credit: Adam Fisher

Filmmaker Adam Fisher

Adam Fisher got his first taste of computer animation as an undergrad film major at Wesleyan University. Lacking the expensive software required for digital productions, he started making stop-motion films in his free time.

He returned to school to get his masters in animation at Rochester Institute of Technology. Fisher has two films featured in Oregon Lens: Timber, a short public service announcement about saving natural resources and Mashed, a film about a boy who does not want to eat his vegetables.

Mashed was Fisher's senior thesis and combines live action, computer animation and stop motion. Arts & Life spoke with Fisher about the process of combining all of these techniques.

Tell us a little bit about Mashed.

I thought it was a good chance to try a lot of things. I could have the kid be real and the food come to life. Using stop motion would look real and fit in with his environment well. And then I wanted to throw in this kind of imagination element too, so I brought in his superhero friend. I created him on the computer and wanted to make these three worlds fit well together.

That took me about three years to finish. I did all the live action stuff and all the stop-motion stuff while I was still in Rochester over the course of about a year. I got a job out here in Portland working for Laika. I had some time off when they finished Coraline and I used it to do the computer end of Mashed and stitch it all together. That took another year.

It took three years to complete this film. What advice can you give other animation students who have an idea that might take a long time to bring to life?

I always found myself looking forward to the next step. When you’re doing an entire film basically by yourself and you’re the primary force behind every single stage of production, it’s really easy to get bogged down. If I was writing, I couldn’t wait to shoot and if I was shooting, I couldn’t wait to record sound. I think that helped me to keep going.

Every once in a while you’ve got to take some time off and kind of come back to it fresh. You’ll start to feel like none of the jokes are funny and things like that. You really have to have faith in your original vision. It also helps when you’re at a point when you can show people something and get feedback.

The other thing is to know what you’re getting into ahead of time. With Mashed I thought it would be simple. But it ended up being three different production cycles. Plus, I had to figure out how to fit them all together at the end.

You should just be sure you understand what you’re getting yourself into when you plan something [laughs].

Did you use real food when you shot your film?

It would’ve been great to use food, but I was shooting the mashed potato monster for six or seven months so it would get a bit rank after a little while.

I had plasticine clay for my mashed potatoes, which is just an oil-based clay that doesn’t dry out or harden or anything.

For the other vegetables I did use real Brussels sprouts and asparagus for the model for the molds and then I cast them in silicone. It worked great. I got a really nice mold from the originals, but when I poured the mold I stuck ’em in there and then I went away for a long weekend. When I opened them back up there were some smells coming out that I would not wish on anyone.

Could you talk about the difference between working at a larger studio and working on your own film?

Working for Laika was amazing because everybody there is so artistic and talented. Everyone had something else going; I found that really inspiring. The upside to working by yourself is that you make all of the decisions. It’s your creative idea. You’re really invested in everything.

But both are fun and valuable. It’s maybe good to go back and forth and keep yourself fulfilled on all fronts.