His shirt might have been the same, and some of his stories may even have been similar, but when Michel Gagne talks the things he says always come across as original. The celebrated animator, illustrator, publisher, artist, and self-effacing humourist returned to VFS for a second straight year to share with students insights from a still-blossoming artistic career.

Speaking in his customary stream of consciousness style, Gagne ( http://www.gagneint.com/ ) ranged from topic to topic in a series of tangents that were at once whimsical and inspirational. One moment he was talking about drawing creativity from his walks in the woods, the next how he was influenced by Kandinsky and Da Vinci.

“Michel is an enormous inspiration to people in the animation industry, publishing industry, comic book industry, and to me,” said Joseph Gilland, Head of Classical Animation.

A genre hopper in the truest sense, Gagne has worked on approximately 20 feature films, illustrated a 40 page Batman story for DC Comics, runs his own publishing house, and has animated video games, amongst many other projects. He is currently developing Insanely Twisted Puppet Show , a series of short cartoons perched on the precipice of production with Nickelodeon. “It's an insane series,” Gagne said.

Gagne talked about other current projects including a new illustrated children's book about counting called Odd Numbers . His previous books include the hugely popular Insanely Twisted Rabbits, Frenzied Fauna, Freaky Flora, and A Search for Meaning: The Story of Rex. He is also currently working on an art book based on designs he created while developing a video game.

While working for Don Bluth Animation in Los Angeles in the early 1990's, Gagne famously clocked an additional forty-hour week working on private projects over and above his forty hours at the studio. It was during this fecund period that Gagne refined both his fine art and animation techniques while producing the critically acclaimed short film Prelude to Eden .

“I started the film in 1991 after coming back to America from a 4-year stint at the Bluth unit in Ireland”, Gagne writes on his web site. “I was looking for an outlet to give some kind of meaning to my life... Prelude to Eden was the film that helped me find my own sense of storytelling, timing, motion and design."

In 1996, the three-and-a-half minute meditation on the origins of the universe received an Annie Award nomination – the animation industry's equivalent of the Oscars. But more importantly, the film helped developed his signature style and reinforced his ambition to leave studio work and pursue independent projects.

Gagne moved closer to this goal when a surge of almost accidental creativity illustrating oddly shaped animals for friends at work turned into Insanely Twisted Rabbits. This book helped Gagne launch his own publishing house, Gagne International Press, and quickly led to a second book in the Insanely Twisted series, the alphabet book Frenzied Fauna.

“I do what I love,” Gagne told the Animation students. “I feel like I've always played, and when working for studios wasn't fun anymore, it wasn't a game anymore, I stopped. I took a chance, and I said I'm going to go on my own and try to make a living playing.”