Pierre Perifel

Early life and education

Perifel was born in Lyon. His passion for animation began in high school. In his third year of attending the École Émile-Cohl (fr) art school, he applied to Gobelins, l'École de l'image and was accepted.

He graduated from Gobelins in 2005. His group thesis film, Le Building, was created with Marco Nguyen, Xavier Ramonède, Olivier Staphylas, and Rémi Zaarour. The film uses a combination of 2D and 3D animation. Perifel worked on the 2D elements and had primary responsibility for the film's backgrounds. Le Building screened at numerous international film festivals and won several awards, including Best Undergraduate Animation at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.

Career

After college, Perifel was offered a position at DreamWorks Animation - he would eventually join the studio, but turned down this initial offer, so that he could continue working on 2D animation projects in France. His decision was also influenced by his wife's pregnancy at the time. The earliest films of Perifel's career include Curious George and Go West: A Lucky Luke Adventure (fr). He also worked with Ramonède on Nocturna and The Illusionist.

Two years after graduating from Gobelins, while on a vacation in the United States, Perifel visited a friend who had joined DreamWorks. Perifel has said that he was "ready for something else and for an experience abroad", so he left a demo reel with the studio. Representatives from DreamWorks still remembered Perifel and renewed their previous offer to him.

Perifel moved to the United States in 2008 and began his career at DreamWorks doing character animation on the 2D short film, Secrets of the Furious Five, for which he won an Annie Award. Following that, Perifel transitioned to CGI, working on Monsters vs. Aliens for about two months. He then joined onto Shrek Forever After - a project for which he has expressed special fondness. He returned to 2D animation with a few sequences in Kung Fu Panda 2. On that film, he also served as lead animator for the character Lord Shen. Perifel has said that he "was in charge of [the character]", even though he "didn't have a team of animators".

Rise of the Guardians followed. At this point, Perifel was officially promoted to supervising animator, leading the team responsible for the character North. Both Kung Fu Panda 2 and Rise of the Guardians earned Perifel Annie Award nominations.

Perifel's next project was set to be Me and My Shadow, which afforded him the opportunity to develop 2D animation again, but the film was cancelled by DreamWorks.