[Music]
hey everybody and welcome to school ISM interviews where we talk about art and
life as an artist I'm your host Bobby Chu and I also have my co-host down here
the wonderful Matt Johnson if you're an artist or interested in movies gaming
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work and think have you ever felt too inexperienced they're too young to be
taking art seriously I know I did in the beginning of my career whether you're 88
or 18 knowledge is the door to opportunity for everyone which actually
brings me to our guest today because at the age of eighteen eighteen Brian
Kissinger was the youngest artist to ever be hired at Walt Disney Animation
Studios over 20 years later Brian has worked on such films as Tarzan Moana big
hero 6 ooh topia and many more in this interview he accounts his artistic
journey and the lessons he's learned along the way this one is a good one
so please enjoy you're really never too young to get serious about it you know
it should I think at the beginning start out as being something that's fun for
you it should be a passion that you really enjoy the drawing process that's
sort of thing but I always say it's not the school it's the student you know you
you can kind of determine your trajectory by the amount of work you put
into it and I was fortunate enough to have really good art teachers I during
high school and junior high even that saw a spark and a passion in me and
were able to point me in the right direction which ultimately ended up in
me getting hired when I did at Disney so I always when I meet students now you
know and sometimes I say well you know four years down the line or eventually I
want to do this and that and I always challenge them to say well why put it
off and you know set maybe shorter term goals for yourself knowing that you'll
have to work harder to achieve it but you know get in there and start is net
heart while you were actually we're talking about this a little bit earlier
you were probably the youngest artist right the youngest artist to ever be
hired at Disney when you started you were only 18 years old can you kind of
talk about that story a little bit yeah sure yeah it's kind of nuts I just when
it came time to apply to art schools right so it's my senior year of high
school and I start putting my portfolio together and I submitted to the
different art schools you know and in addition to that I decided to submit it
to Disney as well just to get feedback so that I knew what to work on
specifically because I knew at that time another thing that helped was I knew
specifically I wanted to be a layout artist and I think that that was really
helpful and I always tell students that as well like to really take a moment and
think about what discipline you want to do in animation and tailor your
portfolio to that so many times you know people say oh I'll do anything I just
want to get you know in the animation studio and that's usually not a good
while it's a good attitude it's not a good tactic because you want to make
sure that you're presenting a very focused portfolio so I knew I wanted to
be in layout so my portfolio reflected a lot of what was needed in the layout
portfolio but I got a call from Disney not long
after I sent it maybe a month or a few weeks after I sent it and they said
we'll we'll take you now we'd like to offer you a job at Disney studio and I
was stunned I didn't know what to say and in fact the first thing I did say
was well I have to finish Spanish class first and ever there was a long pause on
their end and I heard some paper shuffling and they said well how old are
you and I said 117 and they said well when you turn 18 and I said in May and
they said okay well you'll start in August and I hung up the phone and I
called my mom and said I think I need to look for an apartment in Burbank and
that was 21 years ago what did she say oh she flipped out she was so proud she
was so happy you know my mom and dad are both very supportive as they were music
teachers at the time so they were artists as well there are musicians but
they were you know always impressed upon music you know you can do art as a
living just as long as you make sure you can make a living at it you know they
were you know which their rate was you know they're musicians but they became
band teachers so they were still able to do their art but have a career and raise
a family that sort of thing and so for them for the longest time
they're like you know we know you want to do animation but about be an
architect you know architects make money you could
do well and do arts and it wasn't until the 90s when Beauty and the Beast
Aladdin all these blanking all these movies start making money that they were
like okay you can you can go work in animation so them being teachers you
know like I'm sure education means a lot to them yeah
was there any kind of difficulty there I know in fact they were
we supportive I you know I get what you're saying and we talked about it and
their their philosophy was you know this is an amazing opportunity this is what
you want to ultimately do this will be a learning experience for you and if it
doesn't work out you can always go to college later so they were progressive
in that yeah it's you know and I'm very grateful to them because they were also
the ones that were drawing me to her driving me to drawing classes you know
at night because the only figure drawing class that would let kids under 18 was
at the Union up in Burbank and I was living in Orange County at the time so
they were driving me all over town so I could get the until I got a car get all
the education I needed so they were behind me so I try to do that for my
kids now Wow so you're not even 40 yet and you've done over 20 years in the
industry that's incredible Alex yeah it's kind of crazy people ask
you know they're like oh you miss out on the college experience that sort of
thing and I feel you know every day here I've been learning something so it's 20
years of education and we live it up here too so I think I'm good I
definitely think you're good we're pretty much the same age and I remember
seeing Tarzan when I was in college and just being blown away by the I I forget
what the kind of term was for like traveling through the paintings what
legends in canvas yes thank you I was so blown away I was just thinking oh one
day I hope that I will work on this and you were already working on it that's
incredible yeah look and did you work from the Paris a satellite studio or did
you work from LA on toilet play I was I was at the bidding studio
yeah so for Tarzan it was at the Burbank studio we had our layout team in Paris
that we would work with as well as when sequence was done in Florida at the
Florida studio but primarily all the work was auto layout work was done in in
LA which was another amazing experience you know to be so young but come into
this kind of international production in fact one of my first scenes I had the
layout was going to be for Glen Keane to animate and you know part of the layout
artist responsibility back into and run days where you would rough out the
perspective in the background and then you would lay down on a sheet of vellum
and indicate where the rough areas where the characters were going to perform and
animate so I remember freaking out that I was drawing telling Glen Keane where
to draw his characters and yeah it was one of those pinch-me moments of like
okay I guess this is real life now or get the bucket moment you know yeah
exactly yeah it was a lot of emotions so how did you get the confidence in that
moment I mean I think a lot of us if we do get an opportunity like that it can
leave us feeling a little nervous or a little anxious so how did you get
through that yeah that's a great question I think it was just kind of you
know plowing through it putting that mark on the page you know there's so
much intimidation that comes with a blank page that it doesn't matter who
you're drawing it for it because it's enough of a roadblock in itself so I
always like to just and I had a teacher to this too you know as soon as you get
start marking on the page itself just a little scribble or doodle it kind
of shatters through that walls and with layout you know it's all about teamwork
and that's why I love animation to not collaboration so there was a shot before
me that was already done and a shot after the one I was working on that was
already done so I knew I could lean on that work that had already been done
and when they brought me in they had paired me up with a mentor which was
really great so I'm a big big fan of mentorship and then it myself now a
couple times here at the studio um and you know that's when I could lean on
them and so they're you know even students that don't have a job right now
I'm really big into peer review and finding a few friends that you really
trust and that you can show your rough FISC of drawings to that speak that same
language and and can help guide you because that's it you know you can be a
tremendous artist but if you're not a team player you're not going to be a
good fit for animation I've seen that people come and go they're like oh my
gosh they draw so good but you know you wouldn't have lunch with the person
they're you know is they they don't work well I don't share ideas yeah so that
was you know a big way for me to break through in those moments is just just
have my network that I could rely upon now when you think back 21 years ago you
think to that mentorship when you first started there must be some lessons that
stuck out more than others that you really need it or you really felt
helpful for you at such an early age can you remember any of those that kind of
clicked with you yeah you know it's funny a big one that stuck with me was
you know staying positive and it's weird it's not a it's not necessarily a
drawing lesson or anything like that but it was a great added lesson and um you
know it's not about being blindly optimistic but you know so much of
working on these films animation is such a small industry that everyone kind of
knows each other and this advice came from someone who had actually done a lot
of live-action film work and he always told me he was like you know you want to
be the you want to be the guy on set that everyone remembers as being the guy
that was easy to hang around because we're spending these long hours
together and that sort of thing so it was always really helpful for for me to
just kind of be present and be there for the team and you know that I and I
constantly kind of nice I get that kind of feedback like oh we love having you
in disguising because you know you're a positive influence and you don't you
know you recognize that they might be an issue but you come with a solution
instead of just being an ace hair so that's something that you know 21 years
ago working on a hand-drawn feature still applies to working now on CG
features so it's it's those kind of ideas that that stuck with me mmm yeah
interesting little caveat was I was talking with Matt Winston who is Stan
Winston's son and he was saying when he was working for James Cameron on
Terminator and stuff like that whenever there would be in awkward situations
where it gets a little heated and things like that he would be the first one to
make the joke you know and kind of break the ice you see everything back together
I did want to get back to it's a little bit of the how you got hired to Disney
of course it's a great portfolio but you also talked about a sketchbook that you
had that you did in Ireland or something like that right you're mentioning that
you also hand it in not just your portfolio but a sketchbook
yeah yeah it was a because I was going for layout which at that time in the
handgun news was mostly about environmental drawing and perspective
and that sort of thing I happened to go the year before I went on a high school
trip to Ireland and my teacher my animation teacher told me he's like
you're not going to be going there very often you should bring a sketchbook with
you and you know they've got castles over there and really cool stuff you
know if you wanna be in layout you should learn to draw that sort of thing
so I got a sketchbook and I challenged myself to
fill the whole thing by the end of the week long trip
and I was going because my mom was a band director at the high school and she
was taking the high school band over there but because I wasn't in band I had
a lot of free time where I wasn't marching in the parade or going to
rehearsals and that sort of thing so I would just kind of wander around with my
sketchbook and draw and so I submitted that whole sale with my portfolios so
this was back in the days where you had to physically put together a portfolio
at Kinkos you know and send a physical object and
so in the envelope I slipped the original sketchbook as well and warts
and all you know there were a lot of bad drawings in there too but when I came
into the studio the layout supervisor dancing Pierre at the time he told me
that that was the reason I was hired was because of the sketchbook and not
necessarily the portfolio because what the sketchbook showed was a a chode
skill and promise as an artist that it showed a passion and and hunger to kind
of observe and and illustrate the world around me and that's something that I
think is really good for students to realize is that you know the best part
folios aren't necessarily the polished ones but it's the ones that really show
the thought process and the point of view of the artists that we really like
to see and because you know it's got to be something that when you come on a
show you know realistically you're not going to come on and dictate all the
artistic decisions of the project so you know we want to see what happens when we
give you a world and then it's up to you to plus it and that's something that we
can see when you see observational sketching of the world around you can
see how people I turn things into shapes and that sort
of thing so that was I was really glad that I did that I always encourage
people to make their portfolios be more about the Finnish parrot more about that
the rest inking stuff as opposed to the polish wood in that kind of one of the
first question someone asked drew asked that question he'd like to work at the
story artist and he wants to know about things to put in his portfolio since
he's starting school next month so you did kind of already go over that do you
have any are like specific to being a story artist do you have any advice for
him yeah yeah that's yeah that's great true I think what I would say is you
know get a lot of that observational sketching in there you know and start to
really you know illustrate ideas and emotions of this these scenes you see
around you think of it as New Yorker cartoons less about you know static
figure drawing you know life drawing nude modeling that stuff is great too
for Anatomy and building up characters but we want to see you know your sense
of storytelling in one sketch and it doesn't even have to be in the rectangle
kind of cinematic frame it can be you know a a portrait mode or something like
that they're just these these images that really tell a story in one frame
you look at some of the you know comic strips like the far side how they're
able to tell a story in one image and then you know from their transition into
more sequence kind of work where you're telling a story visually through shots
and more traditionally cinematically but yeah for story I mean look at like some
athlete Leo Matsuda look at their blog and he's a stray artists Easter worker
he directed the interworking short which was in front of Milan egg or was it
Zootopia but you know he's someone like you look
at his drawing and there's so much character and charm in that that that's
the sort of thing we want to see in addition to sequential art that goes
from you know you know up shot to down shot to wide shot you know we want to be
able to see that you can speak the cinematic language but on top of that it
really is about character and emotion so if you have a lot of drawings in there
that show that sort of things and you'll be good to go
I had a question about just you know storyboarding you know of course
animated films tend to have a lot of humor some people they're just naturally
funny but for the people that aren't naturally funny do you think that they
can become funny is there a method or formula you know no I'm sorry there's a
little I guess that you could work yeah I think funny can be learned but it's
hard I think being funny is harder than being
dramatic funny is harder than doing a you know epic battle scene funny is hard
because it's so subjective and what's funny to one person will be funny to
another but you know it's something that's important to entertainment and
it's something that I really enjoy I enjoy doing the humorous side of things
as opposed to the more dramatic or the more action-oriented stuff but it just
comes again from immersing yourself in the material you know I grew up with the
Simpsons you know I remember when they first
aired and if we're watching them ever since then they certainly shaped my
sense of humor also money Python big fan of them you know so it's it's
really you know you can learn this stuff but you have to like go to the source
and really absorb it and start to learn how things are structured and you know
the timing of things there's a great show on CNN right now
called the history of comedy and I really recommend you guys watching it
because they break down all the different aspects of comedy into each
separate episodes and they talk about it everything from what is good parody to
what is good sight gags a great thing my friend Nancy Cruz she's another story
artists care and she actually comes from The Simpsons he was a director of the
Simpson but she always mentioned that silent movies are great we used to watch
for storyboarding for beginning scary blade artists because it is all visual
storytelling sometimes they do cheat with dialogue cards but if you watch old
silent movies you really get a sense of the shorthand for how to make a gag work
or how to make something read because clarity is one of the biggest things in
storyboarding because even though we picked our sequences to the directors
and the English sorry artists at the end of the day it does have to stand on its
own when we're screening it to the to the company so yeah that kind of going
back and looking at influences and older films certainly helps that and you also
said that you started off in layout what was there something that was kind of
like a catalyst that made you interested in story into into story yeah yeah so
there's interesting because I've been in layout for about 12 years and I had
moved well the studio had moved from doing 2d layout to 3d layout so that was
kind of a big change for us and a big change for layout because it went same
department that was really about draftsmanship and drawing in addition to
all these film principles and then it moved into pure almost pure live-action
cinematography because it was all of a sudden we were working
in true 3d space and we can move a camera around like never before so it's
almost like going back to school again I had to learn you know when do you move a
camera that sort of thing which is all great and I loved it because you know we
were really doing some exciting stuff that was like unbolt the opening
sequence of bolt where he's in his action-packed TV show I did a lot of the
layout in that sequence and that was awesome you know like helicopters and
ninjas on bicycles and it felt like I was making a Transformers movie you know
so it was great to stretch those muscles but ultimately I did miss going to join
and a notification came up on our internal website where they said we are
on accepting applications for a training in story and internal candidate and my
office met kind said oh you should you should go for that because you know
you'd like to god you're really good with
historians and and that sort of thing and that was one of those things like
yeah maybe I should so I went for that position and ultimately got it but it
was interesting because like I said after 12 years I was going back to being
a trainee again which this time I wasn't 18 and I had a wife and two babies at
home so it was a not only training and story but a training in time management
yeah and you were mentioning also that you it is a kind of like a Disney
marriage you guys met in Disney yes you know right and yeah during the layout
Department so that was that worked out well and that was nice because though
she's not working there now my wife Jenny and I can relate not only as as a
married couple but as artists and artists at Disney so even though when I
come home she knows the shorthand so you know oh I gotta work late because
I got a picture tomorrow or you know that sort of thing so it was really nice
to lat to me here there and get to I continue
that relationship together wonderful so how did it how did it feel
when you decided when you took that leap to learn something
after being so used to what you're doing already for so long like I think a lot
of people find it intimidating to say okay now 20 years later I'm going to
step back into the student mode how did you feel about that yeah it was hard it
was harder than I even thought it I was really nervous about it and I knew it
was going to be tough but it was tougher than I than I thought it would be and
telling them for that I took inspiration from my dad because um though he was a
band director I remember at one point maybe about ten or twelve years after he
had been in a band teacher he came home one day and said you know what I'm tired
of being a band director I think I want to be a lawyer now help like what and
what's interesting is I think he was about my age when he decided to make
that change and how he went to law school and my mom
continued to be the band director at her school and he went to law school for you
know extended period of time had to pass the bar exam and he did and ultimately
you know he's still a lawyer now you know and actually he's been a lawyer
longer than he was of an teachers so um you know I took inspiration like well if
he could do it maybe I can too but the thing about story is like I said before
it is it is the first stop on the roller coaster and you know there's there's
nothing it's a lot easier to take something someone else's said and make
it better and that's not to say they're not good but it's always easier to in
improv you know add on to an idea but with story it was that blank page
and it was really them looking at you and you know you're basically becoming a
mini director you have to juggle acting and lighting and you know pacing and all
this stuff in writing in some cases into your scene so it was it was quite a
challenge Wow and um you were mentioning that you also have two kids you have a
wife and two kids one of the big common questions I get asked is how do you
manage your time you don't just do story as well sometimes you do comic books I
don't know how regular that is but maybe you could speak about how you manage
your time yeah no it's I get that a lot actually
because yeah I do do comics last year I did a room actually year before last I
did a five series rent of Greeks and Marvel which was an amazing opportunity
and then now I moved more into just kind of doing cover art because ya doing
storyboarding and comic art at the same time I found my limit I thought like
that was too much but what helps me with time management is to really come up
with a almost an assembly-line way of looking at my art because I do my own
books as well and even my you know side Instagram art I always try to come up
with my own pipeline for doing it so that I know that if I only have 15
minutes to work on something I'm maximizing the amount of work that I'm
doing in that 15 minutes so for instance if I'm doing a comic I'll make sure to
rough it all out first and know that okay for this week working on rough
drawing and that's it and then making sure that those rough drawings are as
solid and as clear as possible and all the information and then that I need so
that next week is all about inking and inking you know is a little easier to
drop in I do mostly my thinking in the roughing outfit
so inking is nice because then I can take my Briscoe board wherever I go and
if I have 15 minutes okay I mean do these panels do this here and get that
done and so on and so forth so I always really try to have multiple things going
on at a time so that depending on you know like Oh tonight I'm really not
feeling it but I need to get some work done well maybe I'll just do inking then
tonight all right knowing that I'll do if the rusts are
done or I can do Russell another thing if I'm feeling a little more motivated
so it really is just creating a schedule for yourself and and plugging in and
knowing that okay I've got two hours a night where I can work because my wife
and kids will be asleep luckily I'm more of a night owl and my wife is an early
riser so it's nice I take the kids at night and she takes them in the morning
so we work that out but yeah definitely having a plan and a routine and a rhythm
helps you know it's like okay I'm just going to do a little bit each day and
that will eventually add up to a finished product you know I'm not sure
if I heard it correctly but I think maybe we do somewhat the same thing
we're in your little time chunks of different kinds of work you have options
of what you want to work on is that right like if you are not in the mood of
thinking you might go to inking yes yes that's exactly right yeah it's kind of
like there's certain things or even coloring right like you know it depends
on what the mood is but by having different projects to work on you can
apply yourself in different ways so it works out worked out really well and it
was great to with with the comic because since Marvel did hire me to do the
pencils inks and colors for all Jenny was able to do all my flash colors
for me so while I was at work and she was home with the kids she was on the
Cintiq flatting all the pages for me so that at night I could come home and do
my shadows highlights and gradient passes so it was a it was certainly a
family business there that's awesome right on - how old are your kids now
they're 9 and 11 so they're really really fun age they're both like to draw
as well which is really fun so one of our one of our fun - guns right now is
we go into the little studio in the backyard and we throw on The Simpsons on
the FX app and we just draw together with Simpsons on in the background and
it's really it's really nice for me although they always catch me they want
me to go out and draw with them and draw like just random stuff like they are and
they can always go and trying to sneak in like Commission work oh you know work
work and they're like no daddy draw for fun and I think that's really good
advice to hear every now and then is to bigger draw for them now I want to go to
one of the questions because we had a whole bunch of questions so Gloria and
Rose asked what can you advise someone who wants to be an illustrator or
concept artist for animation and books but has never been to art school and and
now it's self-study and slowly doing freelance work and also happens to be in
a third world country other than moving to another country and going back to
school what kinds of opportunities should one be making or looking for how
would you feel about it it's a great question it's certainly
easier now than it used to be right the Internet provides us pretty amazing
opportunities like this for example me being able to talk to you guys is
amazing and that we can take questions from
other artists is really great and so I always tell people that lean into that
and just you know go to youtube if you can get on and look at the amazing art
tutorials that are on there you know deviantART has a lot of great
you know step-by-step images that people pose kind of like how to draw hands and
at agape Pinterest is another great resource that I found where people are
really starting to create boards on Pinterest that are all about you know
how to draw fabric how to draw you know all these they break it down you know
and and great examples of good character art so even if you can't afford a you
know an art book you can go online go to the library and check them out you know
these great animation art books also I encourage people Phyllis traitors who
wanted to get it into animation to not just study animation but to study fine
arts and art history and to be inspired by the whole breadth of art you know you
look at when Disney started his studio he went to the fine arts schools to hire
his artists so they were all very strong traditional artists that then learned
how to do animation and applied what they knew as artists into the animation
field I think the danger now of when you just you know follow animation tumblers
that you know you start to cycle in and you can see how the art kind of becomes
sterile and repetitious and it's harder to break through so I encourage people
if they're looking to kind of break through the white noise of art on the
internet and get themselves known the best way to do that is to look to the
Past and get inspired by things outside of our little bubble
of you know white eyes and small noses and profile shots and that sort of thing
and to look at you know classic illustrators and let that inform you
inspire you or even beyond that even outside of art right like if you're
learning about breakdancing and you really get into it it will run out in
your art right no I mean Jake Parker that great video of his where he talks
about you know getting inspired and remembering to save time to you know
play video games and you know go out and go dancing or you know go go to the
Opera and just take it all in because that's all going to sink in and really
help you in ways that you won't know until you're actually facing that scary
blank page and could be like oh well this what I grade your app is doing
breakdancing you know how would that look so yeah that that's where these
original ideas come from in a friend of mine the black frog Igor Alban and shell
VA he does live action he's super knowledgeable about antiques because his
parents are or were antique dealers I loved creatures some I was kind of
interested in how different animals live and do their thing is there something
that you have a really big interest about that's outside of art oh that's
great um I would say yeah probably music just because of what I grew up with you
know and I actually don't play an instrument I'm the one member of my
family that doesn't the black sheep but it's certainly ingrained in me and um
it's what inspires me and certainly as we work on musicals here at the studio a
lot more it's a resource that it's another kind of language that I speak
that I can when we're working with composers
offer up suggestions or you know collaborate with them a little closer
because I have that connection okay I guess I have a here for it and then I
guess the other thing that's I'm very knowledgeable about is Star Wars so at
any time as you can see in the background yeah no surprise there but
yeah that's surprising they come in handy more than you would realize but
yeah I'd say between music and Star Wars losing my my other things I'm
enthusiastic about how did it come in handy can you give an example yeah it's
so funny like just the story structure you know they talk about the hero's
journey and kind of those big themes and so there's often times where you know
we'll be talking about a story point and you know the room is kind of searching
for how it should play out and you know I can be like oh well it's like when
obi-wan appears as the mentor to Luke on Dagobah after Yoda's died and all of a
sudden something like that will gel the entire room and they'll be like oh yeah
now we see it you know so that's sort of thing so one of those things a lot of
productions we got a little out of hand and we had to have a a jar in the room
that anytime someone's made a Star Wars reference you had to put a dollar in the
jar so we do have to kind of mediate it a little bit but it's that kind of
classic storytelling that those original movies did so well that and it's what
inspired us all to get into movies and so it's it's another kind of common form
of story myth that we can conjure when we're working on our movies I remember
when that the remote control BBA came out a lot of Disney artists got bb-8
where you wanted them and did you erase them with everybody else that kind of
thing oh yeah yeah definitely in fact I think one of the biggest things I was
excited about the acquired leukocyte I was gonna be at
leas mate Disney discount on Star Wars merchandise so it worked out well as you
can see yeah yeah you take an advantage awesome I call it a recycling my
paycheck yeah and say check that funny now let's see what's that oh yeah go
ahead I was just going to see a couple other viewer questions you want to do
that yeah sure alicia has a really good one here
Alicia asked if tomorrow your kids told you they wanted to be professional
artists what would you recommend to them to achieve that goal as a father and a
professional and also what do you think is more important for an artist passion
Constance adorability deplane you broke up a little bit it is this is relating
to my kids and what advice I give them but I miss the first place if they
wanted to be professional artists right yeah so that's really tricky because
certainly I now feel the role that my parents were in when I said the same
thing right and you want them to succeed it's also challenging because they're
growing up in an age where likes and shares are valued almost sometimes more
than actual merit and that sort of thing so I'm trying to impress upon them the
difference between the two sometimes you know I've got a nice following on social
media and the kids see that and they equate that with the success and I have
to say well remember I've also been doing this for a long time you know
there's really no such thing as an overnight sensation it's just one night
that you discovered them that person but that person has been working forever to
get to that but right now I'm trying to keep them in a space you know being that
they're at 9 and 11 of just making the art accessible to
them but not really shaping their opinion of it yet that was something my
wife and I talked about in that we wanted you know certainly we wanted them
to be artistic and have the ability to express themselves but we were just
going to make the tools available to them like when we go out and draw on in
the studio I there's a stack of typing paper and pens you know it's not you
know and they see the photoshopping and they've had some chance to work in the
photo shop and my daughter's pretty savvy at it but in a way we kind of took
that away too just so that they could stick with the fundamentals of you know
being a strong artist without flying on Gaussian blurs or you know halo filters
and that sort of thing but we do say you know you got to work at this I kind of
echo what my teacher told me when I was in high school working at this stuff
he's like you know you may be working really hard and working through the
weekend and missing the party that everyone else at school is going through
that weekend but if you work now the rest of your life will be a party and so
I kind of tell that to my kids like look I know you come into work as the studio
dad's work and you get free cereal at the cereal bar and I have all the toys
on my shelves but if you work really hard now then that will pay off later so
that's kind of the tactic we've been taking is you know you can do your dream
job you can get out there that you got to work at it so that's kind of the
long-winded way of saying I don't know and I hope it works out we'll do another
one of these in ten years and see where they're at but hopefully I think that's
good advice for all of us for real so good you were saying miss out on parties
I'm sure you've missed a lot of college parties you know but you made up for it
with probably a lot of rap parties do you remember your first rap party and
what was at like that was that was and it was
insane because it was actually for Hercules because we were working on
Tarzan right while Hercules was finishing up so
Hercules was the first rap party and running John the directors of those
moves with that movie and subsequent movies but they know how it's fairly
good at party and I mean it had everything from you know tables and
tables of food to like live people painted as marble being human statues
for the Grecian theme and yeah I mean Jennifer Aniston was there you know it
was crazy it was a big deal and I had taken my high school friend as my
plus-one and we were tripping out and then we learned about swag bags that was
the first time I had looked about swag bag and back then it was like you know a
sweater from the movie the soundtrack you know and everyone got in the book
and it was just insane so it was it was pretty nuts and a good time
and well because I was 18 I couldn't drink so it was a very sober wrap party
but that was pretty entertaining seeing all my co-workers three sheets to the
wind when I got to meet a guy that's amazing that's super cool when you think
about the beginning when you first started as a teenager and of course
everybody volved over the time how are you different now than you were back
then I think I've learned when to apply the gas pedal I think when you're a
young artist and you're fresh in the business you really want to please and
you think that the way of pleasing is to you know deliver work as hard as you can
the all-nighters because you're also trying to find yourself as an artist and
that was the thing I noticed just in being a trainee as an 18 year old versus
a trainee as a 32 year old uh was that I was really intimidated because I was
going to be a trainee alongside college students who could do the all naívi I
couldn't do all-nighters Engler because I had to change diapers of me you know
and and that sort of thing so but what I learned was kind of the ebb and flow of
credit section and kind of you know all right where are we in the grand scheme
of this movie's lifespan are we early on well okay then things are a little more
fluid they're going to change so I'm not going to be as Precious about my
drawings because all the paint is wet and the ideas are going to morph and
evolve versus where at the end of production so I will have to work a
little more overtime because you know we're going to be turning around these
changes quicker when I was younger it was you know for a 12-hour days every
day just so I could impress and and you know make a good out look at myself but
then I realized no I can get a little more confident I know how my speed is
going to be so that's not to say you know I still have self-doubt right like
that's always an artistic trait and I think it's partially why we do our and
why I still enjoy drawing is because it's like a puzzle you know you're
always trying to figure out what's the best way to solve this artistic problem
whether it's in story or layout you know how how are we going to tell this story
cinematically or in visual development you know it's all puzzle pieces and and
the thinking behind it is actually more enjoyable for me than the actual drawing
execution part of it so that's I think how I've changed
just from when I started to now and you are also saying that you did lay out
even longer than you've done story board you know so far it's almost the same do
you feel like there's anything else on the horizon like transitioning from a
storyboard artist to may be director writer do you have any other goals like
that yeah definitely directing I got to direct a short over the summer for the
first time that was we had a group of interns come in and every year that our
interns come into animation that they have eight weeks to produce a short and
this year I got to work with them on that and it's always been a goal of mine
and developing different projects that this was official and I got to see
through completion and it was great because we had one of the interns
actually be a co-director so we worked together and learn together and it was
great and it's something that I think again going back to my parents being
bender fan directors and been leaders is I appreciate art that everyone can make
together it's why I went into animation as opposed to fine arts because you know
an orchestra will always make a better tennis soloist will and so I really
enjoy as a director and as a storyteller creating these awesome sand boxes that
artists could come in and play and create with and so that's certainly
something I would love to you know it's also a way to use all the other
disciplines like the illustration that I do and the color sense and music I love
all the components so to be able to be at the forefront and help some say into
what all those components could be is certainly at the next Coltrane
and being at Disney I could just imagine being at Disney for 21 years going
starting from when you're a teenager till now all the people that you've
encountered all the people that you've rubbed shoulders with if you could thank
somebody from your past that has taught you something really valuable or really
helped you in some way who would that be and what did they do
wow that's great that's um that would be a long list but I can think of I can
think of three off the bat and you know and this is outside of my parents I
think enough but you can never think them enough but certainly my first art
teacher in high school cause she was on that recognized the potential my
animation teacher is named dave master and he created this amazing animation
program and he is the reason why i was able to be hired at 18 because he didn't
just teach us how to be good artist he taught us how to be great professional
he recognized that animation is a combination of art and business and how
to do both of those things his class was an ROP program a regional application
program so there were people from high school H to grown up a you know in their
40s working there so he had structured if they going to where I was already
collaborating with artists you know 20 years older than me so that when I dig
into the studio I have a maturity level that I could deal with older people and
vice versa and that sort of thing yeah old people really intimidated me when I
was starting off just a little yeah I totally know what you're talking about
right yeah I mean you feel like you're just the kid Knight had blue hair at the
time like I was just some punk and here's all these professions you
know I mean there's you know blinking on one side err Goldberg on the other mark
and you know it's like I got exciting with these people but Dave taught us how
to manage that and how to you know do what's expected of you and that sort of
thing and then they think yeah again dancing Pierre who was the person who
hired me my original layout supervisor because he always challenged me but was
there for me and the stuff he taught me then didn't just apply to layout it
applied to everything and it was really a way for me to be so fluid here in the
studio you know fact I could go from layout to visual development to story
was because of some of those core principles that I learned as a trainee
in the way of it awesome awesome I've learned a lot from this interview
it's fantastic thank you so much on behalf of Matt and I you know thank you
so much for your time I do want to let everybody know that Matt and I will be
back next week we're going to do a midnight East Coast stream with the one
and only Andy Park from Marvel Studios game so thank you again Brian I hope our
paths will cross sometime in the future and yeah any last words for the
interview huh yeah no I appreciate this opportunity and it really means a lot
again because I've worked at the studio for a while you know I've gotten to work
on these amazing projects and I love just sharing the knowledge that we
shared with me I feel you know coming from a family of educators I really
enjoy sharing that knowledge and I feel that by sharing it you get to learn it
again so I really just appreciate the opportunity
for you guys having me on and that you know people should feel free I'm I'm
definitely around on social media so if you guys have questions is ways to find
me and yeah thank you school is on subscriptions you can pay a monthly fee
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