NFB Hothouse 11: ‘Pumpers’ (Pascaline Lefebvre)
This week on Skwigly we’ve been delighted to meet the participants of the National Film Board of Canada‘s 11th Hothouse apprenticeship scheme for emerging Canadian animators.
With a BA in Graphic Design from l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Pascaline Lefebvre has been working as a graphic designer for the past five years, with a firmer focus on illustration in this past year. Her involvement in Hothouse 11 was partly motivated by “Getting back into shape, having a gym membership, and imagining characters based on what I saw in real life.”
On the production of Pumpers:
The film observes people interacting at a gym: I think they look and interact a bit like children in a kindergarten. Also, the film’s original soundtrack is composed of various baby noises. There’s a wide range of emotions there that can be interpreted many different ways and associated with different personality types or character actions.
I draw faster using a cartoon style. I usually draw with pen and paper, but for this project I had to use a Wacom Cintiq in order to meet the deadline.
On the benefits of Hothouse:
It’s very motivating to have people around you dealing with the same boundaries and deadlines. The staff at the NFB were amazing: they love their job and you can tell. I benefited from an immense amount of motivation.
What next?
To do illustration full-time. Also, I want to experiment with hand-drawn animation (in a technical way) during my free time.
To learn more about the work of Pascaline Lefebvre visit pascalinelefebvre.tumblr.com
Thanks to all the Hothouse 11 participants for taking the time to share their experiences with Skwigly! To find out more have a read of our recent interview with Malcolm Sutherland, Hothouse 11’s mentoring director