Ones to Watch 2016: Animator and illustrator Julian Glander

Gloriously cheerful and full of pastel hues, Julian Glander’s work is funny, surreal and creative. Based in Pittsburgh, the illustrator and 3D wizard has been creating gifs, animations and illustrations for a couple of years now and has made the transition from personal projects to commissioned work seamlessly. "Recently all my projects have been a result of people seeing my work on Instagram or Twitter,” he explains. “To be honest it’s a bit of a mystery to me – I do the work, I post it and somehow I get to do more work. It’s not a bad cycle!” 

This year saw Julian create a series of gifs for Canadian network Koodo Mobile, an animation for Dropbox, and a weekly comic strip on Vice ’s website and there’s no doubt that his client list will continue to grow over the next 12 months. While he has no concrete plans for next year apart from taking a trip to Berlin to speak at Pictoplasma, Julian has several projects in the pipeline. “I’ve got a full-length comic in the works, as well as an animated series. I’m in the process of finding homes for both of those. 2015 has been a banger, if next year’s half as good I’ll be one happy fella.”

The animator is also looking forward to experimenting with new techniques: “I just got my hands on a virtual reality headset, so if you don’t hear from me at all in 2016 it’s because I made a nice little pastel VR world for myself and now I live inside it,” he says.

Earlier this year, Julian created an animation for the California Inspires Me series put together by Google Play and California Sunday magazine. In his signature style he brought actor, director and scholar James Franco to life through a world of bubblegum characters. Full of little details and nuances it’s a fantastic example of his ability to illustrate a story in an engaging and humorous way. Julian hopes to work with Google again one day: “I know this will jinx it, but one of my all time career goals is to do a Google Doodle. Maybe 2016 will be the year!”

Outside of his own work Julian is excited for what this year will bring: “2016 is a multiple of four year which is when all the best stuff happens – the Olympics, our presidential election (feel the Bern), and a leap year which means a whole extra day to goof around and make cool stuff.”