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Awards Genie Award for Best Animated Short Nominations Canadian Screen Award for Best Animated Short Movies Carface, Sleeping Betty, From the Big‑Bang to Tuesda, Une Minute De Science, Trenches Similar Jean‑Pierre Davidts, Emmanuel Aquin, Marc du Pontavice, Tim Whitnall, Rick Jones | ||
Claude Cloutier is a Quebec film animator and illustrator who has to date made seven short films with the National Film Board of Canada. Cloutier began his animation career with the 1988 short The Persistent Peddler (Le colporteur), which was in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. His 2007 short Sleeping Betty (Isabelle au bois dormant) is a humorous Sleeping Beauty adaptation that received numerous international and Canadian awards including a Genie Award and Jutra Award. His most recent film, the 2015 short Carface (Auto Portraits), received the Prix Guy-L.-Coté Best Canadian Animation Film at Les Sommets du cinéma d'animation in Montreal and had been shortlisted for a possible Academy Award nomination.
Cloutier has said that in his youth, it had been his dream to become an animated filmmaker and that when he began working as an illustrator, he did so with the hope of being able to transition into animation. He worked most notably as an illustrator with the now-defunct Quebec satirical magazine Croc, with two comic book-style series La légende des Jean-Guy and Gilles la Jungle contre Méchant-Man. His hoped-for entry into animation came when an NFB producer asked him if he wished to adapt La légende des Jean-Guy into an animated short, which resulted in The Persistent Peddler.
The summer of 2015, Cloutier did a two-week "Frame x Frame" exhibition at the Musée de la civilisation in Quebec City, during which the public could watch him working on his next film. Cloutier has said his animation technique involves working first with paper and ink: "I draw on paper with brush, India ink and water, for nuance and half-tones. After that, it’s colored by computer. I like to draw on paper. I’m old-school."
