028: Chris Chua and Austin Madison


In this episode, Pixar animators Chris Chua and Austin Madison come on the podcast.

Chris during his days at Dreamworks working on films like Flushed Away. Photo courtesy Chris Chua.

Austin at work in office during the production of WALL-E. Photo courtesy Austin Madison.

Another one with Austin during the WALL-E days. A friend of his put together a yearbook of the animators on the show. Photo courtesy Austin Madison.

Chris is very active on his personal blog, uploading many new sketches several times each week. This is him sketching in Paris. Photo courtesy Chris Chua.

In Part One, Chris and Austin tell stories from college, and also give some advice for aspiring animators.  They share some great insights about animation and talk about live action films that inspire them.  I also expose my belief that Dungeons and Dragons is a video game (cutting the podcast's listenership in half).

In Part Two, we delve into describing what kind of creatures animators are, and we discuss (at length) Austin's favorite western, Young Guns.  We also discuss labor issues in the animation industry, why they love working at Pixar, and the different directing styles of Andrew Stanton, Pete Doctor, Brad Bird, and Lee Unkrich.  Also, Chris Chua compares Walt Disney to the Death Star, and Austin Madison talks about his budding career in paleontology.  Good stuff!

Find out more about Chris Chua and Austin Madison:

Chris' imdb page: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1378807/

Chris' blog: http://cchua001.blogspot.com/

Watch Chris' student films: http://www.cchuareels.blogspot.com/

Chris' Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/ChrisChua007

Austin's imdb page: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2936988/

Austin's blog: http://munchanka.blogspot.com/

Austin's Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/munchanka

Thanks for listening!  Check back for future episodes in the coming months, including an interview with David Price, author of The Pixar Touch.  Weekly news episodes will return Dec. 21.  Write your comments below, or send feedback by doing this:

Email us: thepixarpodcast@gmail.com Call and leave a message: (801) 709-0652