Animation Had Some Kind Of A Plan With Me – Interview with Kristjan Holm
What was your drive to initially study interior design and what made you decide to leave it for animation?
Interior design was a teenage plan without any master plan. Life was nice, crazy projects and champagne… 12 years later it turned out that animation had some kind of a plan with me. Hopefully it knows what it’s doing.
What do you think are the most characteristic features of Estonian drawing animation?
Lack of dialogues for sure!
Being a lover and expert of bikes, how are animation and bicycles connected?
Bicycles mean pure freedom; animation, if we think about how it’s made, means long term imprisonment in the windowless cell... Quite opposite things, luckily they balance each other efficiently.
Having been an independent (and self-taught) animation director and professor of arts for many years now, what is your message or advice to present students of animation?
I consider myself more Priit Pärn-taught after two years (2007–2009) in Estonian Academy of Art’s Animation Department. If I still try to figure out some kind of message that doesn’t sound like an empty slogan, then maybe if you have to make a film about cats, then go and live together with cats on the streets of Istanbul before you start. If you have to make a film about forest elves, then switch off your phone and go and live in the forest like a fairy for a while. Yep!