The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Imagination is the limit for Dustin McKenzie. Not quite 30, the Flin Flon native is making a name for himself as an animator and director of CGI _ that's computer-generated imagery _ films and TV shows. 'I think I owe it all to luck and being at the right place at the right time,' says McKenzie. That's modesty, of course. At Nerd Corps Entertainment, the Vancouver computer-animation company for which he works, only the cream rises to the top. In nearly nine years with Nerd Corps, McKenzie has been part of no fewer than a half-dozen TV and film series as an animator, animation supervisor and, most recently, director. These visual delights include titles like Dragon Booster, The League of Super Evil, Storm Hawks and Rated A for Awesome. He has also helped bring viewers Hot Wheels Battle Force 5, based on the famous line of toy vehicles. But McKenzie is perhaps best known for his work on the Monster High made-for-TV films, which follow the adventures of a group of relatives and offspring of famous movie monsters. He co-directed 2011's Monster High: Why Do Ghouls Fall in Love? and followed that up by serving as animation supervisor for last year's Monster High: Ghoul's Rule!. More impressive, McKenzie has now solo-directed two other films in the series. Monster High: Friday Night Frights came out in February, with Monster High: Scaris City of Frights following just last month. Many viewers are unaware that CGI movies even have directors. It's not like there are living, breathing performers involved or a need to reshoot a scene because Draculaura or Clawdeen Wolf fumbled a line. Not only is there a director, but as McKenzie can attest, they play a vital role in getting the finished product onto TV screens across North America and beyond. 'We're given a selection of storyboards (basic illustrations) that are already timed out to the dialogue to match the script that Mattel (which owns Monster High) has given us,' he explains, 'and it is my job to find the animators qualified to do different scenes based on difficulty and talent, and then all I do is basically rein them in and keep a singular vision for an entire crew of different artists.' Relating to those artists is no problem for McKenzie. He's been one of them for virtually all of his adult life and has known since high school that the career embodied his true passion. As an adolescent, McKenzie was fascinated by Toy Story, the first film to use CGI animation, and Reboot, the first completely computer-animated TV show. 'I've just been loving that type of animation ever since,' he says. Yet growing up in Flin Flon, McKenzie initially envisioned a career as a video game programmer. He even took a programming course at Hapnot Collegiate, but found it far too technical. As he puts it, he was 'doing stuff way too artistically.' He began focusing on computer animation instead and never looked back. After graduating from Hapnot in 2001 and upgrading his academic standing the following year, McKenzie headed west to Vancouver in the fall of 2002. There he would spend two years studying at the much-acclaimed Art Institute of Vancouver, then called, rather blandly, the Centre for Digital Imaging and Sound. McKenzie excelled, showing a keen eye and formidable work ethic. Fresh out of school in the summer of 2004, he landed a job with the then-fledgling Nerd Corps. There, he hit the ground running. The first show he helped animate, Dragon Booster, won the 2005 Gemini Award as Canada's top animated program or series. The show's theme of unity _ the protagonist promotes harmony to stave off a war between dragons and humans _ struck a chord with a surprisingly diverse audience. See 'Fun' on pg. 7 McKenzie went on to work as an animator and senior animator on Storm Hawks, a comedy-action blend about flying heroes who patrol the skies of a fictional planet. It was on Storm Hawks that he and his fellow animators decided to have a little fun with the audience. 'Every episode, there was a small group of us that was always trying to sneak a chicken into one of the shots, even in the background or whatever,' McKenzie says. 'And it got to the point where I think even the storyboard artists would come up with chicken gags or other directors would come up with their own chicken gags, and it just started growing. (We were) seeing fans on the Internet saying, 'What's with Nerd Corps and chicken stuff?' And it just started as a silly idea.' It's those I-can't-believe-they-pay-me-to-do-this aspects of the job that keep McKenzie in love with his career. It might otherwise be too easy to suffer burnout when six weeks of animation yields just one or two minutes of footage. McKenzie compares CGI animation not to Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse, but to puppetry. The characters already exist on screen; they just need to be manipulated. 'We are given 3D models (on the screen) that we bend and pose, much like dolls or toys,' he says. 'Then we make them move about to do what it is we need them to do.' For most CGI animators, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is a job at Pixar, the American studio behind Toy Story, Cars, Finding Nemo and other outrageously successful and respected films. But McKenzie isn't so sure. Colleagues who have gone on to work for Pixar tell him they spend so much time striving for perfection in each frame that it can suck the joy out of the job. 'I like what I do here because I am able to do a lot of animation really quickly, so the idea is to stay fresh,' he says. 'I think I'm more of an idea man, so I like to get the ideas out there. I'd rather have a funny, quick animation than a forgettable perfect animation.' At Nerd Corps, McKenzie is afforded much creative freedom, though just how much varies depending on the show and the client hiring the company to perform the animation. 'Sometimes you get something from the client and they say, 'Hey, we did our best trying to iron out the story, can you guys come up with something better?'' he says. 'And, 'Here's the point we're trying to get across, do you guys have a more efficient way of doing that?'' There is always a more efficient way to tell a story, especially when animators are typically allotted just 20 minutes for each TV episode or a little over an hour (or less) for a movie. McKenzie loves presenting other people's stories, but he admits his goal is to one day use CGI to tell his own. In the meantime, he recently began writing his first book, about a musician who gets pulled into an intergalactic battle to save the universe. It's just further proof that for Dustin McKenzie, imagination is the limit.
