Claude Cloutier
Claude Cloutier is a Canadian film animator and illustrator based in Quebec. He has created seven short films for the National Film Board of Canada. He began in animation with The Persistent Peddler (Le colporteur, 1988), adapted from his cartoons for the Quebec magazine Croc, which competed at the Cannes Film Festival.
He became widely known for From the Big Bang to Tuesday Morning (Du big bang à mardi matin, 2000), a short that was nominated for Best Animated Short at both the Genie Awards and the Jutra Awards.
His 2007 short Sleeping Betty (Isabelle au bois dormant) is a humorous take on Sleeping Beauty and won many international and Canadian awards, including Genie and Jutra nominations.
In 2015 his short Carface (Auto Portraits) won the Prix Guy-L.-Coté for Best Canadian Animation Film at Sommets du cinéma d'animation in Montreal and was shortlisted for an Academy Award nomination.
Cloutier has said his dream was to become an animated filmmaker. He began as an illustrator for the now-defunct Quebec satirical magazine Croc, creating two comic series: La légende des Jean-Guy and Gilles la Jungle contre Méchant-Man. His entry into animation came when a National Film Board producer asked him to adapt La légende des Jean-Guy into an animated short, which became The Persistent Peddler.
In 2015, he did a two-week Frame x Frame exhibition at the Musée de la civilisation in Quebec City, showing him working on his next film. He explains that he starts with paper and ink—brush, India ink and water—for nuance and shading, then colors with the computer. He prefers drawing on paper and calls himself old-school.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 17:00 (CET).