Andy Knight: 1985

Like everyone, I am completely saddened by Andy Knight's untimely passing. He was an incredibly creative artist; an amazingly mature leader right out of the gate. He was also generous to those he worked with.
Andy was 2 years ahead of me at college, a class that was comprised of some pretty stong draughtsmen/cartoonists, and Andy was at the top. His drawings were the definition of "appealing".

In 1984-85 I was fortunate to work in Paris on 2 "Asterix" animated films. Andy was doing both storyboards and layout for the films. His drawing ability was something to admire even back then. He must have been 22 years old, yet he storyboarded most of the film with a confidence and ability of someone who'd been in doing it for a dozen years. I could never figure out how he understood film language so easily that early in his career.....

On "Asterx in Britain" I moved up to work in the Layout dept, which Andy was Supervising, and my job was to create "character poses" for some of the sequences. It was daunting and frustrating to see him in his office just pumping out image after image that were so well designed and composed for animation. In my attempt to keep up, I was learning to put down ideas in a simple, appealing manner, much like Andy. In hindesite I was learning from one of the best. The group of artist at the studio was young and influenced each other immensely. That included Mike Smith, Rob Stevenhagen, Bibo Bergeron, the Brizzi brothers, Reg Bourdages, etc...

For most of us on those films, it was one of the best experiences of our careers/lives.

I had not seen Andy in the past 15 years, and unfortunately never got to tell him how much he inspired me to improve my early work.

Below are a couple of photos of Andy during that time.

Andy(standing) supervising the storyboarding on "Asterix in Britain".

(Keith Ingham is second from the left.)

Andy and Pino

On the street's of Paris.

Pete, Jonathan Webber, Andy

Andy, Linzi, and John

(courtesy Reg Bourdages)

One of the common images I have of Andy is his wry smile. It's as though he knew something you didn't; showing a wisdom beyond his age.

Rest in Peace Andy.

I'll be adding more pictures of Andy to this blog in the next few days. If you'd like to add images to this blog, please email them to me at ken@duncanstudio.com