Barbara Federico: Then got scholarships to different colleges and when I -- I have always wanted to go into imagineering.
Jonathan D'Agostino: You just casually mentioned you got scholarships, different scholarship.
Barbara Federico: Well, because you had to submit portfolios and being that I came from middle class background in Louisville, I was offered scholarships from like Pratt and Parsons and different places and I came up here and just went to school and came out and ended up meeting someone who worked on Saturday Night Live, yeah one thing led to another.
Jonathan D'Agostino: Like everything else, somebody opens the door, somebody found out you had talent and I mean what are some of the main projects you worked on for Disney?
Barbara Federico: Well, mostly it's with the cartoons. I worked on Doug. I worked on a lot of PB & J, Stanley. Doug started actually out with Nickelodeon. It all started because of the person I hooked up with, again I was working on Saturday Night Live. I did an animation piece with him and then he got hired to work with a friend who created Doug and then it just kind of started there.
Jonathan D'Agostino: Did you have something to do with the muppets, one of the muppets?
Barbara Federico: I worked on Muppets Take Manhattan.
Jonathan D'Agostino: Well, that's a great one; I just watched it, terrific.
Barbara Federico: Yeah, that was a long time ago. I worked actually in the studios in Queens, they had just built then.
Jonathan D'Agostino: The storyboard, what did you did?
Barbara Federico: Yes, storyboard work. And that's basically where you are just planning, showing the director what their next moves are going to be. So you sit there with a script and you are actually scripting out with the person who is going to watch the movie is going to be seeing in the most efficient way possible.
Jonathan D'Agostino: You are creating the cartoons out of the scenes, is that what it is? Because I have seen these Disney specials where they show how they have got the storyboards and there all the, executives are sitting around and --
Barbara Federico: Right, and that's basically how they are like determining what the actual finished product is going to look like.
Jonathan D'Agostino: How do you go from that to marketing and advertising and I know you talk about you do party favors and things like that?
Barbara Federico: Right, well I started out when I first got out of college, I was a freelance illustrator and I was taking my stuff around to all kinds of places. I did work for New Line Cinemas; I was doing work for Maisie's. I was doing work for just all kinds of stuff. And ended up doing storyboards and advertising campaigns for advertising agencies. So I kind of got to know that side of it also before I went into animation. As a freelancer you get involved in soup to nuts.
Jonathan D'Agostino: Where does your business comes from? I mean where does that end of the business come from, the freelancing business? Not so much the party favor business, not the marketing, not the advertising, but where you are needed for illustrations?
Barbara Federico: Well, when I was going into school they had a placement center where they would post all kinds of jobs, people would call in that wanted students for illustration and I kind of got the hang of how to go in and just make something happen with someone you meet.
At the beginning, it was me calling out places that I saw posted in the placement center and then as you get more out there, as you get more connected with people who do, who views the kind of work you do, it just kind of like feeds on itself.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services