Meet Alessandro Novelli

We asked Alessandro a few questions to find out how he started his career and what inspires him!

Where did you grow up and how did you get into drawing?

I grew up in a really small village in Sardinia, one of the Italian main islands. When I was a kid more than being interested in drawing, I started playing around with macromedia flash. At the beginning of 2000, I was making fake websites just for the fun of making them, even if I was incapable of putting them online. So, I suppose this was my first step into what I actually do now.

When did you realise that you wanted to animate?

At the beginning I was much more into art and graphic design in general. The passion for animation came a bit later, more or less at the end of my senior year at university. My idea was to become a whatever kind of video artist, so a profession that would allow me to combine film, art, and philosophy all together in a single piece. First, I started experimenting with stop motion, pixelation and direct animation on bodies. With time, I started changing what I was doing and got more into digital animation.

Did you go to college to study illustration or animation?

I studied digital design and film at IED (Istituto Europeo di Design), in Torino, Italy, and during my senior year I won a scholarship for SVA (School of Visual Arts), in New York City where I studied graphic design and motion graphic.

Was your first job in the animation industry or have you had other jobs along the way?

Since graduating, I have been contracted for many different positions, from web design studios to advertising agencies, everything through a recruitment programme at my university. At the end, I accepted a proposal from one of my motion graphic professors at SVA, who invited me to join a NYC-based animation studio where he was working.

Whose work do you admire the most?

My inspiration comes a lot from books, travels, and interacting with people in general. I have some favourite artists like Bill Viola, or on the animation side I love Masaaki Yuasa, both his series and feature films are incredible. I feel politics and social systems very much influence my personal work, the work I create mostly tries to understand and escape this over-structure, more than the commercial one.

What is your favourite thing about having an animation career?

One of the things I like most about my career is the chance I got to participate in several film festivals with my short films and to speak to design events, I first attended in the audience. The opportunity of getting to know new people, sharing ideas, showing and talking about what I do and what is behind my projects, I feel is the thing I am enjoying most at the moment.

If you could have any job / project what would it be?

Something with a philosophical topic, maybe conscious orientated, where I could freely mix realistic and abstract animation styles with no strict limits and the possibility to explore different narratives.