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FLIGHT: Doug, Ryan & Richard Introduction
You’ve got a very strong sense of layout – leading the eye from one point in the page to another, so I was kind of surprised to see you were a toy designer as opposed to something like storyboarding or animation. What lead you to that position? Doug: Ah thank you. I kind of happened upon the toy stuff completely by accident. I just answered an advertisement for a studio based in Sydney a few years ago looking for black and white cartoonists to do finished illustrations for presentations. Which was kind of true but failed to mention the concepting, engineering and technical knowledge you would need in designing toys. So it was a surprise and a bit of a baptism of fire. But good fun and while 80% of the work was toy or premium based some of it was design for presentations, comics and illustration for books and promotions etc.
Doug: The most well known global clients would be companies like Qantas International and Hungry Jacks. The rest are various magazine and book publishers here in Australia and in the States such as Funtastic, Weekly Reader and Simon and Schuster. Tales From Under Your Bed was your big self-publishing venture this past year, do you intend on bringing this book to a North American audience? Doug: Yep. I’m currently working on plans to solicit the first book through Diamond under Jai Nitz’s Jungle Boy Press later this year. Hopefully if I find the time and it goes well I will put together some new stories too. How does the toy work compare to your own work? For instance, some company projects will have a set artistic style and all artists would have to meet that style, despite having a unique style of their own. Doug: When I was working for the studio in Sydney it was exactly that. Very rarely was it original work...it was toys based on licenses only...like the latest Disney feature or kids cartoons like Pokemon. So it was a matter of working from style guides and really it's a bit soulless, the creativity comes more in conceiving the mechanics of the toy (i.e.: what the toy is going to do) rather than how it looks. Since I’ve gone freelance however I’ve hooked up with a couple of companies here in Melbourne that deal in original work only...which has been great.
Doug: I think (my memory is pretty poor) I put my name down on the CBR comic book idol list for a bit of a lark last year. Which Jai saw then contacted me through email. Mentioned he had a couple of projects he wanted to get off the ground and in front of publishers...and Heidi was born. For more on Doug visit skullduggery.com.au/.
I’m not certain but you may be the only one here who’s worked on an Oscar award winning film. Could you tell us about your involvement in Bowling For Columbine and the forthcoming Robots? Ryan: Bowling for columbine was a weird random thing, I was a friend with a guy that was friends with the editor. They were looking for an illustrator, so being a Big Michael Moore fan I sent my stuff in and got chosen. I worked with Mr. Moore for a few months on and off. He’s great and just like he is on screen. I did all the character and BG designs and did a lot of the early storyboarding. Wining the Oscar was amazing though very unreal. I was watching at home, we all (the crew) didn’t think we had a snowball's chance in hell. Mainly because we didn’t think the academy would give Michael a live mike on national TV. So when we won, I got all light headed and spaced out. Then my phone started ringing, it was very exciting. I still can’t believe that I worked on an Oscar winning documentary myself. That’s one of those things I never even conceived could happen.
Your work really tends to be young reader oriented, are children’s books something you’d ultimately like to move towards? Ryan: Yeah, I want to get into do kids books, but more like little graphic novels more like “captain underpants”. That’s what I’m working on next! Tell us about Silent Kimbly. Ryan: Silent Kimbly came from my love of buster keton and Japanese pop art. I wanted to set up a situation where I could do ANYTHING. So kimbly is sci-fi little girl who has the power to change things with her mind. There are usually monsters around and a lot of surreal stuff. I originally had planed on doing kimbly as a month comic, but I got reject by everyone. Then someone mentioned they might be interested in putting it out if it were a graphic novel. Then I spent the last year trying to get that done around work. In that time I started the webpage to start to get people excited for the graphic novel. Kimbly is a style thing to me, it is where I can go and let my mind wander and my doodling take over. To see more come to Silent Kimbly.com!
Ryan: Yeah, I know of a few other publishing houses that are doing "kid" graphic novels. Scholastic is on the top of my list of people to send stuff to. I'm also on the hunt for an agent to help me navigate the wild word of kids publishing. With Robots, were you working through to the recording stage as well? Ryan: Yes, I was working on robots during recording. In fact, for one of my gags, I wrote a bunch of lines for Robin Williams to say. That was pretty cool, I got to hear him say my lines. Of course he came up with something MORE funny then what I had written but it was really cool to be part of the process. For more on Ryan visit Ryan Sias.com.
I notice you like to use bold lines and elongated anatomy in your art, and were possibly influenced by Dungeons and Dragons at some point, maybe even a little bit of a Mark Andrews influence, who are some of your artistic inspirations? Richard: I feel like a ham, but I don’t think I know Mark Andrews work, got a link?! If its D&D related, I bet I’ve seen it, I used to play when I was a teen, but I really just played so I could read the Monster Manual and Legends and Lore book, I loved reading the descriptions and looking at the art… I think the bold lines look comes from a few places, one is every time I feather something, my friends say “Dik, stop feathering, just do solid lines.” That’s cool, but I like the old school inkers… I want to ink like those guys someday… I also went to school and studied animation, so I became influenced by the animation style as well... As far as elongated anatomy, it probably started from the same place as the bold lines, I used to draw really squat, stocky figures, people kept pointing it out to me and so I tried going the other way... But my influences in art have really come from all over… I love looking at NC Wyeth, John Singer Sargent, Norman Rockwell, Al Hirschfeld, Michelangelo, JC Lyendecker, Dean Cornwell, Monet, JC Coll, Frank Frazetta, John Buscema, Jack Kirby… it's all good, I love good art.
Richard: This project has definitely been a great experience, being able to tell my own story was really refreshing and fulfilling because I think ultimately, I just like telling stories, whether its spoken, written, or draw… I think face painting for kids was great too…I remember not wanting to do it, but once I got started, the kids really energized me… that was the day that I realized that kids really don’t care what your drawings look like, they don’t have to be perfect, they just have to have energy in them, they need to be fun…that’s it… that day was a fence post in my life in art… one can learn something in every job they do… Could you tell us about your project Smoke? Richard: Sure, Smoke was a story I co-created with my buddy and writer Josh Pruett (yep, I already mentioned him as the writer of “Hecter Spector”) Smoke is a world in which dragons exist, and they live amongst us, but since their bellies are constantly aflame, they need a disguise, they hide as smokers…at least this is what our hero, Simon, believes… he sees himself as a modern day St. George, he “knows” the dragons are there, but no one else sees them, its very well possible that he is completely delusional…oh, and he has influenced a whole slew of children to follow his dangerous crusade… Josh and I will definitely be revisiting this world, we have a story we need to get out of our system… I like having some closure with the stories I start, and “Smoke” left a wide gaping hole in me…
Richard: We will see, I definitely know Josh and I want to tell at least one big important story in this world, it's living inside of us, we keep talking about it too often to not do a story with Simon and the dragons, anything after that would just be gravy... we had originally designed it to be an ongoing series, but I think both of us would rather not do a "soap opera", I would rather see a story told with a nice, satisfying ending. Open ended for sequels? Yes... but an ending none-the-less... For more on Richard visit Richard Pose.com. Introduction
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