As a teenager in Chennai, Siddharth John was into cartoons, doodling and flipbook animation. Today he has gone a few notches up from there to doing previsualisation of some of the biggest Hollywood movies such as Thor: Ragnarok, The Martian and Kong: The Skull Island .
In an email interview with Edge, Siddharth recalls his journey from a boy fascinated by cartoons to a previsualisation artist rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest names in Hollywood and being a part of the judging panel of the prestigious Annie Awards. “I was always interested in arts. In school, I took art as a subject and, thanks to cartoons, was fascinated by animation from a very young age. It was great when I realised that I could make a career out of my passion,” he says.
“It was hard researching with limited resources back then. But I managed to formulate a clear plan on what to do,” adds Siddharth. After completing his bachelors in computer science and visual communication from Annamalai University in 2006, he did a postgraduate diploma course in animation from Chennai before joining for MFA in Animation at Savannah College of Art and Design in the US.
Although there are many artists who get into the industry without a degree in animation, Siddharth values the college education. He adds: “The masters gave me a broad understanding of animation and it is vital to have a degree if you ever wish to teach in a college.” The diploma course, he believes, didn’t give him the skills required to breaking into the industry.
Siddharth John
His first big break was a project for the game Skylanders. “It was a great experience working with some extremely talented people in the industry. It had a demanding schedule that prepared me take on large-scale projects with quick turnarounds,” he says. Getting used to long working days, Siddharth adds, is a must for those who are looking to get into this field.
Working on advertisements, games and short films, he climbed his way into the movie industry. The big break, he says, was getting to do the previsualisation in 2015 reboot of Fantastic Four . “With a lot of movies and advertisements using green screen, it is sometimes hard to visualise how the sequence looks. Previsualisation artists make an animated sequence that looks very close to the finished shot, which serves as important reference to the director for the final shoot. It saves production costs by avoiding re-shoots,” explains Siddharth. Till date he has done previsualisation for nine movies, the last one being the much awaited Venom starring Tom Hardy.
Depending on the projects, Siddharth says, there can be different challenges. “ Sometimes it’s meeting the scope of the project, which can be huge with feature films. For instance, in Kong:Skull Island, the challenge was to get the precision of epic shots that has a lot going on at the same time. Other times it would be to make a sequence that fits the director’s vision,” he adds. So is there a set path to Hollywood? “I don’t think so. The degree from a reputed college helped a lot. So did the opportunities that I got to work on some interesting projects,” he says. Passion and hardwork, Siddharth believes, are the keys to succeeding in the field of animation. It is also equally important to build up a good portfolio.
