Interview with Ben Hibon

IA: Do you think you graphic style has also evolved? Is this evolution connected to the evolution of the tools available and the tools you use?

BH: I taught myself how to animate using computer programs. I only learned the techniques of animating frame-by-frame on paper at a later stage. Because I started by creating my frames directly on the computer I had to opt for a very simple and graphical style for me to be able to animate it. I guess that did dictate most of my early work by default, and kind of stuck with me ever since. I have been able to add details and complexity to my visuals as I gained experience using different techniques and applications or by collaborating with other animators. There’s definitely a link between the style and the technique, as the latter one helps create and translate the other one.

IA: You do animation for MTV Asia, CodeHunter has been a huge success and you’ve been awarded at Imagina this year. Has this success changed something in the way you’re producing short movies? Has your vision of this market changed? And in what way?

CodeHunters - MTV Asia

BH: CodeHunter was a great experience for me, both creatively and commercially. In terms of fitting in any “markets,” CodeHunter has always been a bit of a strange project. MTV gave me full control over it, and although they were very precise about the duration and structure of the film, the rest was up to me. It was great to be able to create such a project from nothing; the designs, the story, the direction, etc. This is something that you normally associate more to feature or personal production, not a commercial one, so it’s really hard to compare CodeHunter to anything else I’ve done