A visual consultant in the films and games entertainment industry, Mr. Alexander Lindner has been part of very impressive European animation movies in the past in the capacity of co-director, art director and script consultant. In a career spanning nearly 13 years, Mr. Alexander Lindner has been involved with several movies which have won awards and nominations, the most recent being the Oscar 2011 nominee, "The Gruffalo" in the Best Short Film, Animated category. Mr. Alexander, an expert in digital and matte paining, concept design, art direction and storyboard, also has an impressive knowledge in script writing and story structuring.

CG Today : Mr. Alexander, it is an honor and privilege to get the opportunity to talk to you about your experiences across more than a decade in animation industry, which we are sure our readers would love to hear about. Please accept our hearty welcome.

Alex : Thanks a lot for interviewing me for your website!

CG Today : Let’s start with The Gruffalo. Nominated for the Best Animated Short, it includes several matte paintings by you. The story has been considered to be an aesthetical beauty with its simplistic charm that has stood true to the book. How do you go about the conceptualization when there is a story book to follow as opposed to a completely original work?

Alex : Work in films is always team work. You are just a link in a chain to make a story or a conceptual idea work, even if you are holding a leading position in the film. There is always something you have to think about: The story, the vision of the director, the financial possibilities, and the target audience. A director or producer might hire you to push the boundaries, or to come up with unexpected and refreshing ideas. But, there is always their own idea and vision as well, which usually existed long before they came to the point to actually engage someone to put a pencil on paper. So, the “completely original work” you mention is something I rarely see happening in the film industry – the exception being someone who is hired for their own artistic universe, and the film and storyline is adapted to their art, as was the case with HR Giger's paintings for “Alien”, although even he had to change some of his paintings so they could actually build the set or fit a guy into the costume!

In the case of “The Gruffalo” I was expected to follow the color keys – little gouache sketches – which were done before I came in. Of course, I was told where the animation of the characters was, what would be foreground, background and so forth. I received a 1 Terabyte hard drive by mail containing the animation files, and a very large number of set photographs, trees, flowers, grass, etc, so that I had sufficient material to work with. That was quite something! For the rest of the project I mostly worked from my home studio via internet and Skype, mostly with the compositing department. I never had any problem reaching someone there in the middle of the night when I had a question, so I guess they were quite busy too, haha!