Profile: Aaron Augenblick
An interview with a young studio head
by Jake Friedman
*Originally published in the December, 2006 issue of the aNYmator newsletter.
It appears Aaron Augenblick is the underdog of indie studio animation. Since the birth of Augenblick Studios in 1999 when he was only 24, Augenblick has been hitting the niche market between MTV2’s Wonder Showzen (season 2 now out on DVD) and the entire run of Comedy Central’s Shorties Watching Shorties, not to mention several independent films like the hilarious web-series Golden Age now hitting the festival circuit (find it online – it’s delicious). He’s also producing a pilot for Adult Swim called Super Jail created by Christy Karacas and Steven Warbrick (the creative minds behind the short film Barfight), and you’ll see his animated sequence in the upcoming Paul Rudd/Wynona Ryder film The Ten. Recently I had the chance to talk with him about his work, his goals, the Fleischers, and 2D animation
Courtesy of Aaron Augenblick
JF: What was the path that you followed to be the head of your own studio?
AA: One thing that helped was complete ignorance of how hard it would be. I got my first job at MTV animation. They had seen my thesis film, The Midnight Carnival, which I had created at SVA, and they hired me to work on a pilot and I worked there for about 2 years on Daria and Downtown. I left because I really wanted to keep creating my own independent films, so I got a couple of people that I had met at MTV and we went out and started a studio – at very little to no money. I think we had one computer back then, and we were doing everything traditionally on paper, and basically built up form there. We got a little job here and there all the while funding independent projects that I did along the way, and the jobs ended up getting bigger all the time and I was able to hire more people and take better jobs and be more selective.JF: If you knew then what you know now, would you do anything differently?
AA: I think I would have prepared more on the business end of things. Artistically and technically I had a pretty good foundation. But just knowing the ins and outs of running a studio and owning a corporation, I was completely unprepared. We started our studio during the Internet boom, and I know people who started with investors and funding, and we went a completely opposite route, starting everything really, really small and just worked for all of our money.
The first freelance job we did at the studio was for Yvette Kaplan, for Between the Lions, and Yvette really helped us out because she was a director at MTV, so when we went off to start our own studio, she took a chance with us. I always strayed away from doing websites because I only wanted to be doing cartoons and animation. I think the first really big break we got was Shorties Watching Shorties.
JF: Where do you see the future of your studio?