Like many appreciative and supportive (albeit naggy) parents/guardians of someone who dabbles in the visual arts, I have been pressured to nearly wit's end about writing a children's book since I barely picked up a pencil. It's not that I don't WANT to make a children's book, it's just that having somebody constantly telling you that you should because it would A) be cute, B) make a lot of money, and most infuriatingly C) that it would be SO easy to do, makes me less inclined to do so each time they bring it up. It's even worse when they try to bring in "family connections" to help you publish the thing, even if they may not even have the slightest idea of what they're doing.
But in all honesty, I have thought about writing a children's book for some time, and when freelance work dies a bit, I think I'll give it a go. I've actually already written one some time ago and kept it in my vaults until whenever I decide to dig it up again. It's about a tiger who wakes up for breakfast with a seemingly unending appetite. I, at least, think that the idea is solid enough for a book. But I've had one big issue; designing the tiger.
I had to figure out who the tiger was and, more importantly, what he looked like. Was he an adult tiger? A cub? An adult tiger that acts like an immature cub? Should he have a long slender body, or a short stout one? How realistic/stylized should I be? I spent some time studying tigers, as well as fictional tigers from comics and movies, both for inspiration and to help me avoid designing something that already exists! If it's too realistic, it'll look like Shere Kahn. If it's too graphic, it'll look like Hobbes. There seemed to be a fine line there, at least for me.
But after a lot of scribbling and rough designing (while I will scan and post at a later date), I eventually ended up with this:
While the look of the tiger was pretty much in place, the one thing that really helped me cement the design was to try animating him. By doing so, not only did I phone in on the design a bit more, but I got to understand a bit more on who the character was and how far I could push the design. So I did a rough test of him taking a big tiger bite out of a peanut butter sandwich:
Yummy!
Now that I'm a bit more confident with the look of the tiger, I can start planning out the layout of the book, and how I will go about getting it made. I've heard some good things about sites like Lulu, and I know a few authors, so maybe they can give me a few tips. But it never hurts to ask around, so if anyone knows more about making and self-publishing a children's book, feel free to drop me a line!
I'll post more about this as I go later on. Take care!
Like my friend Shelley Low (who I interviewed last September), I met Giorgio during my freshman year at SVA in 2007. Over the following four years, I got to know Giorgio and see his work progress and grow exponentially, culminating to his 2010 thesis film, Short Winded (a short excerpt appears below). His film was a highlight of that year's animation screening for me. Great animation, creative designs, incredible backgrounds... all done by him singlehandedly! His film was nominated for Best Film at that year's Dusty Awards.
A few weeks back, I met up with Giorgio and talked about his experiences so far and what his plans are for the future:
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MR: At what point did you say "I
wanted to become an animator" and how old were you at the time?
GR: I've asked this question myself to
a lot of friends and they've all given me more or less this same
answer. While it's hard to say exactly when it happened, I was one of
those kids was drawing since the age of 2 or 3, who sees a Disney
movie and thinks, "I want to make cartoons like they do", and
it doesn't really hit you that you want to do it for a living at the
time. But I would say I always wanted to do it, though I didn't know
it for a fact until my late teens. But I've always had an inclination
towards this profession.
MR: So you had an affinity for it early
on, but you hadn’t considered it until later on, until high school
that "I want to do this, I want to be an animator"?
GR: Exactly. I hadn't really considered
it as a viable option until then. It seemed like it could only be a
hobby and nothing more, at the time.
MR: Was there any specific movie that
just made you click in your head that you wanted to do this?
GR: I have very fond memories of
Aladdin and The Lion King. Those two are the main inspiration that
eventually pushed me to want to be an animator.
MR: You’re from Italy.. and you’re
seeing these films in Italian. And I know about Bruno Bozzetto, but
is animation really a big market or does it have any sort of
prominence in Italy?
GR: For the most part, it's all
imported Japanese shows or American shows. But having said that, I've
recently discovered of an Italian studio that actually produces some
Italian cartoon that are being aired in the state like Winx Club.
That show's been in Italy for a number of years now. There's a little
bit of a movie industry there, though it's not as mainstream as
Hollywood is here US. At some point in time, the movie industry in
Italy, which was really strong in the 60s and 70s, just became much
weaker than used to be.
MR: Have you been looking at any
Italian filmmaking and animation?
GR: There aren't many recent films that
pop out at me from Italy's modern film industry. They made a feature
film about 10 years ago, which translated into English, was called The Seagull and the Cat, which is based on a Chilean
novel of how a cat tries to teach this seagull how to fly. And it's
actually a really nicely animated feature film with a really cool
story.
MR: As far as art is concerned, was
your family supportive of your decision? Did they embrace it or try
to guide you into something else?
GR: My Dad was expecting me to get into
architecture or nanotechnology. So you can imagine how well that
conversation went [laugh]. But eventually, they were very supportive
of my decision, and they did not hinder me from doing it, even if
they might've been skeptical at times. And now my younger brother is
also pursuing animation.
MR: Was he inspired by you?
GR: I wouldn’t say he was inspired by
me, he always had the same general interests as I did. But I think
seeing me go for it made him understand it was possible for him to go
for it as well. Now he's studying CG animation at Ringling.
MR: Is Ringling in-
GR: It’s in Florida, and it's one of
those schools were they take the students and put them in big
companies right out of school. You could almost say it's the CalArts
of CG animation.
MR: What made you decide to come to the
US for college? Did you apply to any other schools? And was coming to
the States a really really big jump for you?
GR: Well, it wasn't that bad since I
lived here from the age of 6 to 10. Then I left to go back to Italy
and came back for the 7th grade in to live DC, and have been here in
the US since then. By this point, I've lived just as much in DC as in
New York City.
MR: Why SVA? Did you look around for
any other schools, or did you apply for any other schools? And what
appealed to you specifically about SVA?
GR: SVA was close to DC, where my
family was staying at the time so it was a convenient location. But,
the last time I had lived in New York I was 10 years old, so I was
way too young to begin too appreciate the environment the city can
have, like the artistic culture, and the fashion styles and all those
things. In retrospect I'm glad I chose SVA, because I got to
experience the City in that sense. It has a lot going for it in the
artistic scene, but being in an East coast city, animation-wise, it's
different from what people tend to do over in the west coast.
MR: And did you ever think of going to
the west coast?
GR: The west coast has a different
style of animation, but I think it's just as appealing. I would love
to go see what it's like there.
MR: So did you apply to other school
besides SVA?
GR: Besides SVA? I applied to the
Academy of Art University, which should be west coast… and I think
I applied to RISD, and I got waitlisted there. In the meantime I got
accepted at SVA, so I went straight for that, it was one of my top
choices.
MR: Did you get accepted at any other
schools?
GR: I got accepted into the Academy of
Art, and for RISD I got waitlisted, but I can't remember past that.
MR: I see. So looking at it on a scale,
you thought "I can go to school in New York City, that’s the
thing for me."
GR: You know, it is. I've actually
visited RISD too, and it's like a small town kind of environment and
it's very suburban. Most of the students, to get around, they ride
bikes. I had a friend there who I visited often, and after seeing the
difference, I am so glad I went with SVA. Because living with all
these people in a building, all together, in a crammed space… and
then going to the studio – getting to know them better - helps
build a big sense of camaraderie for me and I like that a lot.
MR: And you hit it off with people
immediately?
GR: Yeah, right away. Since Orientation, I've been meeting people that I'm still very tight friends with
today. And then I also met people like you there, and people that had
been there years before me... everyone was just very friendly.
One of many backgrounds Giorgio painted for his thesis film, Short Winded.
MR: Who were your teachers? Did you get
a lot out of them? What did they teach you?
GR: I had Doug Crane for first year,
and I'm so glad I had Doug Crane. I had no idea who he was when he
was assigned to me, because I didn't get to choose my teachers for
first year, but... Doug Crane is really just one of those teachers
that knows what he's talking about. He's been there, in the industry
for a long time. He worked on He-Man and Raggedy Ann and Andy. He
just knows all these little tricks... he is basically very old school
but that was the great part about his teaching method: he wouldn't
teach you how to animate how they would today, but how they used to
animate. So you got to go from this basic sense of how to do things
and, during my second year, I had a more modern teacher, Celia
Bullwinkel, who introduced me to Flash and started getting into that.
So now you get these two very contrasting approaches to animation.
MR: It’s a good foundation. Because
everything’s analog. You learn everything the hard way first, and
it gets easier as you go.
GR: Exactly, exactly. And I think it
makes it easier than someone just handing you a program saying "Here's Macromedia Flash. Lear it and animation at the same time" and it's very counter intuitive. Whereas you can learn animation -you
know how to use your right hand, or left hand if you're left-handed -
and you just draw. Then, here's the program, apply what you learn by
drawing and use it on this program. It's just more intuitive.
MR: And how was Celia’s second year?
GR: Celia's second year was great. We
did a lot of acting exercises. One of my favorite ones that I did,
was the sneezing exercise. You know it's little things like that. You
think, "you know it's just a sneeze". But when you start getting
into all the little details and nitpicking all the muscles that might
move, the twitches of the body… the sneeze is a very complicated
motion and it can vary a lot.
MR: What I liked about her assignments
is that it was something either quirky or fun. One of them was a fat
person sitting on a chair, and you would learn about weight and how
to anticipate. And the fishing pole assignment.
GR: She does do a lot of those. I
didn't get those two, because teachers seem to add stuff to their
curriculum so I didn't get those. But, yeah, she did do a lot of
thing that, at least on a subconscious level, would force you to use
weight and form and incorporate that into your work. I'm guessing for
third year you also had Howard [Beckerman].
MR: Yeah, I had Howard.
GR: So did I. He was great to have for
third year. He had all these acting exercises and he was very…
intricate about going about them.
MR: And what did you think you got out
of Howard specifically?
GR: Howard is great, he is a very
easygoing guy, but he's very strict and he knows what he wants you to
get out of his animation exercises. He knows when the acting is good.
Whether you're a good or a bad animator doesn’t necessarily mean
you're good at making your character act the way he should be. And I
was a pretty decent animator by that point, but my acting for my
characters was not up to par. Howard's class changed that and made me
see how much further I could push a character to express things or
how to pantomime things.
MR: Any other favorite teachers or
classes you think you got a lot out of?
GR: Don Poynter's Layout and Background
class was very good. Just learning about colors and composition…
that was so important.
MR: And now 4th year comes,
and you’re up to your thesis year. How did you come up with the
concept for your thesis film.
GR: My thesis film, which was Short
Winded, is about this little wind sprite getting chased around the
forest by a monster. The way I came up with it is that, earlier that
summer, I had found out about a little French animation school called
Gobelins. And their students make all these amazing quality little
animated shorts, usually not lasting more than a minute, as you know.
I had seen my first one that summer, which was Fenrir. And anyone
who's seen Fenrir will ask me "Did you base your film off of that
film?" And I would say yes, because I totally did. I was so blown
away by how beautiful Fenrir was that I wanted to do something along
those lines. Something kind of Tom and Jerry-esque, without too much
of a character plot, not too deep, not too overwhelmingly emotionally
involving… but something fun and light-hearted. You know,
fast-paced, but light-hearted.
MR: I remember seeing it back when you
were working on it, and you were doing everything. You did the
backgrounds, the animation, everything. You had a lot on your plate.
And it was about 4 minutes long… is it that long?
GR: It is that long, maybe a little bit
past that now, because I added a little bit to the ending.
MR: How turbulent was your thesis year?
[laughs] Were you killing yourself right at the beginning?
Were you
going through a lot of hurdles or was it pretty straightforward all
the way through?
GR: It was a bumpy ride, but in the
sense that there were times you felt like you were going uphill and
other times where it felt like it was just smooth sailing all the way
through, until you hit another bump and then you're again going
uphill. I think the biggest problem for me was in the way beginning,
and I gave myself time to buffer for this. And that was that I did
not know how to paint in Photoshop.
MR: And who taught you?
GR: I taught myself.
MR: Really?
GR: The first background I did for the
movie, which is also one of my favorite ones, took me three days to
do. But it took me three days because I was learning to experiment
with the program. After that I learned to work out and spit out
background within a day's time. And I would get at least one done a
day until I was done with all the backgrounds.
Another background from Giorgio's thesis film, Short Winded.
MR: And was the animation all on paper?
GR: No, I went completely digital. I
used Flash. I wanted to do it with paper, but I knew that if I had
gone traditional-
MR: You would never have finished.
GR: Yeah, because I planned for the
fact that I didn't have time to scan papers and to composite them.
By
going completely digital, at least, I could guarantee that I could
get that consistent that I was going for.
MR: After finishing you film, ranking
up to your peers, your film went over pretty well?
GR: Yeah it did actually, it was
nominated for Best Film.
MR: Looking back did you feel that SVA
was overall a good experience? And what did you think you got the
most out of those 4 years?
GR: Well definitely a lot of regrets,
but also no regrets at the same time. The management of the
department was a common concern of the students, and even of the
faculty, as it's not run too well. But on the same count, so many of
the students there are great friends and they're great contacts,
they've given me jobs and tips, and the teachers keep in touch too.
After getting the chance to meet all those people, I wouldn't give it
up for anything, even if I had the chance to go back and change it.
MR: And that’s what you think you got
the most out of it, the people?
GR: The people was the best thing, you
can learn animation if you put your mind to it on your own time. Just
buy the Animator's Survival Kit, spend tike practicing every day on
your own time and learn it yourself, but you can't buy a book and
meet all these great people. It's something that comes with the
experience of being in that kind of environment.
a short excerpt from Giorgio's thesis film, Short Winded
MR: What do you enjoy doing when you’re
not working? Do you like to draw or do you only draw when you’re
working?
GR: After I spend an entire day
working, it's really hard to go back to the computer and force
yourself to draw for pleasure. You just want to go like "eh, I
just want to watch TV for a bit", and you just watch TV [laugh].
But I do enjoy drawing, it's still fun, as it should be.
MR: How much outside drawing do you do?
GR: Not enough, that's always the
answer [laughs].
MR: Have you thought of doing any work,
like a personal short or work for your reel?
GR: Oh all the time. I always get some
ideas I wan to do for some short. Recently, I was thinking that I
would like to combine my interest for animation with my interest for
video games, and I was thinking about programming a game. I want to
learn C++, so I could eventually make some 2D side-scrolling
old-school game.
MR: And this would be a game you would
download on a game website, or something that would blow up to full
proportion?
GR: Ideally I'd love for anything to
grow to full proportion and be able to sell it, but you've got to
start out small, especially when you're like me and you don't know
any coding at all. You've got to look life in the eye and be real
about it and understand that you're not going to make that huge game
in the first shot. I'm going to go small with the first couple. If
it's going somewhere from there and I'm having fun with it, from
there I can always move on to something more serious.
MR: Do you do anything besides drawing,
like sculpting or painting?
GR: Sculpting and painting, no. My main
interest has only been drawing, and I couldn't turn my back on it for
anything else. I would consider it counter productive to take up
another interest, at which I'm not skilled to boot, in exchange for
time I could be using to get better at those few skills that I'm
really interested in.
MR: Do you prefer drawing on paper, or
do you prefer digitally or either?
GR: I probably like drawing on paper
best. It's more natural and the feel is nice to the hand. It's
harder. On a computer you can erase, no matter how bad the mistake
is. If you're using a pencil on paper, you can't completely erase the
pencil line all the time. For painting and coloring, I would go
digital all the way.
MR: Do you use Flash, or Photoshop-
GR: Yeah, Flash and Photoshop are the
main ones. Photoshop mainly for painting since it can at least meld
colors. Though I would like to try SAI some time soon.
MR: Have you tried other programs like
TV Paint or Toon Boom?
GR: I tried Toon Boom very briefly. I
want to get more into it, but I can't get my hands on an 'Animate'
copy. The basic version doesn't have all the features I would like to
use to actually be able to begin exploiting the program. I like that
it takes the key components of Flash and it actually improves them
for animation, whereas Flash seems to be moving away from that trend.
A digital piece by Giorgio Renna.
MR: What are some people or movies,
that your work is either based or inspired from?
In The Lion King, the scene where Simba
loses his father is very powerful. It's one of those scenes that is
just burned into your brain, where I can still close my eyes and see
it happening. As far as names go, he's not really related to my
business, but Shigeru Miyamoto, the Producer from Nintendo.
MR: What inspires you about him? His
style, his creative approach...?
GR: Yeah his approach to creating games
and characters and starts with a simple idea. : let's take an Italian
plumber, make him move from left to right, and if he reaches the flag
pole enough times, he saves the princess. In terms of storytelling
it's simple but it's still a narrative. As you move from left to
right you create your own story as you go along. It's a very
interesting way to tell a story interactively. Even with such a basic
structure, the fact that the story can be, not just entertaining, but
also enthralling, to me is very surprising. Playing "Super Mario World" and watching the ending credits I almost remember crying because I
was so moved by the overall game experience, by the story. Not only
did I just see the story, I was a part of it. It involves you and it
moves you.
MR: Speaking of video games, have you heard about Wreck-it
Ralph?
GR: I have, I have! I’m very excited
about that movie, maybe even more so than Brave. Even though Brave
looks gorgeous, the potential behind Wreck-It Ralph is amazing.
MR: Yeah, it will be mixing animation
and video games. As far as an audience goes, not everyone is into
video games. So to that point, they say it’s not very universal. On
the other side, die-hard video game fans are kind of jumping saying... whenever anyone tries to do anything parodying or based on a video
game, it never turns out exactly right. So from your perspective, how
do you feel? Do you feel like you’re in the middle, are you gung-ho
about it, do you have any reserves about it?
GR: Oh, I'm gung-ho all the way, but in
respect to how people feel about video game movies, that it's a very
narrow sector culturally-wise, could be said about any movie. There's
things like Ratatouille, that's very cooking-specific. I don't cook. My cooking skills are basically limited to using a toaster. And
Ratatouille was still a touching movie. It's not the subject matter
that matters; it's the characters within that subject that make the
movie good and the story. I don't think that having video games as a
subject matter makes it a weaker film.
MR: When you sit down and you animate,
what do you enjoy animating most?
GR: Definitely character. I don't like
animating effects very much as they can be tedious and difficult to
do. But during a very extreme movement for a character that involves
a lot of twisting and turning. If it's a very extreme action and
complex motion you can get away with morphing the character a lot
more. That makes drawing it more fun and organic.
MR: Do you prefer comedy, heart-felt or
will you enjoy any kind of-
GR: I would say a little bit of
everything. I can't do just all-out comedy or all-out heartfelt. I
would get bored. A little bit of both I think is the best recipe.
Giorgio's animation for 11 Second Club (April 2011)
MR: Where do you see yourself in the
next 5 years, what would you like to do?
GR: I see myself still doing what I'm
doing now, still doing animation. I would like to be somewhere in the
west coast, working there.
MR: Do you think that you’d like to
make the jump out there soon?
GR: Maybe after seeing how things go, I
would like to go within the next couple of years.
MR: If there’s a dream job, what is
it that you would like to aim for?
GR: My current goal, would be to be
able to one day work for Dinsey or Pixar. Even if should ever get to
that point, I wouldn't want to stick around there forever. I would
want to move on to something different. I get bored easily.
MR: Would you only stick to animation:
would you do storyboarding or cg or do you have anything in mind and
you want to keep to that?
GR: I don't mind doing anything as long
as it relates to animation. I just have a very complicated love-hate
relationship with drawing backgrounds. But I am learning how to do CG
as we speak.
MR: You’re learning what, Maya?
GR: Yeah learning Maya. Learning the
nuances of animation in CG, as opposed to traditional, is a little
different. I learned it back in college. Now I think I'm more
comfortable that I can start doing some more decent animations with
it.
MR: What are your feelings on CG?
GR: CG is just as good of a form of
animation as any other, but I secretly resent it for injuring the 2D
industry, in the sense that we're not seeing as many 2D movies. I
guess I more so resent the corporate aspect of animation for thinking
that 2D is not a profitable means of animation. But -
MR: There’s a sentiment that seems to
say that 2D is only for kids.
GR: Exactly. But asides from that, CG
is just as good as 2D. You can do things differently but they can
have the same effect. Sometimes they can have a better effect. It's
just another art form.
I started my webcomic a few weeks ago. "Why didn't I post about it here sooner?", you ask? I wanted to leave my friend Shelley'sinterview up on the front page for as long as possible so people could see it.
Anyway, I started posting it a few weeks back, and it's been a lot of fun! Shannon's doing the coloring and it's looking better than I expected it would! I'm learning something new with each strip and it's really the only non-work related artwork I've been doing recently. I started working at Titmouse (SuperJail!, Metalocalypse, etc.) here in NYC earlier this month, and it's been going okay. I work 5 days a week, so my only window for outside drawing is either on the 40 minute commute in and out of the city (when the trains aren't stuffed like a sardine can) or on the weekends.
Here's a link to the strip! : http://ftbcomic.blogspot.com/ (there's also a link on the side of the page over there -->
Right now the strip is put up on a temporary blog, but my friend Tara is helping me make a neat Comicpress site that I can transfer the strip over to. Then the old site will become sort of a work-in-progress/Livestream page for the comic. Should be done hopefully soon!
Here's some work-in-progress pics for the second strip:
When I met Shelley Low at SVA as a freshman in 2007, she was already a junior. At the time, she was working diligently on a scene for a class project in Howard Beckerman's third year class, of a horse trotting in a circle. There was so much involved in that one scene; perspective, believable horse locomotion and solidity of the drawings, and of course I was pretty blown away by it all. Over time, I got to see more of Shelley's work. Her drawings have a natural flow and grace, loaded with appealing charm and character. That is something I've always strived for in my own work, and Shelley seems to capture it effortlessly. It was a driving force and inspiration to me for the remainder of my studies and pushed me to hone my craft as far as I could.
Over the course of the following year, I saw bits in pieces of her thesis film in progress and how much time and energy she was devoting to it. The final film (which is embed below) was one of my favorites at the Dustys screening in 2009. And although her education at SVA was over, I continuously ran into her working in the computer lab and the studio. For the following two years, she came back to the studio to give a helping hand to her underclassmen friends and their own thesis films. She seemed to be reliving her final year of school all over again, along with holding down jobs outside the studio. Her devotion not only to her work but to her friends never ceases to amaze me.
Over the summer, I met again with Shelley and talked to her about her inspirations, her work, her time at SVA and what she's been up to nowadays:
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MR: So what inspired you to become an animator? What was it that appealed to you? Was it an early age thing?
SL: An early age... I did grow up on classic Disney and Warner Bros., primarily Looney Tunes. There was a period where I refused to watch anything that wasn’t animated.
MR: So in Singapore, were they subtitled or were they dubbed?
SL: Oh no, they weren't dubbed. My family is English-speaking anyway. Tom and Jerry I grew up on too and that didn’t even have dialog. But yeah, a lot of classical Golden Age stuff I watched as a kid did inspire me. And of course, you know, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, etc. The Second Golden Age really came up during my childhood, so that was really inspiring for me. I started acting like a cartoon character for a long time. I honestly learned how to anticipate and stuff like that before I even knew what I was doing, just by watching Looney Tunes and such.
MR: So even before you started to say, "I want to be an animator"…
SL: Well, art was the one thing I knew I was good at.
MR: Oh, so you already drew?
SL: Yeah, I was drawing my whole life, but it was just a hobby for a really long time, and then I actually started to pay attention and try and get better, and realized, "I'm actually improving! Wow, I'm actually pretty good. I should keep going with this," and so I did.
MR: Did you just think, "I want to be an artist", and then it kind of followed up into animation?
SL: What's odd is that my other love is science.
MR: You love science? It's a good balance.
SL: I didn't get terribly good grades in science. Not good enough to do anything with it.
MR: Is it because you're interested in the concepts of science, but not the nitty-gritty... details and formulas?
SL: That's pretty much it, I think. I love science, I love the beauty of it. And mathematics too, but not in the same way. I used to anthropomorphize chemical elements and draw little comics to help me study.
MR: Did it help you on tests?
SL: Well my teacher thought it was amazing. It never really went anywhere in the long run, because everything got more complicated and abstract as we progressed and finally I had to say, "Okay, I can't draw this." I would still love to revisit some of those topics from a creative point of view and see what comes out of that.
I really loved chemistry, and I liked biology a lot too. I could never really get into physics, but you know, maybe I'll try again. I appreciated mathematics a lot more as I got older. Not so much when I was a kid, obviously, but more so when I actually started understanding what it was about, as opposed to just going through the motions with the formulas and such. I don't think I have a particularly mathematical mind, but once I get it, I get it.
But science was my other big love. And I wanted to go into veterinary school at one point too because I would love to work with animals, but then I actually worked in a vet's office and a dog died, and it just made me think: I don't know if I could deal with that on a regular basis. It would be good to help animals, I would love to do that, but you’re not going to be successful all the time. Not even doctors are successful all the time, and I'm not sure if I could deal with that.
MR: But was it like a 50/50 thing, like veterinary work or animator?
SL: Yeah, I wasn't really sure. I was fifteen years old or so, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life. I just knew what I was good at. I liked writing, but that was not really something I was great at or had a real passion for, so that was out. Then it was just between being an artist and being in vet school and I was afraid that going to art school would kill my love for it. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.
MR: As far as veterinary stuff – the interest in animals, do you think that helped you artistically? Given that you’re known for being good at drawing animals.
SL: Oh, completely. You draw what interests you, and I’ve definitely drawn a lot of animals.
MR: Did you study anatomy books or anything like that?
SL: I actually studied my dog, because my dog is a greyhound, so she’s basically a live skeleton! I just followed her around the house and drew her in different poses. I had a Victor Ambrus book about drawing animals, and he had a lot of tips about how to successfully draw animals. A big thing that I learned from the books was just how to get the basics of the pose down immediately, and with animals that's important because you can't really ask them to stay still for hours on end like you can with models. So I practiced on my dog and I actually got pretty good at it. Just roughing out poses, getting down the anatomy really quickly.
MR: And did you use any of those drawings when you submitted a portfolio?
SL: I definitely included life drawings in my SVA portfolio. I was really good at life drawing for a while. I don't have the patience for it anymore.
MR: Life drawing in terms of people, or...?
SL: Still life. I was good at that. And it was good for me because it trained me to replicate on paper what I saw with my eyes. But I could only go so far with realism before I got bored with it, and it was just like, "Yeah... I want to move on now, because I've done all I can with this."
MR: What was the name of the book? Who's the author?
SL: Victor Ambrus. I haven't really heard the name around, so I don't know if he's really known here at all. Anyway, he’s an illustrator, he did some illustrations for children’s books I used to read, and he wrote several books about drawing that were helpful to me.
MR: So you get to SVA in 2005?
SL: I get to SVA in 2005, after finally deciding that I want to go into art and animation.
MR: Was it a big deal, coming to New York City and trying to get immersed? Was it a big change or did you get used to it quickly?
SL: It was a HUGE change, but I actually got used to it pretty quickly because I met a lot of people here that I clicked with in a way that was different from…
MR: Back home?
SL: I have a number of good friends back home. But they're not really arty people for the most part. I enjoy their company, and I can even share my love for animation with them, but it's not the same.
MR: Yeah, they don't have as much of an interest in it.
SL: You remember the Satoshi Kon film, Paprika? SVA had a screening of it and they had Satoshi Kon come in and everything because I was busy with projects and I was really annoyed because I wanted to see it. I went home that summer and it was showing at an arthouse theater when I was back, and I thought, "Oh, awesome! I get to see it on the big screen after all!" So I asked some of my good friends, "Do you want to go see this movie with me, because I'm really excited about it" and they said "Well, we’ve already downloaded it, so why don't we just watch it at my house?"
And they would not pay for tickets, because they already had the movie, so, "why pay for tickets?" And I think that was actually pretty heart-breaking for me because of course I’m going, "but it's different on the big screen and... animation..."
In the end, I just went to see it with my parents, who are film buffs, so I can usually count on them to watch things with me that nobody else will. But still, it’s different when you see movies like that with people that do that kind of work. If it had happened here, I would have easily been able to get a bunch of people to go see it with me. And we would all have been excited about it and we'd probably have gone to a diner or something afterwards and had a long conversation about the film over dinner. It's that kind of thing that I can't really do with very many friends back home.
MR: At SVA, you immediately clicked with a bunch of people.
SL: I had a good vibe about SVA in general, and I don't really have any regrets going. The animation program isn’t perfect, but I met a lot of people there that I'm really proud and happy to know.
MR: How was thesis year, anyway?
SL: It wasn't as horrible as people were making it out to be. I guess because I didn't bite off more than I could chew? I mean, people always try to do more than they're capable of and then they kind of... oh well.
MR: On your film, was it a one-man show, or did you have people helping you out?
SL: I had a handful of people help me out. I had.., it was mainly for menial stuff like scanning and coloring. I actually would rather not have had any help at all, just because I'm a control freak like that.
MR: You're a perfectionist?
SL: I am, and I also don't like having to explain the process over and over. But two of my friends, Tris (Waples) and Brian (Kaufman) actually wanted to help me, and they came up and asked if I needed help, and I said, "Well, sure. I can give you a couple of simple scenes just to try." Tris mainly wanted to figure out how he was going to color his own film for the year after that. So I said, "sure, try this method out. This is what I'm doing." They just wanted to get experience where they're really working with people, and that's why they were going around asking thesis students if they needed it. So I was happy to oblige, really.
But other than a handful of people, I basically did it all myself. I mean it's a three-and-a-half minute film. There's really no excuse for me not to finish on time, you know?
MR: When did you finally come up with the idea? Was it late in the game?
SL: It was... it kind of germinated in March before thesis year, and then over the summer I kind of developed it. I knew I wanted the central idea... I think I wanted the film to be a lot more wacky originally, just cartoony-styled stuff bouncing all over. I was getting into doing more of that at the time and I wanted to try it, but I don't think my skills were up to snuff at the time, I was still figuring a lot out in terms of both drawing and animation. I could probably do it now, and I’d probably have designed the characters more differently now too. But at the time I was still relatively naturalistic so in the end I just opted to go with what I was good at.
I wanted to challenge myself, because I knew everyone was going to expect I would do a puppy film and I didn’t want to go the easy route. I wanted to challenge myself, but I was thinking, I don't know if I could do a whole film with people. Firstly because that's not really what inspires me generally, I’ve always been more inspired by nature and animals. And secondly because my skill at drawing humans was not as developed as it is now. I wanted a challenge but at the same time didn’t want to be tearing my hair out during the production process.
So I focused on animals that I would enjoy drawing, but that I had not really tried drawing before, so I would have to figure out the movement of them by looking at actual reference and studying how they move.
MR: So instead of doing something with dogs or cats, you tried to do a pangolin and monkeys.
SL: Yes, yes.
MR: Did you study a lot of...?
SL: I did, actually. There's a lot more pangolin footage around on the internet now than there was when I started making my film, which I'm happy about but also kind of annoyed about because it's like, "Well this would've been helpful."
MR: Did you realize, "Oh, a pangolin can't move this way?", or...?
SL: Yes I did. They mainly walk on their hind legs and they only use their claws now and again for balance. The claws are mainly for ripping apart insect mounds and stuff like that, so they don't really use them to walk because they have to grow out really long and powerful. So they're not really for walking. I was doing all this research about the adaptations that these animals have to thrive in their environment.
I also wanted to pick something close to home because durians are a big symbol of my country to me, or of my region of the world at least. My dad loves them. I'm not a huge fan, weirdly enough, the taste and smell are too strong for me, but they always make me think of time spent with my family since we’ve spent many a night sitting around chatting and eating them. That’s how I spent a lot of nights during my summer vacation home, since that’s also when they’re in season.
MR: Four years of school – what did you think you got the most out of them?
SL: I learned a great deal, my drawing and technical abilities have definitely improved. But probably the best thing I got out of college was meeting the main group of friends I have now, we hang out a lot, talk a lot about movies and games, and collaborate on a number of projects too. It's fun being friends with creative people.
MR: Did you get anything out of your thesis film?
SL: I did feel like I accomplished something. And it was the first full-color, full-sound, full-everything film that I ever made. It was cool just seeing it on the big screen, though it was also terrifying – the screen is so huge! But people apparently liked it, and that makes me happy.
MR: So what happened after you graduated?
SL: I got a full-time internship at World Leaders and was there for quite a while. They were still doing Venture Bros. at the time, so I had a fair amount to do. I got to work on a nice variety of projects, definitely a big learning experience. And I get to say that I worked on Venture Bros.!
MR: And what were you doing as an intern there?
SL: A lot of the stuff was data checking and organizing things. I had to panel storyboards – cutting the panel part of the storyboard out and saving that as a separate file so that they can make the animatic. Most of the interns were doing that kind of thing, at least at first.
MR: So it was more like computer management and leading to the editing process?
SL: It was like that at first, but if you get into good relationships with people, which I did, you start getting more and more responsibility. At one point I got to check lipsynch on the x-sheets – which was pretty amazing for me, to be trusted with something so important.
MR: And how long did you do that for?
SL: I was at World Leaders for about a year, full-time and then part-time when I got another part-time job. After that, they didn't really need that many people anymore because they were wrapping up production on Venture. And by then I had been hired on at another studio anyway, so it worked out.
MR: That was Bunko Studios, yes? How did you find that job?
SL: I made friends with another intern at World Leaders, and she recommended me to the head of Bunko. I sent him my reel and my film and he liked it, so I became an intern there. At first it was relatively quiet because they weren’t working on a lot of projects when I came aboard, but eventually they asked me to come and work as a Flash animator on Sid the Science Kid, since they were going to be starting production on the second season of that, and I was more than happy to jump on that. Fun project to work on, and I learned a lot.
MR: So you do traditional animation, AfterEffects, Flash animation…
SL: Yes, and I'm a lot more comfortable with Flash than I used to be since learning some tricks from professionals. I can do basic motion graphics work with AfterEffects but I’ve yet to really explore it.
MR: Photoshop, Illustrator? I know you're learning, because I've seen some of the stuff you're doing with Illustrator.
SL: Yes, I'm attempting to learn Illustrator. I'm trying to get used to it, it's just really different from what I’m used to. Photoshop I have been using for years, and sometimes it’s hard to break out of the mindset of how that works. And Flash I'm actually very comfortable with now, I can do vector art in Flash no problem. Using it is relatively intuitive for me, whereas Illustrator...
MR: It's more technical.
SL: Definitely. Drawing mechanics in Illustrator are a lot better than Flash, though – I'll give it that. I hated Flash at first and now it's like my best friend, so I am hoping that in time Illustrator and I will have a better relationship.
MR: The thing I like about Flash is that it's quick, you can just dive in and animate something, but the problem is that just trying to make things look beautiful in flash is hard.
SL: Yeah, very true!
MR: What do you enjoy doing when you're not working?
SL: I would really like to start working on my own projects again.
MR: What, like a personal film or...?
SL: I don't know about a film just yet. I still have to recover from helping last year’s thesis students. I’m good friends with a number of them and I spent so much time in the studios helping them out, it was like living thesis year all over again.
MR: So it was like Thesis, Part Two.
SL: I didn’t appreciate how much I had taken on until after that year was over and I realized how tired I was. Don’t get me wrong – it was fun hanging out with my good friends, and helping them work on their films. They’re good films, and I’m happy I played a part in making them, but it all took a lot out of me, more than I would have expected.
MR: Besides animation, do you just enjoy drawing?
SL: I love drawing, always have and still do. I haven't done it in a while, and I think it's because I stopped going to classes. That's kind of sad, but it's true – and I think this holds true for a lot of artists my age – somehow the drawings I like the most are the ones I doodle on my notes during class.
Right now, I'm kind of drawing blanks on inspiration of my own, but I’d still like to practice my drawing skills. I still want to draw, I just don't really feel like being creative right now – but I’m hoping to get ideas again as I get back into drawing. You can’t force these things.
MR: Right. I've been drawing the same stuff over and over.
SL: I know, it gets boring after a while, so then you think, "Okay, I feel more like drawing other people's characters than my own right now." And that’s what I’m planning to do pretty soon, actually. Drawing things you didn’t design or create yourself can be really challenging and rewarding, and a nice change of pace. It’s fun to either try drawing in somebody else’s style, or transmitting a character into your own style.
MR: What do you enjoy animating most?
SL: Recently, my animator sensibility has been getting more and more cartoony. I love squash and stretch, that's not a surprise, and I use it all the time right now. I'm trying to get crazier with expressions, because I know that's not a big strength of mine, but I'm attempting it.
MR: So you're trying to exaggerate?
SL: I'm trying to exaggerate more, yes. It’s a challenge for me since I’m relatively conservative in my drawings, but we all know by now I love challenges.
MR: I know you said your influences were classic Disney, but was there any movie that made you just click? Was there a ‘click’ movie?
SL: I don't know if there was any one movie in particular. I would say a big artistic/story influence is Brad Bird, I've loved all of his movies, and from interviews and his commentaries and such, he just sounds like a really great person to work with. It's what I'd aspire to be like in the future.
MR: You'll work towards it.
SL: I don't know if I'm really a story person, I don't think that's my strength. I think I'm mainly character animation, and I do intend to get better with that. I’m not as good as I’d like to be by a long shot, but I’m working on it.
MR: Well, you're branching out, so...
SL: It's a process, you know. I can't get too stuck on that. I'm not sure if there was any one pivotal thing that made me want to do this. Maybe it was just seeing all the behind-the-scenes animator stuff on the Disney Channel that they used to show whenever they had a new movie out – when they have the concept art, and they have the people talking about that, and the process of making the film. Just seeing the animators talk about what they do, it was really fascinating to me.
MR: Do you remember long enough ago that they still used to show the old Walt Disney show on TV?
SL: Yes, I think. I just liked seeing the behind-the-scenes stuff, and I thought that it would be great if I could do that someday. At first I was afraid because I know it's tedious work. You know how some people go in thinking, "Oh, this is going to a party! This is going to be easy"? No, I knew it was going to be tedious going in, but surprisingly, I liked it.
I think that was partly because of my first year teacher, because he's Mr. Positive-Reinforcement. But that was actually a fantastic first year for me as far as academics, because he gave me the freedom to experiment and play around, and I felt invincible. I felt like I could draw anything, I felt like I could do anything and I was just on top of the world.
MR: Now your other teachers... second year you had...?
SL: I had Doug Crane. And that was good too, because he helped tone me down a little bit. I learned how to be on model better, and also his effects animation exercises were really useful. But at the same time, I did kind of fall into that trap where it's just like "key, key, now inbetweens"…
MR: It became more technical.
SL: It became much more technical and I did have to break out of a formula, and I feel that I eventually did. But I broke out of that much much later – at Bunko, actually. When I worked on Sid, I was animating stick figures, and you don't have to pay much attention to getting stick figures on model, except for things like keeping count of the number of fingers you were putting on him, the number of hairs he has coming out of his head, things like that. Aside from that, you can just do whatever you want.
MR: It's also good to sort of get outside of your comfort level.
SL: Exactly, for example – I never really played around with smears before I worked on Sid, and then I started using them all the time. And I was playing with timing, I was playing with different movements, things I hadn’t really experimented with before because I was worrying about other things, and it was just a lot of fun. I felt like I was learning how to animate all over again.
MR: And you had Howard (Beckerman) third year...
SL: I did.
MR: And what did you get out of Howard's?
SL: I had to collaborate with my class on a film based on an idea that he pitched to us, and that was definitely a learning experience. Also, I was assigned to design and animate a horse. I was known for being the ‘animal specialist’ in the class by then.
MR: Once you animate a horse – a horse is different from any other animal.
SL: They’re difficult because they're-
MR: Rigid creatures?
SL: Yes, more so than dogs and cats, anyway. But they're fun at the same time. I did a cycle of the pony that I was really proud of, her prancing around in a circle. I did a lot of work I was proud of on that film in fact. Everyone worked hard and we were all happy with it in the end.
MR: And with each year, did you feel like you moved to a new level?
SL: Most definitely. Technical skill first and then more branching out to actual narrative, I suppose, Howard’s big on storytelling as you probably know. Also it was good to work with people I knew, and I learned a few things about how to work as a team.
MR: Where do you see yourself in five years?
SL: I'm not entirely sure where I'd like to go or where I'd like to be at this point. I mean, I know I want to be doing art, and I would love the freedom to be my own boss, but maybe in five years I’ll want stability instead of freedom, I don’t know. For now I would actually like to bounce around for a while. I'd like to work on a variety of projects, build up my portfolio and reel more, just spend a while developing my skills some more in the professional world. Maybe attempt to do motion graphics or 3D, even though I'm not hugely into that. The technical side of things is definitely something great to know and have in your skillset. I just feel like there’s a lot I still have to learn, and frankly, I’m excited.
