Produced By - Insight #29 - Fatma Rikabi Sukari: Animation Artist’s Introduction to Stop Motion Animation

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

Fatma Rikabi Sukari is an animation artist and VFX production coordinator based in London, currently employed with Scanline VFX. Half Romanian, half Syrian, Fatma grew up in these two countries and developed an interest in animation from a young age. They learned animation in order to study it at a university in London, which they successfully completed. However, they encountered some challenges along the way, such as the effects of a global pandemic and a hand injury that prohibited them from pursuing animation as a career. As a result, they switched to production and landed a position as a production assistant at Scanline VFX, one of the leading VFX companies that was acquired by Netflix. They also have experience working as a production coordinator where they have been collaborating with different departments, keeping projects organised and making sure everything runs smoothly. Despite the hand injury, their passion for animation hasn't diminished and their ultimate goal is to become an animation producer. Last but not least, Fatma discusses their experience at the Annecy festival, the largest annual animation event in France. Listen to this episode to get a deep dive into animation, learn about the Hollywood productions Fatma worked on and be motivated by their unwavering spirit in the face of adversity.  Boost your creative career by joining our new Skillshare course at https://skl.sh/3Rh7ZtY and don’t forget to let us know how you liked it!     Connect with Fatma: ⁠https://linktr.ee/xcisinix2000⁠   Episode quotes: “Then by the end of high school, I really wanted to come to uni in the UK and I started drawing continuously which was a big mistake. It overloaded my wrist a lot and I remember one of the mornings when I just woke up I couldn't move it. It was such a pain, like if I had needles in my wrist and hand.” “As a production assistant, I really like that I'm very close to the artists and enjoy talking to them. When I was a PA in the department, I would sometimes just call them and talk for 20 minutes. I think working from home, it becomes depressive on both sides because you're very much alone. So I just enjoyed talking to them and seeing how everyone is doing.” “It was just remembering that I came to the UK thinking, okay, big job, a lot of depth. I needed to know it was worth it. And just thinking that I really put a lot of effort into getting all the skills, the amount of work and so many sleepless nights to learn the skills I'm doing now. So I had to continue. It just felt like there is no way I'm going to just stop here.”   Connect with the podcaster: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://tomasloucky.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://twitter.com/TomasLoucky⁠     Follow the podcast: 🌐 Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://produced-by-podcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🔗 Links: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/produced_by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   💬 Contact: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://produced-by-podcast.com/contact⁠⁠⁠ 📷 Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://instagram.com/produced_by_podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  🎥 YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT5LHnM6YCaeVzIr0WatOsw⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  🎵 TikTok: ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@producedbypodcast⁠  👾 Discord: ⁠⁠https://discord.gg/8j3zNzwqJg⁠ ⁠ ✉️ Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Spotify: ⁠https://lnkd.in/e5Y8Wscx⁠  Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/produced-by/id1684669642⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📨 Newsletter: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7092551882589528065 ⁠   If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it on ⁠Patreon⁠. ❤️ 🤩 If you enjoy listening to the podcast, please, leave a review on your podcast app, subscribe or share it with your friends. 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As we discussed stop motion, can you try to introduce what is stop motion to someone who doesn't know anything about it? So, stop motion is like an animation technique where you use in a more simplest way, real puppets. The best example is Nightmare Before Christmas, so I think everyone saw it. I remember actually it's one of my friends and he held his CG and I was like, it's not, it's just puppets. And it's impressive if you consider when it was made, I think. it's quite old film but still so beautiful and really well done. I think stop motion as an animation technique, it's one of the hardest because when you do it to the animation or three, you can do back and forth and check your in-betweenings.

But with stop motion, it's way harder to do that. Use Dragoframe, which is one of the programs we use. It just captures the pictures. But you can use the onion skin to see what was before, but you need to plan your moves in advance because you can't really go back and add something. thing you can't just delete you need to be very patient right yeah that's the sicker part is you need to be very patient about it too and with just two people doing all the like sets animation everything there was a chain of time the sink of this yeah and why did you actually decide for stuff motion are you

fan of this type of animation i think initially i wanted to go to deed because do my designs are very 2Dish looking, but then my friend who came to me was like, okay, your idea sounds, it can go in stop motion. I was like, okay, let's talk about it. And then it makes sense because if you look at all of the stop motions in general, you have this very uncanny, you know, feeling like it's a real life and you feel like, because in stop motion, all the objects in our life, to some degree, you can see the horror of it. You can feel it. It's like live action to some degree that you connect with the characters. And I was like, okay, it makes sense. why we can do a stop motion because you will feel the same anxiety as the girl because you know

she's an object in our life she's the real puppet so you will feel the same feeling to some degree and what kind of material were you using i know that quite often clay is used or like puppets for our puppets because it was very short time we went so we had like our small armatures but my friend built them she built it with metal wires wood and wood and there was another material. I don't remember that she did like the legs and the hands. But the heads were made of wood. She carved it.

She carved all of that. And then she did a lot of material around them. Like it was kind of everything homemade in a way. Yeah. It was her plan. With available resources with the budget. Yeah. I think love scoers to build stuff.

Yeah. And to get an idea, what was the scale when it comes to, can you say roughly what was the? like the height of the puppet what was the size of the set the puppets too are pretty small i think it's like maybe this big i guess like my hand kind of like maybe was smaller yeah but the sets were pretty big i don't know i'm not very good with would it be maybe like a half meter high or even meter or less one of the sets was like a staircase going spiral and that's i think maybe be a meter high, maybe shorter, I don't remember exactly. But we had, for my film, there were

like the stairs, which were like very high in. And then we had two sets, like a hotel reception and bedroom. And both of them were pretty big because we had to have someone helping us, you know, carrying them around. And how long does it roughly take to build such a set? I think we worked on the sets maybe four or five months, but it was kind of every day for like 10, 12 hours. Because I know I did have the skills to like build us as I was helping as an assistant. And then we got different like assistants to help us. So it wasn't just us. So while my friends was doing that, I was helping her with her portfolio. So like kind of giving tasks to each other to like earn more time. Just came to my mind that I know there is a studio called Laika. Do you know it?

Yeah. Yeah. And they're well known for stop motion features. And I've seen a few videos how they built sets for their films. And if you see it like as a time lapse, it's really beautiful, like the whole process. But if you consider how much time, effort and patience and everything they put into it, it's unbelievable. Yeah, it's just like with Stow Motion, the process is very painful, but the end result, it gives you this feeling of accomplishment. Yeah. It's just beautiful because these days, most of the animation is 3D or like these days. days, even 2D when it comes, for example, to new Spider-Man and films like that. And stop motion is not that usual.

No, it's very expensive. Like, it takes maybe two to five years to do something. And it's very expensive. It's like an investment. And then you don't know if the movie will like earn the enough money to cover all the expenses. But I believe with there like just Lyca and Artman, there's like the biggest studios. And there's another one in UK, A and C, I think. And it's like, you know, these.

after five years, they will make something very good. It's like, there'll be no mess with that. So it's like everyone is waiting to see what are they in a come. Yeah. So have you got favorite Stapmarshal animation store? I think I really loved Kubo and the two strings, I think it was. Yes, from Lika, right? Yeah, that one, I think it was one of my favorite one to this day.

I think I really liked it and then I saw the process of how they did everything and I was like impressed. What did you like particularly this one? I mean, the sound track was very good. And I think it just, the story was it worked for me. I mean, it's children's story. Because at the end, if you like watching the day, you think, okay, this didn't really end realistically correct. But it's just very hard-warming in some degree.

And when I saw the process behind the scenes of how they built everything, I was like, wow, the process soon. I think I actually watched behind the scenes of this one on it. as well and I can only agree with you.