Euan Frizzell

Euan Frizzell was born and raised on the Canterbury Plains. Later he graduated from Wellington Polytechnic with a Diploma in Visual Communication in Design.

While a student, Frizzell bought a second-hand 8mm movie camera and began experimenting with animation (animation was then largely hand-drawn, and shot on film). By the time Frizzell graduated he was hooked, and began working as an animator and cameraman. He also shot early and forgotten Vincent Ward documentary Ma Olsen.

Frizzell later trained as an animator at England's pioneering Halas & Batchelor studio. While overseas he also worked as an animator on classic characters Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Daffy Duck, and Fred Flintstone, and was part of the animated team on an ambitious big screen adaptation of cult science fiction comic Heavy Metal (1980).

Frizzell has animated and directed everything from commercials to award-winning films and documentaries, but his special interest is in characters and character animation.

“When animation characters live for more than a few shots they inevitably develop lives of their own," Frizzell has said. "When that starts happening you are beginning to get a soul in the character, and something that you can really work with. It becomes both a personal piece of expression and a collaboration with the character, which is a huge amount of fun.”

Frizzell has directed about 200 animated commercials and 50 children's films, many of them made through his company Gnome Productions. His feature work includes handling animation on Glenn Standring horror movie The Irrefutable Truth About Demons and Jonathan King's remake of Under the Mountain.

In the 90s he began making a series of short animated adaptations of stories by Kiwi children's author Lynley Dodd. Narrated by Miranda Harcourt, the tales were later compiled in DVD Hairy Maclary - Ten Favourite Stories.

Frizzell has received multiple international awards, including a CINE Golden Eagle for his work on 1992 Margaret Mahy tale The Great White Man-Eating Shark. This and another four ten-minute Mahy adaptations were collected on 1994 volume The Magical World of Margaret Mahy. He also animated a number of Mahy's characters for A Tall, Long Faced Tale (2008), Yvonne Mackay's documentary about the author.

Frizzell also directed and animated Musacus, an instructional film promoting a NZ-born musical education system that helps students learn keys via colour-coding, instead of notation. The film was a finalist in the distance learning category of the 2007 New York Festivals awards.

For the past 10 years, 75% of Frizzell's work has been for international distribution.

Frizzell served on the organising committee of the inaugural ANIMFX NZ conference in 2006, which brought together animators and game creators. As well as being interviewed for Kiwi animation documentary From Len Lye to Gollum (2004), director Chris Wilks also chose Frizzell to handle animation for the doco.

Euan Frizzell currently works as a freelancer, and has a continuing interest in documentary animation and graphics.