I’ll try to do something kind of like it”. And there is Pinterest too, after all I find it rather cool, for drawing I find it rather good, it’s good stock of images, you can make yourself your little library saying to yourself “that’s interesting for that” and you sort them and it makes you a nice inspiration library. I’m not especially a pro of the color and for that kind of things for exemple I see what others did with simple and efficient colors, it looks simple but in fact it isn’t.”
How do you see the future of the profession?
“It’s complicated to know how it’ll evolve. Everything depends on economy, as it’s entertainment as soon as there are massive budget problems it’s one of the first milieus where we’re going to stop puting money in because concretely it only “for fun“, so it means that if the people have money issues they won’t put money in the things that are just for having fun anymore, on the other hand if things are going well and there is enthusiasm there can be money. I began it with Alice and at my age I think that it would be good that I start geting into a bit more of personal projects, when you’re a serie animator there are only quite young people and the pays don’t evolve, you won’t earn more aging and at a moment you feel that you’re going to be kicked because you’re too old and you cost too much. So on your side either you evolved and you became chief animator in a company or you’ve got a more important post either you try to develop your own projects. Personally I don’t know what I’ll be next year, even 2018 I don’t know yet if it’s going to be cool or horrible, we’ll see. In fact we premanently try too cut the budgets, like in everything else, to make more profit, so we try to create tools that make you go faster, that pre-chew the work, so that you cost less, we go back on the salary lowering, we find other solutions… Future prospects are not necessarily obvious, but then in the facts after all I’m still here and I’m not in the shit for the moment and here it is so it works.”
Would you know the approximative number of companies in the animation sector?
“Listen, I don’t know at all. Maybe I’m saying something silly but I believe that in France there must be 10 important companies in animation. There is still an advantage for the France, it’s that in fact there is money that’s meant for that. I don’t know exactly how it works but I know that the TV channels have a part of their money that they have to spend in a precise way, so they’ve got to invest also in the cartoon among others, which is good because it allows a lot of companies to work on a regular basis, what is less good is is that they do it because they have to and sometimes they kind of don’t care about the projects however they can be really annoying because if you’re too creative they will tell you “yeah but we don’t want to take the risk that it be censored or to have issues with parents that woudln’t be okay with that thing” so they will rather bet on very standard things and very recurrent and not necessarily funny nor passionating. I never lived it but a lot of people lived it, you work on a serie for 6 months/1 year and in fact this serie will never be aired on TV. And in the video game milieu I know it’s the same.”
How much do you earn and how many clients do you have?
“How much I earn is very variable, it depends on my client. If it’s a brand that comes to you you know that you have minimal rates that you can make respect on a daily basis. The rates I’m going to give you are belgian rates and we are more taxed than in France, it’s one of my problems as a belgian, I’m very expensive for a french. When I give my rates to a french company it finds me expensive but in reality with what’s taken from me it’s not that expensive, so you make a little compromise sometimes if you like the project. The guys from Lyon I’m at 200€ a day, I’m very expensive compared to one of their employees. The advantage is that they don’t always have work for me so I don’t work for them everyday. Usually I try to get more than that but as I like working with them I’m happy. If I manage to eat and the project is cool it’s okay, if the project is boring and it’s for a brand that has plenty of money there you get yourself paid because there is no reason that you put yourself in difficulty for a company that’s going to make tons of money thanks to you. The year 2016 wasn’t an easy year for me, among other things because Alice Dreams had to be finished and that I workd quite a lot of months without money. But I’ve got more or less the equivalent of the status of temporary show business workers in France, it’s not absolutely the same in Belgium but roughly whatever happens I got a fixed and stable unemployment benefit which is around 1000€/month. Days I’m not working I’ve got help, days I’m working I don’t have help. It’s a form of security still and it’s often a game changer, if you’ve got a month or two without income you will still be able to pay the rent and eat. It’s part of the systems that exist but our State tries to kick them, for the youngs getting that status is becoming really complicated, I had it at a time when it was easy to get. I got it so I don’t have a lot of trouble with it anymore but for people who are younger it really is more complicated. But well, what I’m telling you now is peculiar to Belgium.”
How many employees are there in the company you work for?
“Me I’m alone, independent, but for Old Skull Games right now I think they must be two dozen people.”
When was it founded and for how long have you been independent?
“I’ve been independent since I’m 25-26 years old. Old Skull Games was founded in 2012.”
How does it go when you’re being hired?
“That’s the part where I’m so lame! I hate searching, as much as I like to work there is no problem, as much as looking for work is really a thing that annoys me! The best technique is the word of mouth, you meet people, you talk with them, and when they need you they think of you. Sending resumes, if you don’t come along at just the time when people are looking in fact they’re not going to read it. A long time ago I worked for a company, I had sent flipbooks, a illustration per page and in the other way an animation, people found it nice but I had no job feedback, a few months later one of the companies contacts me telling me “we’re looking for an animator for which project” and when I came there I saw they had my flipbook but what’s crazy is that they had not contacted me because I sent my flipbook 6 months before, they contacted me because one of the employees knew me. It’s like every other work, it’s the discouraging part if you’re looking and the people are not looking, you send a lot of things and even if you show them you’re highly skilled people don’t even look, adn then when you have a chat one night because you cross people, you drink a beer with someone, and he tells you “hey but I’m looking for someone” and just because he found you nice he’ll test you right away. So I think that the rapport is still very important, what I do not do, furthermore I don’t sell myself well because I’m too honest. [laughs] I’m rather pessimistic, I’ll rather highlight the eventualities where there is a risk that it goes wrong, where it could take time, which is a bad approach as all the companies work exactly contrary to this, they don’t know at all if the project is possible or not but they guarantee that everything is possible and if they sold they ask the others to bail out their screw-up, they say “nah but it has to stay in the budget, it has to be done for which date” without knowing if it’s realistic or not because they don’t ask the question to the people that will have to do the thing. It’s kind of a great classic. Now with Lyon it’s possible that I get a little less work for them this year so I’ll have to stir myself , remake a book, a video with all my last works and send emails everywhere.”
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Augustin Liglet 