Back in my twenties, when I was a struggling illustrator in New York, things weren’t going so well – no one liked my artwork, my syndicated strip was going badly, it was in only twenty newspapers, and they were diminishing. Any time I tried to create a cartoon that I felt was hard-hitting, the newspaper editors thought it was offensive and in bad taste.
At that point, it felt like my career was a big flop. I could barely pay my rent, my meals consisted of ramen noodles and popcorn, and my landlord (who worked at a fabric store on the ground floor) made it very difficult for me to get in and out of my apartment without him yelling “Pay the damn rent!” at me.
Consequently, I had to spend my days wandering around the city or going to movies all day, in order to avoid any confrontation with my landlord. What was I going to do? Get a normal job? Even though I’d graduated from college with an art degree, I was totally untrained and unprepared for any other kind of normal profession. Besides, I loved walking around the city, proudly carrying my black leather portfolio that subtly suggested, “There goes a professional artist, an illustrator! Someone who’d just done the current cover of the New Yorker or Vanity Fair, no doubt!” I was just one tiny step away from Cindy Crawford or Claudia Schiffer, who also carried around black leather portfolios and appeared on magazine covers.
I could always call it quits and return to Oregon as an artistic failure. Maybe I could sneak back to my hometown in the middle of the night so no one would notice. But I liked New York City. I loved the excitement, the variety, the weirdness – I didn’t want to leave.
I was in a total funk. I decided to walk the streets of this mad city and ponder my next move. As I exited onto the bustling East Village Street, my landlord yelled at me for the thousandth time: “Hey, Plympton, the rent!” But I ignored him. After all, if I did decide to vacate the Big Rotten Apple, paying the rent would be a moot point.
I wandered the late-evening streets; the sun was about to set. I had no idea where I was or where I was going – I was a sleep-walking zombie. As it started getting darker, I realized that I was lost. New York is a very easy city in which to find one’s way because most of the streets are numbered – tourists love that! But the street signs around me were no help at all – as far as I could tell, I was at the corner of “Nowhere” and “Eternity.”
But that wasn’t the only strange observation. As I looked around me, the streets were deserted – which by itself is not too rare a condition for certain neighborhoods at that time of night – but I mean not a single living thing. No people, cops, pets, birds – nothing.
To top it off, all of the apartments seemed abandoned. There was no advertising, no decorations, no signs of human culture anywhere – I felt like I was on a Hollywood backlot, after hours. Oddly, I wasn’t concerned – it wasn’t like I had any pressing meetings or art deadlines to meet. Actually, I was kind of digging the surrealism of the moment. But wait: it got even more bizarre.
I noticed an object flying straight at me out of the golden glow of the setting sun. It was hard to make out at first because of the solar glare – was it a large bird? A plane? As it got closer, I realized it was some guy riding on a missile – kind of like the last scene in Dr. Strangelove, when Slim Pickens rode the nuclear missile right into the destructive mushroom cloud explosion.
But what really blew my mind was that the guy flew right up to me and parked his missile in front of me. Then I realized that it would have been more normal if it were Mr. Pickens – instead, it was a bright red naked man with horns, riding on a #2 Ticonderoga pencil.
Okay, I know that I live in the weirdest city in the world, but this appearance crossed even my weirdness threshold – I stood smack in the middle of the intersection of “Twisted” and “Strange” streets.
Dear readers, I know you’re getting very impatient with this absurd story and you’d like me to get on with my tips for animation success. So I’ll just paraphrase what took place on that magical NYC evening. In his raspy voice, the man offered me a way out of my career dilemma. He had a deal for me, and the deal sounded quite good. As I recall, it was something about how I could be a great success in the cartoon business, but he wanted two things in return.
I was pretty much down on my luck, and I was open to any kind of offer at that point. His offer was this. Point one – he wanted me to change from print cartoons to animation. Point two – he wanted my eternal soul! Okay, big problem – although I loved animation (as a kid, Daffy Duck was my favorite character), I had absolutely no idea how to make animated cartoons. But he replied that this was no problem – he’d snap his fingers and I’d magically know everything there was to know about animation.
“That’s cool!” I said. “Let’s do it!”
The hovering pencil quickly came alive, and his body turned into a giant red hand, guiding the pencil as it drew some kind of sketch, right there in midair. The hand was definitely that of a quick sketch artist, and the sketch looked just like me! What happened next almost defies description – I know what I’ve stated already pushes the limits of credibility, but this was the crème de la crème of bizarre – the sketched doppelganger came to life and walked into my body! Then the giant flying Ticonderoga pencil put its graphite point into my heart, and I heard a ghoulish, cold wind sound, as if I were taking my last breath.
Just then, a manhole cover blew sky high with a loud bang, and flames erupted from underneath the pavement. The bright red man on the #2 pencil swirled around and flew down into the opening and under the city streets with a great shaking and thunder like an earthquake. Then silence settled over that deserted intersection. It took me about 30 seconds to regain my breathing, and then suddenly that desolate street was filled with people – the buildings came to life with ads and signs, and it became a normal neighborhood … odd!
As I skipped home with a new sense of optimism and excitement about my now-prosperous future, visions of success swept through my imagination: women, money, power, prizes, accolades, red carpets, and fancy film festivals. It was a dizzying walk home, and as I bounded up my apartment stairway, the door was blocked by Mr. Landlord. I brushed by him, exclaiming, “Your wait is over, I’m going to be a big cartoon star!”
As I disappeared behind my apartment door, he yelled, “You’re not a star, but you’re certainly a cartoon!” And that’s how I became the rock star of animation.
Okay, so maybe it didn’t happen exactly that way, but part of it is true. In animation, anything can happen, and the only limits are those of the animator’s imagination. And I hope this book can be your magical Ticonderoga to success.
No one is born to be anything – except maybe for royalty. People often say to me, “You were born to be an artist.” I wasn’t born to be anything – I worked my proverbial ass off. If I were to offer any reason for my so-called success, it’s that I freaking love to draw. I wake up in the morning fantasizing about what I’m going to draw that day, and at the end of the day, I feel so happy that I’ve spent the day at my drawing board creating characters.
People call me a masochist for drawing a whole film by myself, but I think I’m a hedonist!
Just beware of naked red men riding on Ticonderoga #2 pencils!