Animated ambitions

Brian Dowrick began creating art when he was 5, drawing when he was in a bad mood and making flip-books with his mom's notebooks. [Photo/China Daily]

Prompted by his work for the Beijing Olympics, US animator Brian Dowrick sets up a school in Beijing. Lin Jing follows the storyboard.

As the Beijing Olympics captured the attention of the world in 2008, Brian Dowrick was in China's capital working behind the scenes as an animation supervisor for the event. It was an exciting time and an insightful one for Dowrick, who through the experience realized the need for a quality animation school in China.

Two years later BaiAn 3-D Training Center was born with Dowrick as founder and instructor.

He wanted to train qualified animators to work for his animation studio Eclipse, but he also had grander plans for the school's role.

"In five to 10 years, I want the best animators in China to be students I have trained," he says.

Dowrick, from the US city of Philadelphia, has more than 20 years' experience in animation. He has worked on numerous films including Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Night at the Museum.

Dowrick's first trip to China as an animator was in 2007, when he worked on the movie Red Cliff by director John Woo. Shortly afterward he began to divide his time between that and the Beijing Olympics, which he worked on for eight months.

"It was a lot of pressure, because you never knew what tomorrow would bring," he recalls. "The job and responsibility was also huge."

"It is one of those experiences, just like if you are knocked off a boat, which is not something you would choose to do, but after you have done it, you become a better person afterward."