Artistic Flexibility

[Joanna Davidovich]

Animators are animators, but more often than not they are also Painters, Illustrators, Designers, Children's book authors, Comic artists... My brain melts at the thought that so many people in the animation industry can straddle so many diverse mediums. I'd like to hear from all you artistic polymaths out there. What medium did you start your career with, and how did you branch out? Does your skill in one medium inform your skills in another?

[Joanna Davidovich]

Amy, you're my hero. I knew your artistic skills were diverse, but an opera singer?!? Is there any way we could hear a sample?

[Amy Mebberson]

No ;)

Very VERY out of practice.
I just warble around the house and sing along with my ipod these days - not classical any more, but I love old standards, musical theatre, old jazz and of course, Disney songs ;)

[Joanna Davidovich]

Well, your out-of-practice opera pipes probably still kick ass. My personal musical theory is that if one can't sing well, one should sing as loud as one can. (Betty Hutton songs are ideal for me.) Because everyone who went to public school knows that "Enthusiasm" makes up for a lack of talent.

Also, I completely agree with you about backgrounds and layouts. I fudged my way through a Character & Layout class by adopting a very mediocre flat planes/spot color look. "Style" can also hide a lack of talent, I suppose.

[Adam Levine]

My mom once told me that as a kid, I would only watch Sesame Street. She said I cried when she put cartoons on....I don't think that phase lasted very long though! My interest started in visual effects for film. I was a big fan of a show called "Movie Magic" on the discovery channel. They showed the behind the scenes of top films, everything from matte painting to model making...and then, towards the end of the show's run, they showed me 3D. Then Pixar showed up and I was hooked. I had always been drawing but didn't think I could make a career out of it. That's when I did my homework and pursued a career in animation...with much help from supportive parents.

As for other things I like to do...that's an intersting point Jo, that many animators thrive in many different creative outlets. In addition to animation, I very much enjoy illustration, photography, film making, graphic design, painting, cooking, and making bizzare stuffed dolls. I've been fortunate to have found success in all of these areas. The only artistically driven thing I'm no good at is music. I leave that to the pros.

I think all of what I do creatively outside of animation informs every aspect of my pieces. They all tend to meld together, each drawing upon the other to help make things better. For example, my love for photography really helps me when I'm setting up a shot in either an animation or a film.

By the way, Amy, your story is awesome!

[Amy Mebberson]

Ooh, I love cooking, too :)

I find that animation/illustration people tend to just naturally 'pick up' other artistic skills really fast. I'm very crafty and taught myself to knit, crochet and cross-stitch. When making my silly little pixel 'dolls', I pulled ahead of the online pack pretty quickly because I love fashion history and knew about lighting, shading, drapery etc. All the principles we learn in different arts cross over to other things we do very easily, I find.
Every skill we learn usually finds a way to help us in whatever else we create.

[Tim Farrell]

I "started" just defacing every school book with pictures I ever had to use. Since I couldn't do that professionally, I tried comic strips. As it turns out, I can draw but not very well... so how about 3D?

I started animation with 3D, but discovered I was limited by the scope of the medium. Being a one-man-show requires an extensive knowledge of an individual software package. I pulled it off to a limited extent, but I found I was compromising my vision and denied the chance to really experiment with my visuals in 3D. To do that, even if I became a master of Maya, I would still need to find and wrangle a group of people. That becomes a job in itself.

So for just one silly project I did all the stuff I had been planning to do that would have taken months in 3D in 2D. I turned a really rough and strange comic strip I drew in a sketchbook into a rushed and sloppy 2d cartoon. I still couldn't draw that well, but it only took 3 weeks. Then that stupid project snowballed into monster that got me some critical recognition, my first industry job, and a goofy trophy from this website. It's also how I met your mother, and the story of christmas.

Also as has been said, style can definitely hide a lack of talent. One of these days I'll get big enough to hire someone else to animate my work.

[John Fountain]

I have always LOVED cartoons - but by the time I was old enough to realize that Bugs Bunny wasn't a real, living creature I had pretty much decided that I never wanted to be involved in animation 'cause it just looked so friggin' HARD (I was right about that, of course, but obviously things changed).

I've always loved anything that told a story - so whether it was cartoons, live-action movies, books, comics, comic-strips, picture-books or smoke-signals I was into it.

I was very heavily influenced by Charles Schulz, Bill Watterson and Berke Breathed... so for a long time I strove to be a newspaper comic-strip artist.

I loved the idea of being able to connect to a reader on a daily basis, comment on current events and tell a short story with my drawings for a living.

At the same time, however, our family had sort of become a travelling puppet troupe, so I had also learned how to design and make really cool puppets as well as operate them - so I also considered that as a career option for a long time.

It was fun, but eventually I decided that drawing was my first love.

When I got to college, I started doing a daily comic strip for the local newspapers and that went on for seven years (yes, I took a LONG time to graduate). But while I was in college, I got into the underground comix scene and started emulating the likes of Robert Crumb, Evan Dorkin and Peter Bagge.

Comic strips started to seem very LIMITING in their potential. Tiny space, little drawings, no room for dialogue or story, and the knowledge that newspapers generally stick with strips like Beetle Bailey that have been around for a hundred years. It just seemed like a medium that wasn't going anywhere, so I started focusing on comics.

Since my university had no "cartooning program" in their art department, I had to pick a major, so it wound up being painting - for lack of anything better to do.

But while I was still predominantly focused on my comics, I really started to love painting and got into the whole bohemian idea of art as pure self expression, blah blah blah. This also got me into writing short stories and taking theater classes.

Towards the end of my college career I sorta fell into animation accidentally which revived my interest in it. Plus, with the increasingly helpful technology becoming available, the process became much less tedious and, therefor, appealing to me.

By the time I graduated I was with a successful improv comedy troupe (which exists to this day back in Detroit), writing for the local paper, doing a dialy comic strip, publishing a bi-monthly alternative comic book, getting into local gallery shows with my paintings, doing a radio show on the college station, and working at a local production house creating animation for commercials and CD roms.

So now, here I am, over a decade later and I work in animation for major studios, I'm writing a graphic novel for a major publisher (details after the ink is dry), in the process illustrating my second children's book (in collaboration with my wife who wrote it as well as the first one), doing comic strips for a nationally distributed anthology, illustrating a pin-up girlie calander using my painting and occasionally doing voiceover work as well as teaching and guest-lecturing.

I guess I'll rest when I'm dead.

[Elliot Cowan]

You are an arts whore, John.....(like me....)

[Joanna Davidovich]

Damn- I can hardly wrap my mind around all that!

Thanks for the thorough answer, John- I gotta admit these responses are surprising me!

[John Fountain]

Really? Why?

[Joanna Davidovich]

I just wasn't expecting some of these answers! Come on- who could have guessed "opera singer"? ;o)

[Elliot Cowan]

I used to be an astronaut