Thieves in Time – Retrenders

Interview with Ghostbot Co-Founder and Animator Alan Lau

As promised in last Friday’s Catching up with Animation Studio Ghostbot, we wanted to share with our readers an interview with one of the lead creative brains behind the studio – Ghostbot Co-Founder and Animator Alan Lau. A fan of Japanese Anime and an active gamer, he’s worked for several esteemed studios in the past such as Wild Brain, Laika, and Madhouse. His ability to seamlessly integrate captivating 2D animation to each and every project is what stands out when looking at all his works en masse.

For Ghostbot, their most recent project was working on every 2D cinematic for the new Sly Cooper video game out now on the PS3 titled Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. I’ve seen the game in action and it’s great to see them keep the charm of the original Sly games intact while pushing the quality of the game art to higher levels. Recently,we had the good fortune to sit down with Alan and find out what other video game projects the company has worked on, what his reaction was on getting the opportunity to work on such a beloved franchise, and the amount of pressure they put on themselves to get the character attributes just right.

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Since we reside in the San Francisco Bay Area, we bump into a number of devoted and talented local artists who are not afraid of working together to come up with very creative original content. One such group is Ghostbot, a small, but experienced, animation studio that has set up camp on the outskirts of San Francisco. Founded in 2004 by three young animators, they work tirelessly on a multitude of mediums, ranging from TV commercials to short films on the web to video games. With a deliberate and unique 2D style mixing pop sensibilities and cartoon art, they’ve produced and have worked on many projects that you may recognize, such as the Erin Esurance ad campaign and the painfully cute Happy Tree Friends animated series to name a few.