&lt;div class=&quot;track&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/19140?ns=guardian&amp;pageName=The+artists%27+artist%3A+Animators%3AArticle%3A1640111&amp;ch=Culture&amp;c3=Guardian&amp;c4=Animation+%28Film+genre%29%2CFilm%2CAnimation+%28TV+genre%29%2CTelevision+%28Culture%29%2CCulture&amp;c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CTelevision+Media%2CFilm+Reviews&amp;c6=Emine+Saner&amp;c7=11-Sep-30&amp;c8=1640111&amp;c9=Article&amp;c10=&amp;c11=Culture&amp;c13=The+artists+artist+%28series%29&amp;c25=&amp;c30=content&amp;h2=GU%2FCulture%2FAnimation&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;standfirst&quot;&gt;Five animators nominate their favourite living artist in their field&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Five animators nominate their favourite living artist in their field  &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sharoncolman.com/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sharon Colman&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;strong&gt; on &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/21/television?INTCMP=SRCH&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nick Park&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;strong&gt; &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nick Park is a four-time Academy award-winning animation director and, of course, the creator of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/user/aardman&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Wallace and Gromit&lt;/a&gt;. His characters are brought to life with sincere emotions and charm. It&#039;s all in the subtleties: the blink of an eye, the raising of an eyebrow. He lets his characters breathe and think, without relying purely on dialogue to carry the story. In some ways, Gromit says a lot more than Wallace.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sharon Colman&#039;s Badgered was Oscar-nominated in 2006. &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.berylproductions.co.uk/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Joanna Quinn&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;strong&gt; on &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.michaelapavlatova.com/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Michaela Pavl&aacute;tov&aacute;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;strong&gt; &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&lt;p&gt;Czech animator Michaela Pavl&aacute;tov&aacute;&#039;s first film &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx4MR2QCWyk&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Words, Words, Words&lt;/a&gt; is a beautiful, funny piece about communication &ndash; without any dialogue. What struck me was how inventive she was. I was inspired by&amp;nbsp;her bold sense of design, which continues the strong Czech graphic poster tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Her work is honest, funny and uninhibited; it is very un-British, particularly in the way she deals with relationships and sex. Her latest film, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DVJpowNuSXMk&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Carnival of Animals&lt;/a&gt;, is bursting with wit, colour and vitality.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Being the same age, I&amp;nbsp;feel our lives have followed parallel paths. This year, we finally met at a film festival in the Czech republic and interviewed each other on stage. She was as mischievous and charismatic as I thought she would&amp;nbsp;be, with a delightfully wicked sense of humour.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Joanna Quinn was Oscar-nominated in 1998 for Famous Fred.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mikey Please on &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitterfilms.com/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don Hertzfeldt&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&lt;p&gt;I first came across Hertzfeldt&#039;s work a couple of years back with the film &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/user/t1i1b?blend=21&amp;ob=5#p/search/0/2Q_DOroGG8A&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;I Am So Proud of You&lt;/a&gt;, the second of three shorts about the life of Bill. Bill, like all of Hertzfeldt&#039;s protagonists, is a&amp;nbsp;stick figure. He is engaging and emotionally subtle, while the story is ambitious, poignant and very funny. (&quot;Not much happened at work. Bill made a pyramid out of three staplers and the new guy swallowed a paperclip.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;While the idea of an animated stick-man might seem crude or naive, it is realised with a masterful knowledge of&amp;nbsp;movement, timing and attention to detail. His stubbornness &ndash; he refuses to use anything other than a 35mm rostrum camera (as opposed to a computer) &ndash; reminds me that everything we see has been physically worked on and each frame is unique.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He is doing the simplest thing in the hardest way, which in my opinion is the best and only way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mikey Please&#039;s The Eagleman Stag won&amp;nbsp;a Bafta this year. &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tomm Moore on &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://adrienmerigeau.com/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adrien&amp;nbsp;Merigeau&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;strong&gt; &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&lt;p&gt;My favourite animator is a young Frenchman living and working in Ireland: Adrien Merigeau. I first met Adrien when he applied to be an intern in our studio. His graduation short film, Le Carnet de Chloe, was an eye-opener: a bold mix of techniques, yet it held together as a narrative and managed to be emotionally engaging even though no two scenes were in the same style.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;His follow-up, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG9XTiDiuUE&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Old Fangs&lt;/a&gt;, about a young wolf trying to reconnect with his father, is beautiful, personal, enigmatic and melancholy. His use of colour and design is atmospheric and, at times, expressionistic and daring. Having observed his directing style on this film firsthand, I was even more impressed: he touches every aspect of the production and keeps his crew motivated. Though it involves long hours and hard work, Adrien&#039;s approach reminded me that animation production need not be an industrial process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;His &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR-Kox34wgk&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;latest piece&lt;/a&gt;, a music video for Irish band Villagers, is a dreamlike work of exceptional design and draughtsmanship, meticulously crafted with subtle use of the computer to enhance, rather than hide, his handmade style.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Tomm Moore&#039;s The Secret of Kells was Oscar-nominated in 2010.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.runwrake.com/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Run Wrake&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;strong&gt; on &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/jul/10/dvdreviews.worldcinema?INTCMP=SRCH&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jan Svankmajer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;strong&gt; &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&lt;p&gt;I went to see Svankmajer&#039;s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdfCOCIv_DU&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Dimensions of Dialogue&lt;/a&gt;, possibly his best-known short, when I was still at college, and it blew me away. It still does. It presents questions about what it is to be a human in relation to other people in a&amp;nbsp;very interesting way. I come from a time before computers and still love the flickery nature of frame-by-frame animation, which is what Svankmajer does so beautifully. You can see the thumbmarks in the clay; it&#039;s all very tactile with a real handmade feel. His adaptation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd03-wm6DDM&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Alice&lt;/a&gt; in Wonderland is fantastic: it has a gritty, visceral, from-the-earth feel. He is from Czechoslovakia and has that kind of communist-era grit. It just adds to the&amp;nbsp;sense of &quot;other&quot; all his films&amp;nbsp;have.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Run Wrake has created visuals for U2.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt; &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;related&quot; style=&quot;float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/animation&quot;&gt;Animation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/animation&quot;&gt;Animation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/television&quot;&gt;Television&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;author&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/eminesaner&quot;&gt;Emine Saner&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;terms&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk&quot;&gt;guardian.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; &amp;copy; 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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