Roger Chouinard, Duck Soup Produckions Co-Founder, Dies At 81

In addition to being a principal in Duck, Chouinard labored as a designer and director on a whole lot of tv commercials. He and the Duck Soup workers participated in advert campaigns for international manufacturers together with Levi’s, 7Up, Nestle, Kellogg’s, Verizon, and the U.S. Olympic Committee, to call just a few. Chouinard directed the Levi’s “Roundup” advert linked beneath. The crew engaged on the advert Xeroxed live-action footage onto cels and animated the clothes being herded as if it had been cattle.

After listening to the information about Chouinard’s passing, long-time Duck Soup worker Carolyn Bates posted a touching tribute on Facebook:

Roger was an unbelievable designer/director, later sculptor. Very sort and beneficiant. Duck Soup was an animation household I belonged to for greater than 20 years… To me, Duck Soup represented an ideal animation studio of bygone days. It had nice animation expertise, numerous alternatives, so many enjoyable, inventive tasks. This was when animated commercials had memorable characters.

The studio was a major employer of expertise in L.A. for many years, with many artists who handed by way of, together with Corny Cole, Mel Sommers, Toby Bluth, Amby Paliwoda, Bonita Versh, Istvan Banyai, Sam Cornell, and Tom Sito. Chouinard typically contributed designs and layouts, along with directing most of the spots. Right here’s a small pattern of among the work achieved by Chouinard’s studio:

Over his profession, Chouinard was honored with quite a few recognitions together with the Communication Arts Award of Excellence and several other Clio Awards.

Along with his animation work, Chouinard labored in a number of completely different types of creative expression from editorial illustration to writing and illustrating youngsters’s books and creating public sculptures. His editorial illustrations had been printed in The New York Occasions, The Los Angeles Occasions, The Washington Submit, the Boston Globe, Enterprise Week, and the Wall Avenue Journal, amongst others.

Chouinard painted as effectively, and his “Robotic” collage work and sculptures have been exhibited at Mori, Arms on third, and LA Artcore in Los Angeles in addition to the Hakone Artwork Museum, Gallery EcruNoMori, and Atogoyama Artwork Works in Japan. A collection of his work may be seen on his personal website.

For years, Chouinard traveled each summer season to Japan the place he would take part in artwork workshops for youngsters.

Lively till the very finish of his life, Chouinard was most not too long ago engaged on making assemblages, sculptures, collages, and mixed-media work that always integrated discovered objects.

Roger is survived by Mariko Chouinard, his spouse of 37 years, daughter Christine (Max) Kilger (with Deanna Chouinard), daughter Nicole (Martin Hiemer) Chouinard, and son Paul Chouinard.