Category Archives: Artists Interviews

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Vito Viscomi

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Vito Viscomi – Writer/Story Editor and Partner at Slap Happy Cartoons.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I used to walk around in women’s shoes as an assistant Foley Artist. Oh, and I used to stuff animals.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Jackass, The Tom Green Show, The Vacant Lot, Fin shorts for the Vancouver Canucks, Kid VS Kat, League of Super Evil… and a few other future projects.

How did you become interested in animation?
I grew up watching Warner Bros. cartoons.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
Born in Italy, grew up in Toronto. Was into sketch comedy and got a call about the possibility of writing for Studio B productions in Vancouver and immediately fell in love with the freedom animation allows.

What’s a typical day like for you with regards to your job?
Usually deal with emails about projects, then collect notes, handle revisions, the occasional conference call with producers/creators/networks, assign scripts and revision notes, edit scripts, write and rewrite.

What part of your job do you like best? Why?
Writing a first outline/draft. As a writer, it’s usually the most fun because there are few Continue reading

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Keith Baxter

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Keith Baxter. Story Artist for Reel Fx

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Janitor at a department store and lead guitarist for an 80’s power pop band.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Songs for Flushed Away. Theme song for The Mask TV series. Story for Greedy Grizzly section of Scrambled Ink, Sidekick Shorts project for Dreamworks which was never completed, especially the Over The Hedge Love Story mashup.

How did you become interested in animation?
Looney Tunes and Disney movies from when I was a kid and the Continue reading
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Rich Arons

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What is your name?
Rich Arons
What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Directing/Producing/writing on Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, Freakazoid, Biker Mice. Lately I’m having fun making cartoons on youtube and developing new properties.

What would you say has been your primary job in animation?
Directing/Producing (ha! I snuck in 2 jobs)

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I scrubbed toilets at a miniature golf course, made sandwiches at Arby’s and cleaned school desks. I even studied to be a lousy auto mechanic once. I failed.

How did you become interested in animation?
Watching Bugs Bunny on TV as a little kid got me into it. I remember asking my mom, “what do they call those guys who draw those cartoons,” when I was about six, because I had to write a paper on what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wish she had said “billionaire” instead of  “animator.”

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I grew up in NYC and made a lot of flip books as a kid. I went to art school back east and then went to the Disney School at Cal Arts for college. I was also lucky enough to study under the great Ben Washam when he taught animation from his Continue reading

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Gerald de Jesus

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What is your name and your current occupation?

My name is Gerald de Jesus (pronounced “dee HAY-soos” instead of like “Jesus Christ”) and my current occupation is a Painter on “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Before I got into Animation, I did a lot of editorial illustrations for places like “Entertainment Weekly”, “Capitol Records” and “The Village Voice”, as well as gallery work for my personal stuff.  Then things started drying up and I got really broke, so I helped my friend make floral arrangements at his flower shop.  Removing the thorns off roses really sucked.  I also had to do these really awful drawings of kids in wheel chairs or carrying crutches for this educational pamphlet…it was pretty demoralizing copying an art style I thought was atrocious.  Hey, whatever it took to pay the bills!

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
One of my favorite animation projects to work on was Nickelodeon’s “El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera”.  Not only was it a great looking show, the crew was just awesome to work with.  Jorge Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua (the creators of “El Tigre”) had such passion for the show, it infected everyone and we worked our hardest to make it look great.  It was sad that it was cancelled before its time, but we were recognized (post-humously) with a bunch of awards, including my first Emmy!

How did you become interested in animation?
It was kind of a fluke… as I mentioned before, I was struggling with finding freelance illustration work, when out of nowhere, my friend Tony Mora, whom I have known from going to Art Center with Continue reading
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Ben Price

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What is your name?
Ben Price

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Managed a video store, worked with kids (age 11-18) in a neighborhood Youth Center.

What would you say has been your primary job in animation?
My primary job has been that of a traditional animator.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Let’s see – character designs for a documentary (unfortunately funding ran out before it could get to the animation stage), test animation of a raven for a Comcast commercial, being layout supervisor and doing layouts on a MTV pilot featuring Bootsy Collins, animating part of the Hallucination Sequence in the feature “Beavis and Butt Continue reading

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David Fremont

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What is your name?

David Fremont

How did you become interested in animation?
Watching Saturday morning cartoons

and after school cartoons. bugs bunny, bullwinkle, underdog, super chicken, johnny quest, sid and marty kroft, monty python. i thought “someone drew that stuff” so I tried to
draw a cartoon character, i think it was Lyle Lion with overlapping cartoon eyes. yellow submarine was a big influence as far as being inspired to draw weirder, abstract stuff.  and sunday comics, Cathy, Fred Basset. No actually I loved Tumbleweeds, Peanuts, figments, the Wizard of Id. I was always drawing comics and trying to create my own comic strip. Then I got into MAD, National Lampoon comics and RAW, Gary Panter had that scraggly punk look that changed my outlook on trying to draw perfect perspective cartoons. I started drawing comics without sketching them out, just pen and ink improv stuff, totally fun and scrappy. That’s how Glue started, a comic that turned into an online animated series for Wildbrain.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I’m from a northern Cal. town called Fremont. How convenient, right?  I moved to San Francisco and worked in an art supply store. The people that worked at Colossal Pictures would buy supplies there and I’d always bug them about working there. So finally I got hired in the Ink and Paint dept, painting animation cels for things like cereal commercials and MTV’s Liquid TV with a bunch of like-minded Continue reading