Animation student vs. Pixar at the Oscars

(Photo courtesy of Emud Mokhberi. Used with permission.)

Video Interview with Emud Mokhberi

With five of his classmates from the Gobelins l'école de l'image, MFA animation candidate Emud Mokhberi, from Iran by way of Sweden, is going up against Hollywood giants Disney and Pixar on February 22, Oscar night. Mokhberi was a member of the team of six Gobelins co-directors who made "Oktapodi," a 2.25 minute CG delight, nominated in the Best Animated Short category.

"People respond to the film," Mokhberi suggests, "because it is a love story about a devoted pair of octopuses. In addition to the fast pace and the design, that is what really seems to delight people."

A Cephalopod love story by way of Chuck Jones, "Oktapodi" has already collected a basketful of major animation awards:

• Siggraph Asia 2008 – Jury Award
• Siggraph – Los Angeles 2008 – Best of Show et Audience Prize
• Hiroshima 2008 – Special International Jury Prize
• Annecy 2008 – Canal+ Family Award
• Anima Mundi – Rio de Janeiro 2008 – Best Student Film (Audience prize)
• FICCI BAF 2008 – Best Student Animated Short Film
• Imagina – Monaco 2008 – Best Animation Award

Mokhberi has followed a circuitous path to his current job as a character animator at Sony Pictures Imageworks, from an undergraduate computer science degree at UCLA, to a job in tech support at SFX giant Digital Domain (where he fell in love with the creative possibilities of computers) to the Animation Workshop at TFT. Expecting to be able finish his thesis film even overseas, he followed his historian-wife to Paris. There, after eight weeks of breakneck French lessons, a "happy accident" led him to Gobelins, the number one animation program in Europe.

Because he had switched countries several times before, Mokhberi was not overly concerned about relocating from the U.S. to Paris. He was more nervous about the Gobelin approach to setting up productions, which emphasized teamwork – a shock to the system after the "one person, one film" ethos of UCLA.

“Unlike the Animation Workshop,” the nominee explains, “which is very much a film school animation department, with an emphasis of storytelling, directing and editing, Gobelins is a fine art animation department, a program for people who want to be character animators. So I thought that combined with the collaborative aspect, it would be complementary to what I had done already.”

Mokhberi’s co-directors on “Oktapodi” were Julien Bocabeille, François-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, and Quentin Marmier.

The original score for the film was composed by another Bruin, music graduate , Kenny Wood ’04, MA ’06, who previously collaborated with Mokhberi on his first year MFA film, “The Muffin”. “We were originally working with a famous French composer for ‘Oktapodi,”“ the animator says, “but I didn’t like how things were proceeding. I suggested fairly late in the game that we bring Kenny into the loop, and he really saved the day with his beautiful work.”

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