We recently connected with Alexander Dupuis and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Alexander, thanks for joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

When I get an idea for an animation that really excites me, there’s usually a little voice saying “that’s nice, but you’re not quite ready for that.” And it’s usually right in that there’s a risk in committing to trying something new – especially if there are deadlines to meet and other people relying on the outcome. Trying something new means feeling like a beginner, for better or worse. But the times when I’ve managed to ignore the little voice have been so much more rewarding than the times I’ve played it safe, both in terms of my own satisfaction and the opportunities that have emerged. So when I get an unusual idea, I try to give it the courtesy of asking myself how could I pull this off?

Alexander, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m an animator and musician from the United States, currently based out in Chicago. I got into animation because I wanted to create fantastical worlds, the kinds one might find in sci-fi comics or on cheesy album covers. Places populated with weird creatures and impossible castles and optical illusions. Creating worlds like that and putting them into motion is almost a way of bringing them to life.

Motion itself is also, to me, quite intimately tied in with music, and many of my favorite animations and films are those whose movements and choreographies bring about experiences akin to something musical. I have a background in composing and guitar playing from well before I started animating, and a lot of the work I do is intended to complement music in some way, whether through music videos or in live performances. Most of my animating is done on the computer, even if it sometimes wants to look hand-drawn, and there’s such a wealth of fun algorithmic motion to play with, from hypnotic geometric patterns to simulations of natural phenomena like fungi or birds flying. It’s a hoot to give the computer a few instructions for moving things around not quite knowing what you’ll get back.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

One misconception that I’ve seen from some businesses that aspire to “democratize” artmaking (especially in the AI realm) is the idea that art should take as little time to make as possible. The problem they’ve identified is a big one – many people do not have the time to make art, because we live in a world where time is money. But having looked at that problem they’ve come to the wrong solution, the idea that this could be solved by producing art objects at light speed. Being an artist is not about possessing a few artifacts: it is, as Kurt Vonnegut said, an experience of becoming, and experiences require time in order to happen. A society that wants to support its artists must therefore, first and foremost, be prepared to financially support dedication of time to artistic activity. UBI would be a first step in this regard.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I remember reading about a study that said artists are happier when they’re resisting the urge to spend longer on pieces to make them “perfect”: that producing more works at shorter intervals increases their joy in their craft. And while I think there is some truth to the idea, I ultimately took away the wrong message, trying for a while to produce work as quickly as possible at the expense of the editing and revisions that can really bring about a new level of satisfaction in one’s work. I think the better approach in a medium like animation, one where there is a slow development time and infinite room for revision, is to avoid perfectionist tendencies in the first few drafts. Producing, not necessarily more artworks, but more iterations through the work. Funnily enough, though, it seems like the better I stick to this approach the more work I actually end up making in the long run, since I make fewer things that I find forgettable along the way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://alexanderdupuis.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sandordupuis

Image Credits
Dani Williamson (headshot)