Scott Baltjes
Scott Baltjes was an animator, modeler, creator of characters' walk and run cycles for ReBoot Seasons 1 to 3. Scott was also Senior Animator for Icons.
Scott Baltjes was raised on a couple of small cattle farms in the rural townships of West Lincoln and Wainfleet, Southern Ontario, Canada. It was a world of horse-drawn haywagons, barn building bees and outhouses. His early addiction to Saturday morning cartoons and newspaper comics led him to create his own comic strip - published as "Trillium", his first work was about growing up "on the farm".
Despite his father's objections, Scott later decided to pursue a career in cartoons. He attended the Visual Art program at Niagara College followed by the Classical and Computer Animation programs at Sheridan College. Scott's first employment contract was worth enough to make ol' Dad eat his words - he now proudly shows off his son's photo at the construction sites where he works.
From 1995-2005, Scott had been working in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on award-winning and cutting edge animated projects. Mainframe Entertainment's 'Reboot' was the first fully computer animated series - Scott was one of the original animators and makes a guest appearance as a binome character wearing an "Angus" hat in the Season 2 episode Painted Windows. In the Season 3 episode To Mend and Defend other staff members made an in-joke to their colleague with a tombstone featuring "Scott Baltjes – Bought the farm". Many of the characters' transformation sequences in the popular "Transformers: Beast Wars" and it's sequel "Transformers: Beast Machines" are his creation. "War Planets:Shadow Raiders", "Action Man", "Heavy Gear", "Max Steel" are among his many prestigious credits. In "Spider-Man", the animated series, Scott pops up again as a background character wearing his signature "Angus" farm hat and orange company jacket.
For the episode Icons the city set and most of the secondary characters in this sequence were modeled by him (Water World was used as a reference, though one binome is based on a long time friend, Leonard, who had a bit part in the movie "Gettysburg"). All the characters were key-frame animated though had to be worked around AndrAIa's lack of facial animation (the Grin software wasn't working on her at that time though the modeling department had just solved the problem of her disappearing bra).
Presently Scott has been employed by Halifax Film since 2006 working on their animated series "Bo on the Go" and "Animal Mechanicals" and was a co-creator on the independent animated short "Sno' Matter".
Long time member of Scouts Canada, Scott enjoys hiking in the mountains or kayaking/canoeing the local waterways to photograph wildlife and landscapes. His interests includes taking photos from Halifax, Southern Ontario, and other places he has traveled around the world - but his favourite subjects are still the odd old barns he finds on his travels back to Ontario or Manitoba. On the rainy days, he enjoys sitting at his easel drawing, painting or working on his own animated shorts "Post_Historic" - an post-apocalyptic adventure about a little girl in a ruined city full of mechanical creatures, and "Alabaster the Unfriendly Ghost" - a hilarious comedy about an inept poltergeist.