Floriane Marchix

Art Director, The Bad Guys, DreamWorks Animation Age: 37

Birthplace: Nantes, France

School: Studied advertising design at La Joliverie in Nantes, then at L’École Européenne Supérieure de l’Image at Poitiers, where I studied a little bit of animation. Becoming quite fascinated with it, I then decided to try my luck studying Animation at Gobelins, l’École de l’Image.

First time I realized I wanted to work in animation: I’ve always loved animation, but the process of making it my daily job took quite a few years to mature. After I realized that advertising (my first love) wasn’t exactly what I had expected, I knew that animation could be a very fun alternative offering plenty of possibilities. I pursued this road and at the end of my studies at Gobelins, I realized that I would never be as good as some of my classmates and I had way more fun designing the environments during the development stages of our projects.

What I love about my job: I love the opportunity to be involved in every tiny decision. Being able to witness the movie coming together. As an art director, it’s fantastic to be able to work with all those different teams who are bringing their A-game to the table. It’s a very humbling experience for sure.

Most challenging aspect of art directing The Bad Guys: It was a pretty smooth show with a clear direction from the beginning and a lot of trust

from our director and producers. We were headed into a direction that the teams at the studio were not familiar with. It was a new style with graphic intrusions, a more anime rhythm, with a simpler look at the same time. We had to “bake” this look and figure out a lot of issues while dealing with a tight schedule. We didn’t have a lot of room for mistakes.

Animation heroes and favorite works: Miyazaki and Brad Bird for their fantastic sense of storytelling. I loved Sleeping Beauty, Nicky Larson, Ranma ½ and Tex Avery cartoons. Later on, Princess Mononoke was a huge revelation. Best career advice: As an art director, the best advice I’ve received was that it was alright to “not know,” everybody expects your answer in meetings because it’s our role and it could be stressful. But it’s perfectly fine to let the teams know that you need a minute to figure it out!