Talk to Adam Fisher about his work, and any preconceived notions you may have about modern-day animators go out the window.

While there are certainly a lot of animators whose work consists mainly of sitting in front of a computer and creating magical images out of thin air and sophisticated software, Fisher works in stop-action animation. He takes a puppet or model and bends it and twists it into various positions so that when it’s filmed – one position at a time or about 24 pictures per second – it looks like it’s really moving.  And to do that Fisher himself has to really move.

For instance, when Fisher worked on “Missing Link,” in theaters now and featuring the voices of Hugh Jackman and Zach Galifianakis, he had to figure out how characters would look while desperately clinging to an icicle. To see exactly what muscles a person would use in such an act, he made videos of himself trying to cling to a building column.  He held on for about a half second, the fell off.

“But by doing that, I learn a lot of what muscles are flexed and what kind of pose would feel real for someone holding on but losing their grip,” said Fisher, 40, who teaches animation at Maine College of Art in Portland.

Fisher, who grew up in the Down East town of Prospect Harbor, has worked in animation during the past decade on major animated films like “Coraline” (2009), “ParaNorman” (2012), “The Boxtrolls” (2014) and “Kubo and the Two Strings” (2016). All four were nominated for the Oscar for best animated feature. For “Missing Link,” the comic story of a Sasquatch-like creature becoming friends with an explorer, Fisher animated scenes involving the main characters, including the goofy Sasquatch known as Mr. Link and also Susan.

Last year Fisher, decided to make a change from working in animation full-time, on the West Coast, and took a job in his home state as an assistant professor at Maine College of Art’s new animation and game art major. With animated images used for so many things today – games, advertising, architectural renderings, business websites – animation is a continually growing field and the college has seen more students interested in it in recent years, said George Larou, the program chair. Some 150 MECA students, out of about 500, will likely take some kind of animation course next year, Larou said.

POSTER BOY FOR HOW TO MAKE IT

While Fisher’s students can learn the skills an animator needs from him, they can also learn from his own personal story. He grew up in Prospect Harbor, on a peninsula east of Bar Harbor, where his father runs a company that makes bronze bells, including some for ships. His mother works in the retail part of the bell business and also makes quilts.

He was always a fan of comedy films and animation, including movies with Steve Martin and the British stop-action animation show “Wallace and Gromit.” But he had no interest in filmmaking or animation until his last couple of years of high school, when he got a video camera and started making “silly short films” with friends. He liked the idea that he could make something that would make people laugh.

Having “no idea” what he wanted to do for a career, he decided to attend Wesleyan University in Connecticut, thinking a liberal arts education would help him figure it out. He took some film courses and pretty quickly he decided he liked animation. Making a film with live actors required so much scheduling and organizing.

“With animation, you have so much freedom and control over everything, and you can work at your own pace,” said Fisher. “You have the freedom to use your imagination and just bring things to life. It was a feeling I couldn’t get rid of.”

Fisher became a film major and was considering focusing on computer animation. But software is not always easy or cheap to get when one is a student. He figured getting some clay was within his student budget, so he focused on stop-action animation. He went to Rochester Institute of Technology in New York for a master’s in fine arts in animation.

Through one of his professors at RIT, he made connections at Laika Studios, the company that made the four Oscar-winning films Fisher has worked on. He started fairly small, as an assistant facial animator on “Coraline.” His job was to match up facial expressions of characters with a list of all the sounds in a scene. For every sound, he’d have to take two 3-D facial expression masks – one for the eye area and one for the mouth area – and place them on the character puppet to be filmed. Working this way, animators produced about three seconds of final face footage a week, he said.

He also did facial animation on “ParaNorman” and “Boxtrolls” but wanted to work on the broader animation of characters, making them run and jump and hang from icicles. Brad Schiff, animation supervisor of Laika, told Fisher he needed more experience and pointed him toward television. So he moved from Oregon, where Laika is, to Los Angeles and got work as an animator, including for the Amazon children’s series “Tumble Leaf.” It’ s a stop-motion animation show for pre-schoolers focusing on science lessons.

After about a year, he showed some of the work he had done to Schiff, who hired him to do animation at Laika, and not just faces.

“When he came back to me and showed me his work, I knew immediately I wanted him on our team. Adam is the the poster boy as to how to make it in the industry,” said Schiff. “Raw natural talent combined with a competitive drive and strong work ethic make him a great animator, and his versatility makes him stand out. He can be cast on anything from subtle acting to action to slapstick comedy. ”

For “Missing Link,” Fisher was promoted from assistant animator to animator, and he was put in charge of many crucial scenes in the film, Schiff said, including the icicle scene.

To film the characters in “Missing Link,” Fisher worked with puppets that had a complex skeleton of stainless steel parts and ball-and-socket joints, each one adjustable in very small increments. So after filming himself, or other animators, doing certain movements – throwing an axe for instance – he’d bring the puppet to a sort of “puppet hospital,” where the exact adjustments he needed could be made. Then after the puppet is filmed in that one position, he’d start all over again and get the puppet in the next position needed in that sequence. For throwing an axe, for instance, the arm would have to be re-positioned many times to convey the full throwing motion. An animator on “Missing Link” would usually produce about 1.5 seconds of footage a day, Fisher said.

“There is no easy shot in animation. Just blinking would take several frames to get the eye movement right,” said Fisher.

After 10 years of working in animation, Fisher started to think about teaching. He also wanted to spend more time with family, including his 3-year-old son, Henry. His wife’s family is from Pennsylvania and his is still in Maine. So when he heard MECA was starting an animation program, he thought it was the right fit. MECA announced his hiring last July. He and his family live in Cape Elizabeth.

He said he likes the idea of “helping to define” a new program in animation. The program has eight or nine instructors usually, but chair Larou and Fisher are full-time. Fisher was the first professor hired to teach animation full-time.

“What he brings to the program is pretty significant, an accomplished animator with a great eye who has worked in the industry and knows how to tell stories,” said Larou.

 

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