October 18th, Monday night, approximately 8:00 PM. At the School of Visual Arts, the ASIFA-East Annual Open Screening is in full swing. Twenty-three-year-old Noella Borie and recent Parsons the New School of Design graduate is up next on the queue to introduce her six-minute senior thesis film to an audience of professionals and students in the animation field. The theater darkens. Before the crowd, the big screen comes alive with the image of a stop motion curtain sliding open, presenting, in sharp and shaking letters, the opening titles: “Faceless Neil in THE FACE SHOP.”
The short is darkly humorous and visually engaging, using an interesting and eclectic mix of flash animation and lovingly crafted stop motion on top of vibrant watercolor textures—a striking contrast to the trendy CG modeled animation features filling movie theaters today. Borie’s film still feels handmade, personal, and maintains the feeling of the human touch. The appreciative crowd reacts with enthusiastic applause by the short film’s conclusion. Still, Borie is not yet done treating the audience with her cheerfully dark brand of humor; she gets one more laugh out of the viewers as she credits herself at the close as “Jobless Noella”—an amusing but bittersweet nod to the harsh reality of the job field for young animators today.
October 19th, Tuesday afternoon, approximately 4:30 PM. In the Parsons
building at 2 West 13th Street, Noella Borie sits in the lobby prepared, taking out a stylishly printed book brimming with whimsical character designs, concept art, and storyboards brilliantly rendered in rich watercolor—all for the world of Faceless Neil. Borie herself looks quite stylish as well. No doubt she would be easy to spot in a crowd, standing out, tall and slender, with her mane of vividly red hair. Today she is sporting a trim black coat with tights and a pair of butterfly-esque glasses frames that suggest a quirky but cool personality underneath. Noella is calm and composed, answering any question that is thrown at her in her soft and pleasant voice, accented in French. She has always been interested in cartoons. From Disney movies in her childhood (her favorites being Dumbo and The Lion King) to Japanese anime in her teenaged years (a fan of works like Escaflowne and Neon Genesis Evangelion), Noella has been a fan of animation for as long as she can remember.
“I love watching cartoons. Ever since I moved out of the dorms and got my own place with cable, all I do is switch between Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon,” she says, smiling and miming pressing the buttons of a remote control.
As a child, she would always wonder how movies were actually animated, thinking to herself, “How did they do that?!” but it wasn’t until she came to Parsons that “all the secrets were revealed.” The idea for Faceless Neil originated from a four sentence prompt for her Illustration Concepts class that ultimately led to the story's first piece of concept art—a meek little boy sitting on a bed, surrounded by skeletal creatures.
Inspired by this image, Noella set off to work, developing an entire world set in the city of Morteville where it’s Halloween practically everyday, where skeleton bands can bust out jazzy, toe-tapping tunes for a crowd of cheerfully ghoulish creatures, and where no one bats an eye at anyone who has eight eyes. This story has grown to encompass two animated shorts, including her senior thesis The Face Shop in which young, and apparently faceless, Neil along with his endearing monster buddy, Manny, attempt to buy the boy a new face.
Ideally, Noella would love to pitch Neil to Cartoon Network, but it is not exactly easy to get in. She interned for a brief stint at World Leader Entertainment, the studio responsible for Adult Swim’sVenture Brothers, but she left, disappointed at the lack of work she was given. With the upwards trend of American studios outsourcing the actual job of animating to Korea, young animators are now competing with the cheaper service of overseas companies.
“You can’t really sell yourself as an animator—you have to sell yourself as a storyboard artist or character designer,” says Noella.
Still, while she calls herself “jobless,” Noella is not standing idly by doing nothing as she waits for opportunity. In a sea of digitally modeled, computer generated works—what is rapidly becoming the industry standard—Noella resolutely stands by keeping handmade techniques alive. She is always creating art in her spare time, (maintaining a pencil and paper as her weapon of choice) working not only on a Faceless Neil children’s book but also developing designs for a sci-fi comic and assisting independent animator Signe Baumane on her film Rocks in my Pockets. She is also planning on taking a trip to California this winter to scope out the booming animation scene in Hollywood.
Right now, however, Noella remains optimistic, eyes lighting up as she proudly mentions that she has been selected to participate in the 7th Annual Big Apple Film Festival this November, where The Face Shop will meet its largest audience yet. Festivals and screenings may very well be the livelihood for a new animator, offering exposure and allowing for networking that may eventually lead to a paying job. Despite everything, Noella’s passion and love for the art keeps her animating and creating, unhindered by any difficulties that come her way.
"I think you can always improve. You just have to keep drawing."
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All artwork credited to Noella Borie. For more on Noella Borie and her creepy cartoon creation Faceless Neil, find her at www.nobiechan.com or facelessneil.wordpress.com.
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