My thesis this semester is to take on a chunk of the Ars Goetia demons. I wanted to portray Baal in a distinctly less goaty fashion, and combine the bull and cat attributes he sometimes takes on. And, fun-sized Raum for a friend.
They’re all phenomenal. If you have five minutes, please watch each of them. Warning: some hit HARD.
Mary Blair (1911-1978)
Worked for Ub Iwerks, MGM, and eventually Disney. Known for creating incredibly vibrant watercolors, which clashed with the studio aesthetic at the time. Disney eventually let her loose, and her aesthetic can be strongly seen in Cinderella, Peter Pan, and especially Alice in Wonderland.
Evelyn Lambart (1914-1999)
Hearing-impaired Canadian animator who worked with Norman McLaren on several pieces that the Canadian government would later declare masterworks. She directed her own films, making her one of the first women in animation to take the director’s chair. She was known for scratching up film stock to create “jazz” like patterns, the sort of thing you’d later see in Fantasia,Donald in Mathmagic Land, and the like.
Lotte Reininger (1899-1981)
German director who created the technique of silhouette animation, preceding Disney by 10 years. Started out making titles for movies and moved on to make her own animated feature, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, in 1926!As for the rest of her career, well - watch the short.
Claire Parker (1906-1981)
Created the “pinscreen” animation technique, where 240,000 tiny metal rods were manually manipulated in and out of a board in order to create an animation – think tweaking pixels by hand. She and she alone owned the patent on it.
Alison de Vere (1927-2001)
One of the first women to work in British animation, and was design director for The Yellow Submarine. She went on to create many animated shorts at a commercial studio, winning prizes for virtually almost every single one of them. She is often credited as Britain’s first female animation auteur.
Anonymous: Thanks for all of the advice thus far! What does a script writer/ screenwriter's portfolio look like? Can you give a a few tips and examples? I have a few spec scripts written, but I am not sure how to organize it online or in print.
Sorry it’s taken me so long to answer this question, anon.
This is a tough one because writers don’t really have portfolios. Writers have samples/specs and a “body of work”. It’s easy to look at an artists’ drawing and go, “Hmm. I like that.” With a writer, you have to invest time – something busy folks who hire people don’t have a lot of.
Spec scripts are good to have. You can write an original idea (probably the best course of action) or write an episode of an existing show (something that’s currently on the air and hopefully new, but will run for a few years). I wrote a Modern Family and a Regular Show spec before getting hired on Harvey Beaks. You want to make sure these scripts are formatted properly, so look up and read a bunch of scripts to make sure yours looks “official”.
This is a great resource for finding scripts and so is this.
The next thing you can do is make your writing easily available. We’ve already established people don’t have a lot of time to read your script, so don’t make it difficult for them to find it. Put it online! Post a link or an excerpt on Tumblr. Have it available for when someone finally asks to read a sample from you. But how do you get someone to ask you for a writing sample?
Networking! Go out and meet people. Email people you don’t know, but whom you admire. Meet as many people doing what you want to do and get their advice. Don’t force your samples on them (again, they may not have time), but let them know that you exist. The more people who know you, the higher probability of you getting hired. Numbers.
Lastly, keep writing. You just finished writing a spec or sample? Congrats! Get started on another.
Brad Bird told The McKinsey Quarterly in 2008, “The Incredibles was everything that computer-generated animation had trouble doing. It had human characters. It had hair. It had fire. It had a massive number of sets. The technical team took one look and thought, ‘This will take ten years and cost $500 million. How are we possibly going to do this?’
“So I said, ‘Give us the black sheep. I want artists who are frustrated. I want ones who have another way of doing things that nobody’s listening to. Give us all the guys who are probably headed out the door’. A lot of them were malcontents because they saw different ways of doing things, but there was little opportunity to try them, since the established way was working very, very well.
“We gave the black sheep a chance to prove their theories, and we changed the way a number of things are done here (at Pixar). For less money per minute than was spent on the previous film, Finding Nemo, we did a movie that had three times the number of sets and had everything that was hard to do. All this because the heads of Pixar gave us leave to try crazy ideas. [x]
Hey there! I’m a recently graduated illustration student, now working as a freelance illustrator. When I was graduating, I was a bit unsure of what life would be like after school, and while my professors attempted to prepare us for the inevitable, I feel like you can’t really know what it’ll be like unless you’ve had to go through it yourself! They can only tell me so many times that I need “a presentable website, business cards, blah blah blah”, and I’ll shrug it off and go “yeah yeah, I’ll do that eventually”.
Seriously. Listen to them. Because they’re not wrong.
I don’t know if I was just deluding myself (probably), but as other illustrators will tell you, working in this field takes an incredible amount of dedication, and they’re not kidding. As a newborn freelance illustrator, being kicked out of the crib that is college, you will be scared shitless. It’s almost guaranteed! And that’s okay! And if you’re not? Then hey dude congrats, you should be writing this; not me.
Anyways! I wanted to write this to go through my personal experience with being shoved into the wonderful world of freelance illustration. By no means is this a definitive guide of what to do!!! So of course, experiences may vary! But I figured, why not share some of the things I’ve picked up on? I wouldn’t be surprised if your professor has already told you this stuff (hopefully they have), but in case they haven’t, hopefully this’ll help a bit!
So my dad is in the kitchen business, my uncle is a banker, my grandfather was in the kitchen business, my other uncle is a plumber and does a lot of work for hotels, and his brother-in-law actually owns hotels.
Okay, so at different points and for different reasons, they’ve all had interactions with Donald Trump. And here’s something they all agree on: he will screw you over if he can. And you better believe he can with all the money he has. My dad and my grandpa almost did work for him, but after talking with other people who had worked for him in the past, they found out that he cheats his workers - ESPECIALLY contractors. He’ll pay them a fraction of what he promises and then, if they try to take him to court over it, he hires the best lawyers money can buy and then countersues!
Do not vote for this man. He is a professional liar, backstabber and a crook in all but name. He’s the last thing we need in any office, especially the Oval Office.
Your best drawings come when you’re relaxed and not worried about screwing up. There’s no reason to be tense - If you make a bad drawing, what happens? Nothin! You learn a little, get a bit better, and you can always try again and again and again. You don’t only have one chance to make a good drawing!
that I am lying in bed and I am having trouble falling asleep so I thought I would take out my super secret private journal and jot down a few notes about how I’m feeling right now at this very instant in time, not necessarily because anybody else will find it interesting (although who am I kidding, the very fact that I’m writing this here means I assume some people will find it interesting), but more because this feels like a moment in my life that I will want to REMEMBER and so I am putting it here in this internet place where I will be able to find it later, as a document of what THINGS ARE LIKE RIGHT NOW.
And this is just to say that I have been very busy these last several months writing and producing my own TV show, which still feels like a very weird thing to say and an even weirder thing to actually be a true fact that exists and is happening. Running my own show has been an incredible experience – I feel like Charlie after Willy Wonka gave him the chocolate factory. I got really lucky with an incredible staff of writers (not a dud in the bunch!) and an unbelievable cast of actors, and just the most wonderful collection of artists and animators and directors and editors and line producers and I’m sure I’m forgetting some people, but basically everyone’s been an incredible talent who has raised considerably the quality of the project, and I know that to say all that sounds like the bullshit that everyone has to say, but this is my own secret private livejournal, so you know I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true.
I remember around episode eight realizing that I could just start phoning it in and we’d still have an amazing show, just because of all the great work everyone else was doing, and I made the mistake of telling that to one of the execs at Netflix, who said, Well, uh, please don’t start phoning it in, and spoiler alert, I didn’t. (Netflix has been a phenomenal company to work for, by the way – so supportive and trusting and helpful – if you ever get the opportunity to make a show for Netflix, I highly recommend you take it. I remember around episode six realizing that this was the longest I’d ever worked on a show where the network still liked the show, and what an amazing feeling that was.)
And this is just to say that this part is kind of the Magic Hour, where everything is so full of wonderful potential – right now the show is on its way to being a thing that exists that could be perfect, as opposed to a few months from now when it will actually be an actual thing that exists that is not perfect. Right now I don’t have to worry about what other people think – I don’t need to obsess over all the things I screwed up that it’s too late to fix. Right now I can just enjoy the feeling of having something that belongs to just me and a handful of writers and producers and directors and artists and animators and editors and assistants and script coordinators and Netflix executives. Today I had a meeting with the people who are going to dub my show into Portuguese and Spanish and French and German so that people all over the world could watch the show that I created, and let me tell you that’s a trip. If you ever get the opportunity to sit in a room with people who are going to translate something you wrote into Portuguese and Spanish and German and French, I recommend you take it.
And this is just to say that one of the weird things about being so incredibly busy and then gradually not so busy is that things come back, the things you’re too busy for come back. A few weeks ago, after I finished writing the season finale, I had a dream about an ex-girlfriend, and I remembered, Oh right, THIS is a thing. I had been too busy for all my anxieties and neuroses and stupid stupid memories, like I actually just did not have the time or brain space to worry about all that shit, and then the second I got less busy it all came rushing back, which on the hand, Daaaaaaang, but on the other hand, Hello old friend.
Anyway, my apartment is a mess, and I still haven’t done my taxes, and I feel bad that I don’t make more of an effort to see my friends, especially now that I’m starting to have a little more free time, and on nights like this, when I can’t sleep, I just have this feeling that no matter what, even in spite of all my recent good fortune, I’m never going to just wake up one morning and find that I’m all of a sudden some other better me, the me I want to be that I’ve convinced so many other people to see me as, that instead I’m just kind of doomed to be the me that I am, and I work that feeling like a loose tooth.
But again, that’s just like default anxiety, that’s nothing to get all bent out of shape about, this is a very exciting time for me and I’m not a TOTAL idiot so I get that. I GET IT.
And I’m already worried about what people are going to think about this show (which doesn’t even premiere until August, which feels so far away but also like tomorrow) or that even if they like it, they won’t like it for the right reasons, or that a lot of people will like it, but the people that REALLY matter won’t, or most terrifying of all, that it succeeds beyond my wildest dreams and then I have to figure out what happens next. (MR. WONKA: “Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted…” CHARLIE BUCKET: “What happened?” MR. WONKA: “Yeah, exactly, right? I know, right? Totally….”)
But, oh my God, good problems to have, right? I saw my family last week and my grandfather told me the story of how his father got stabbed in the back by his best friend. They were working together for Polish independence, and then when they got it there was a big celebration which turned into a big pogrom, and because my great-grandfather was Jewish, his best friend stabbed him in the actual literal back, just because, like, that was a thing you did in those days in Eastern Europe. And my great-grandfather was like, Fuck THIS shit, I’m going to America. And because of that, he missed the Holocaust, and because of that all of us are alive.
So if that doesn’t put things in perspective, re: my dumb little Netflix series about a talking cartoon horse and all my dumb little neuroses, well then I don’t know what.
And this is just to say that I feel unbelievably lucky that I get to exist and be alive, as imperfect and embarrassing as I am, and that I get to tell my dumb little stories for Netflix, and write in my dumb little journal. These last six months have been amazing. These last thirty years have been amazing. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that my great-grandfather’s best friend in Poland stabbed him in the back.
halles-comet: Hi! Bojack came out right as I was starting college - it really helped me with a tough transition and makes me laugh still. You're a talented group of writers. Besides Bojack, who was the first character y'all came up with? Are any of them based off people you really know, or just archetypical Hollywood stock.
None of the characters are directly based on people I know, but Todd has gradually turned into a much stupider version of my good friend Kevin, who is always getting into ridiculous adventures and always has a good attitude no matter what. Kevin used to live in Pasadena in this gigantic mansion that was owned by a woman who I’m not even sure how he met. Anyway, one day the woman asked Kevin if he would drive her daughter to school, and he said sure because he figured since he was living there for free it was the least he could do. It turned out “school” was college on the east coast and Kevin had to drive her daughter across the country.
Diane is named after a girl I went to high school with. The last time I saw her was this big party the school threw our class after graduation. There was a table set up at the party with little cards and a pen. The idea was you could write a note to yourself as a high school graduate and then all the notes would be put in a box and redistributed at our ten-year reunion. (I don’t know if this actually happened or not, because I did not go to my high school’s ten-year reunion.) For some reason, Diane and I agreed to write notes to each other. I don’t remember what I wrote on her note — I’m sure it was something stupid (“What’s the future like? Are there flying cars?”) — but I remember her entire note to me. It said: “ARE YOU HAPPY?”
I remember being terrified to get that note in ten years, probably because I thought I already knew the answer, but I was also struck by how simple and straightforward the question was, while also being about so much. The moment really stuck with me, and I thought about it a lot while working on this show, so I named a character after her. The Diane of BoJack Horseman isn’t really based on the Diane I went to high school with in any real way, but it’s possible she might be based on that note.
Anonymous: rewatching s1 for like the 100th time--at what point does all the brilliant animal sight gag stuff (eg the croc wearing crocs) get added? is it like, we need to have a croc wearing crocs, where can we fit this in? or do you start out by needing someone to guard the food and say let's do a crocodile--hey, he should wear crocs? or some kind of total afterthought, or something else entirely? thanks. love the show, my favorite of all time.
Hello! I am going to answer your question, and then I am going to talk a little bit about GENDER IN COMEDY, because this is my tumblr and I can talk about whatever I want!
The vast vast vast majority of the animal jokes on BoJack Horseman (specifically the visual gags) come from our brilliant supervising director Mike Hollingsworth (stufffedanimals on tumblr) and his team. Occasionally, we’ll write a joke like that into the script but I can promise you that your top ten favorite animal gags of the season came from the art and animation side of the show, not the writers room. Usually it happens more the second way you described— to take a couple examples from season 2, “Okay, we need to fill this hospital waiting room, what kind of animals would be in here?” or “Okay, we need some extras for this studio backlot, what would they be wearing?”
I don’t know for sure, but I would guess that the croc wearing crocs came from our head designer lisahanawalt. Lisa is in charge of all the character designs, so most of the clothing you see on the show comes straight from her brain. (One of the many things I love about working with Lisa is that T-Shirts With Dumb Things Written On Them sits squarely in the center of our Venn diagram of interests.)
NOW, it struck me that you referred to the craft services crocodile as a “he” in your question. The character, voiced by kulap Vilaysack, is a woman.
It’s possible that that was just a typo on your part, but I’m going to assume that it wasn’t because it helps me pivot into something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last year, which is the tendency for comedy writers, and audiences, and writers, and audiences (because it’s a cycle) to view comedy characters as inherently male, unless there is something specifically female about them. (I would guess this is mostly a problem for male comedy writers and audiences, but not exclusively.)
Here’s an example from my own life: In one of the episodes from the first season (I think it’s 109), our storyboard artists drew a gag where a big droopy dog is standing on a street corner next to a businessman and the wind from a passing car blows the dog’s tongue and slobber onto the man’s face. When Lisa designed the characters she made both the dog and the businessperson women.
My first gut reaction to the designs was, “This feels weird.” I said to Lisa, “I feel like these characters should be guys.” She said, “Why?” I thought about it for a little bit, realized I didn’t have a good reason, and went back to her and said, “You’re right, let’s make them ladies.”
I am embarrassed to admit this conversation has happened between Lisa and me multiple times, about multiple characters.
The thinking comes from a place that the cleanest version of a joke has as few pieces as possible. For the dog joke, you have the thing where the tongue slobbers all over the businessperson, but if you also have a thing where both of them ladies, then that’s an additional thing and it muddies up the joke. The audience will think, “Why are those characters female? Is that part of the joke?” The underlying assumption there is that the default mode for any character is male, so to make the characters female is an additional detail on top of that. In case I’m not being a hundred percent clear, this thinking is stupid and wrong and self-perpetuating unless you actively work against it, and I’m proud to say I mostly don’t think this way anymore. Sometimes I still do, because this kind of stuff is baked into us by years of consuming media, but usually I’m able (with some help) to take a step back and not think this way, and one of the things I love about working with Lisa is she challenges these instincts in me.
I feel like I can confidently say that this isn’t just a me problem though— this kind of thing is everywhere. The LEGO Movie was my favorite movie of 2014, but it strikes me that the main character was male, because I feel like in our current culture, he HAD to be. The whole point of Emmett is that he’s the most boring average person in the world. It’s impossible to imagine a female character playing that role, because according to our pop culture, if she’s female she’s already SOMEthing, because she’s not male. The baseline is male. The average person is male.
You can see this all over but it’s weirdly prevalent in children’s entertainment. Why are almost all of the muppets dudes, except for Miss Piggy, who’s a parody of femininity? Why do all of the Despicable Me minions, genderless blobs, have boy names? I love the story (which I read on Wikipedia) that when the director of The Brave Little Toaster cast a woman to play the toaster, one of the guys on the crew was so mad he stormed out of the room. Because he thought the toaster was a man. A TOASTER. The character is a toaster.
I try to think about that when writing new characters— is there anything inherently gendered about what this character is doing? Or is it a toaster?
Hi, I'm Tim Lai! I'm a cartoonist living in Ontario, Canada. I like drawing cute and colourful things. This blog is a hub where you can find all of my Tumblr, DeviantArt, Flickr, Blogspot, and other posts in one place.
About My Work
I write and draw Lemon Inc., a comic about a seven-year-old who wants to be a business tycoon when he grows up. Until then, he runs a lemonade stand. You can read it at www.lemon-inc.com.
I have done some professional web and graphic design work, including designing the website for the webcomic, Just Joel. I'm also a member of the webcomic collective, Ink Bomb Comics.
September 9, 2015 13:05
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Oh Jerry!