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Eye on Springfield - An Interview with Raymie Muzquiz

Since working on eighteen episodes of seasons two and three of the Simpsons, Raymie Muzquiz has enjoyed a strong, thirty plus years career in the animation industry, including directing eight episodes of Futurama’s second run. Here, Raymie talks about his spell on both shows, his other projects and the industry itself.

Let’s start at the start, how did you get into animation and end up at Klasky-Csupo?

In 1988-89, I was working for a movie trailer company. I was a production assistant and then a post coordinator for about 2 years. I learned a lot about film post production and worked on a flatbed editor, dubbing machines, etc. (all pre-digital). However, it was nonetheless a miserable, unartistic, poorly-paying job that laid bare all those awful “Swimming With Sharks”, fear-and-loathing tropes of the movie business. My boss was a horror. He’d yell at me about the dressing in his salad, or the variety of bread on the sandwich. I was his presumed personal assistant to deride. Yet he would shamelessly “lick the boots” of celebs and execs higher up the food chain. To this day, I cannot watch movie trailers. On the rare trip to a theater, I sit in the lobby and have my wife text me when the feature starts.

During this awful period I would look daily through the trades for another job. One day in the Hollywood Reporter there was an ad that included a picture of Marge (I think). Klasky-Csupo (just blocks from my apartment!) was looking to staff for Season 2 of The Simpsons. Since I storyboarded all my student films and some action sequences in live-action low-budget features at Roger Corman’s Concorde/New Horizons in the late 80’s. I applied for a storyboard position. What happened next gave me whiplash. I was given a test. Hours after turning the in the test I hired as a staff storyboard artist to start two weeks hence and immediately given a freelance assignment.  

How did I get this plum position with zero experience? This requires some context. The Simpsons was an unexpected TV-animation phoenix rising from the ashes of a poverty-row industry. It is little exaggeration to say that the TV animation talent pool (as opposed to feature animation) consisted largely of old, alcoholic and broken-spirited artists doing Saturday-morning hack-work, subsuming their talent to low budgets and low cel counts. The necessary talent were simply nonexistent for this new, hip renaissance. The doors opened to the young, the students and the inexperienced like me; someone who didn’t go to art school nor drew for a living. It was a singular event for me. I was ignorant that there was even a difference between animation and live action storyboards. I was even naive about my drawing ability. Imagine my reaction when I saw trained artists draw in a professional environment. It blew my mind! My only saving grace was that as a live-action film graduate, I knew film language. I could stage without “crossing the line”. Scenes “cut” together and “hooked up” and I was staging in depth rather than in the traditional “proscenium” cartoon style. My acting was restrained, not broad or cartoony.

I did my first storyboard freelance while still at the trailer company. It was for Jim Reardon; his first directing assignment: Itchy & Scratchy & Marge in 1989.

Can you explain the work you did on the Simpsons?

Everybody probably knows what storyboarding is, so I’ll keep it short. It’s the visualisation of the script/story. It’s TV animation’s biggest step from script to screen. You are staging the characters in space and acting them out and breaking it up into separate scenes that informs the entire rest of the process. Design, layout, key posing, action and timing build off the storyboard.

When you were assigned to work on the show what were your thoughts? It was a phenomenon by that point.

The first season’s episodes of the Simpsons were being re-runned to death. I remember doubting if they’d successfully make more before the buzz died off. When I was hired I couldn’t believe my luck. The Simpsons was THE hip show of the moment. To actually be a creative team member on something fresh and original AND get paid more than beggar’s wages was like winning the lottery.

How closely did you work with the directors and writers, what kind of notes and feedback did you receive?

When I arrived for my first meeting, Mark Kirkland and Jim Reardon were crowded in a small room with folding tables, right off of reception. I believe they were both directing for the first time. Although I was already hired to work in-house, I had to give two weeks to my current, satanic employer, so I was assigned work as a freelancer. It was to board an act of Itchy & Scratchy & Marge by its director, Jim Reardon. Little did I know what I was getting into.

I never had to draw so much in my life! My drawing hand (left) was killing me in those early months. I had to develop a callous on the middle finger. They gave me the “radio-play;” an audio cassette of the recorded dialog to draw to and tons of model sheets.  

I remember being overwhelmed by the volume. And you had to draw in these tiny boxes of the formatted storyboard page. I didn’t have that kind of discipline (I never did: I eventually developed a style of drawing on blank pages, then fielding and formatting them onto a page. Sometimes I scaled my drawings down on the xerox machine. I also drew on post-its (the greatest invention in animation after cels) and taped them onto the formatted sheet.  

As this was freelance, I actually only met with Jim twice: Once for the hand-out and then again to show him my roughs. I vaguely remember him asking for changes that I thought were off-show (I’d seen all extant episodes multiple times on TV by then). Plus this was my first time and really had no expectations of what the process was.

But--he was the director--I addressed his notes and turned in the storyboard to the receptionist without further feedback. This almost became my undoing. In future, I would know the director should go over the storyboard and decide if it was ready, needed further revision or even just check the “bookkeeping”; the placement of dialog, notes and scene and page numbering before releasing it to the producers (all the Executives at Gracie Films across town). However--for whatever reason--this didn’t happen. It went directly from reception to Gracie. And evidently the executives didn’t react well. I was ignorant of all of this for years; until Mark Kirkland told me what happened...

The Executives were displeased with the storyboard and demanded to know what happened. Someone blamed it on the new guy (me!). So it was decided I had to be fired (before I even started my first day on staff)!  

Did I get thrown under the bus? I can’t say. I wasn’t there. I am only relating events second hand.  

Anyway, Mark Kirkland, who shared the room with Jim Reardon and was present during my meetings came to my rescue (again, completely unbeknownst to me). He vouched for my character and said I was worthy of rescue and rather than firing me, I could work with him. 

So I have Mark to thank for my career. If I was fired, it would have been crushing and I think it’s safe to say I would never have become the artist I’ve become in the thirty plus years of my career.

What was the pressure like working on the show and at the studios during that time?

Because of my lack of experience, I found it difficult judging deadlines and the necessary labor (and just pencil mileage) to succeed. Plus I was traumatised by my previous job; I was conditioned to fear punishment and humiliation at anytime for something I did or didn’t do.

The climate at Klasky/Csupo couldn’t be more starkly different; so egalitarian! Everyone was socialising and goofing around. Gabor Csupo couldn’t be a more laid-back boss! Long lunches with side-trips for comic books and toys! Nerf guns in the hall. I shared a tiny room with two other board artists, Peter Avanzino and Steve Moore. They would both have to vacate the room for me to reach my desk in the far corner. We bantered and laughed more than worked. Celebrities would drop by (Most memorable was meeting Frank Zappa). There were events always going on; bowling, screenings and parties. And yet, a ton of thought and drawing was necessary; especially for me. I worried I couldn’t work as fast as other artists. I often had to work nights and weekends to meet my deadlines. However, there always were other artists doing the same thing; they may have been more experienced than me, but they were young and not so disciplined; so I was never alone. Plus, you never knew how off the mark your roughs could be and after a meeting with the director and Brad Bird, you might suddenly be looking at a ton of revision work. I also remember that Brad was busy weekdays and meetings could sometimes only be done on Saturdays. I simply had a lot to learn and time to put in to build my proficiency. And Brad Bird was very important influence in those days: I could be nervous and exhausted preparing for a meeting with him, but he’d so infect you with his enthusiasm and creative vision that you’d end up re-doing the whole thing but be excited about doing it. He emphasized the cinematic aspects and empowered us to be bold and push the limits of traditional animation staging.

You worked on some of the show’s early classics, could you tell from your position how the episodes would come out?

My next episode for Jim Reardon was “When Flanders Failed”. Because of the kerfuffle of the first episode I did for him, I was anxious to be as professional and impressive as possible. I thought the act I did showed improvement. However, the episode seemed to languish at some point (after animation?) and word got around that it was a bust and wouldn’t reach air. My memory is hazy about this, but I was bummed at the time; thinking my working relationship with Jim was snake-bit.  

A season later, it eventually did air. I’m not giving a very good account of this, sorry.

“Flaming Moe’s” was an episode I was excited about. I remember Brad Bird suggesting some very exciting staging that turned my head around. Especially the part where Homer ends up--“Phantom of the Opera-ish”--in the rafters. I think that was a turning point for me; I was going to be a Brad disciple and determined to push the staging from then on.

“Stark Raving Dad”, is memorable to me, but not for a good reason. It was one of the last episodes I worked on; only doing an act. I remember being scandalized that Michael Jackson was the subject of the episode. Being a Simpsons purist, I believed that the show existed in a parallel universe and celebrities were parodied for laughs; it was too hip to be a shill for celebrity. There was no Arnold Swarzenegger, there was McBain. There was no Hal Fishman (our local channel 5 anchor), there was Kent Brockman. Dr. Hibbert was a parody of Bill Cosby. Mayor Quimby was a parody of Ted Kennedy. Even Nick Riviera was supposed to be Gabor Csupo! Having Michael Jackson exist in this universe and embodied in a sympathetic character (rather than a target of ridicule) was seriously “jumping the shark” in my opinion. I believed the show had done the unthinkable and it would prove fatal to the series.  

Of course I was wrong. The Simpsons goes on like a perpetual motion machine. But I couldn’t abide watching this wise and subversive show trample over its principles to star-fuck. Now of course, which celebrity HASN’T been on the Simpsons. As you may well know, “Stark Raving Dad” has been pulled from the series since the premiere of the HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland”, giving some credence to my long ago objection: sometimes it bites you on the ass.

“Black Widower” was my swan song. I remember meeting Kelsey Grammer at the table read and being mesmerized by his voice. He sounded just like Orson Welles. The act I boarded included Bob and Selma’s honeymoon. I wanted to give the staging a Hitchcockian influence with deep-focus, Z-axis compositions (like looking out of the fireplace, across the gas burner to Selma and Bob) and my first-ever use of DX (double exposed) shadows to provide menace. I thought that was my best work of the series.

One of my favourite early episodes is ‘Homer at the Bat’ which you storyboarded. What are your recollections on working on it? Did you get any specific notes when it came to the players?

“Homer” was my third “at bat” (pardon the pun) with Jim. He’s a baseball fan as I am, but he also PLAYED Chicago-Style Softball (baseball with a huge, soft ball). I’m a baseball fan too, but I felt I’d be exposed a dilettante due to my terminal lack of athleticism. I was assigned all three acts of the show as well! I really had to be on my game (again, pardon) and not miss any of the references. I reluctantly took him up on his offer playing in one of the Chicago-Style games one Saturday in Burbank. It was a sacrifice as I had to work weekends to keep up with the workload of this episode. I went with a fellow board artist, who’ll remain unnamed (to remain friends).  

It went terribly. At bat, I whiffed three pitches in a row, and Jim kept pitching more and more out of pity. I missed them all. He finally had to tell me to just give the bat to the next guy. In the outfield, I stunk just as badly. The piece-de-resistance was when my fellow board artist was at bat and swung hard on a pitch. He missed the ball AND dislocated his knee. I ran to him as he plopped down in agony onto home plate with his knee, shin and foot pointed in the wrong direction. “If my leg stays like this much longer, I think I’m gonna start crying,” he said through the pain.  After a terribly long moment, his shin and foot rotated snapped back into place. We hobbled off the field as Jim and his pals resumed the game. Could things have gone any worse? I was certain that Jim had no faith in me by that time. If so, he never said it. He was a laconic guy.  

I worked on it a hundred years ago so I don’t feel the pride I objectively should. The episode went against The Cosby Show and beat it in the ratings!  There’s even an exhibit in The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, that I wasn’t aware of until I went there. No artist other than Matt is mentioned. It’s all about the writers and the players who voiced the show.

I still have the storyboards of Jose Canseco in the bathtub with Ms. Krabappel that Jose objected to and we had to cut. I’ll post them someday.

How do you reflect on your time working on the show? Do you ever watch those seasons and episodes back?

See below for details; but no. I haven’t watched the episodes I worked on or those seasons for decades. I haven’t watched any episodes after the 3rd season at all. I did see the movie.

The relationship between Klasky-Csupo and Gracie Films finished at the end of the third season, when Gracie decided to move production to Film Roman, what was your view of that situation?

With the handwriting on the wall that Fox might pull The Simpsons from Klasky-Csupo, the in-house producer Sherry Gunther countered by getting all us artists to sign a document tying us exclusively to Klasky-Csupo in an effort to block Fox access to the crew. That gambit didn’t dissuade Fox. They pulled the show anyway and took it to Film Roman. At the time, I wanted desperately to follow the show, but naively thought I couldn’t because I was bound by Sherry’s contract. Virtually everyone left Klasky-Csupo for Film Roman anyways; contract be damned.

The studio became a ghost town. I stayed, distressed that I had to work on Rugrats. However, I eventually concluded that being torn away from The Simpsons was the best thing for my creative growth. Wherein The Simpsons was written so well, closely supervised and finding its stride, The Rugrats scripts were mediocre and the gags not funny. Rugrats was a vacuum to fill and I was empowered to add gags and exercise Gabor’s mandate to really push the staging into warped and low-angled baby POVs that defined the series. It lacked the regimentation of The Simpsons and I exposed to all the other processes in making cartoons. On the Chanukah special I directed, I timed the animation, I even helped direct the voice talent and supervise animatic and final edit.

The Simpsons, like many prime-time animated shows, are dominated by writer/producers who closely control the creative aspects and the artists are more or less staying in their lanes.

After the Simpsons you were assigned to work on ‘Duckman’ where you directed eight episodes, what was the step up to direction like?

I didn’t go directly to Duckman. There was a period of boarding on Rugrats and assistant directing on two Edith-Ann specials for ABC. It was a sad time, something like being in purgatory, but one which I believe was necessary in retrospect.

Speaking of being in purgatory, here’s an anecdote. Klasky-Csupo was a bunch of empty rooms after the Simpsons left. I was working on Edith Ann one day and Gabor was walking a tour of potential clients through. I showed them what I was doing and then Gabor directed them to the next room; opening a door to usher them in, various large and small auto parts suddenly tumbled noisily out onto the floor. A car bumper, pieces of trim, a fender and hub-caps.  

You may ask why auto parts were in there? I’ll tell you: When Rich Moore worked there, his office overlooked the corner of Highland and Fountain avenues. Over time, he and his crew witnessed a lot of auto collisions on that corner. They would go and retrieve the parts left behind and hang them on the wall. Rich obviously left without taking his collection and somebody decided to hide them all in this room. Suffice to say, it didn’t look professional and I felt terrible for Gabor at that moment.

When I did become director, there was many moments of panic. I was used to storyboarding to my personal standard and quality that defined my aesthetic. Paradoxically, being a director meant losing close control. I had to depend on clearly communicating to the storyboard artists, quickly learning you can only tell artists so much before they “top-off” and forget what you said. No one took notes! It was all by memory! I always took notes as a board artist. A good board artist makes a director look good. There are far more mediocre storyboard artists than good ones; mainly because the good ones are promoted to directors (I feel the quality has improved over time). And I had to deal with freelancers for the first time. They are the guys that fill-in when there’s not enough staff artists. These people were usually moonlighting for extra money and end up storyboarding your show in the style of the show they were working on during the day. There just wasn’t enough time in the schedule to fix everything without working crazy hours. The Simpsons had layout. So storyboards didn’t have to be so precise and if something wasn’t staged right or acting out in storyboard, you could work with a layout artist in shorthand to correct it. Virtually my entire career has been absent layouts. They are very rare for TV nowadays. This makes the storyboard all the more important. The bar must be high; we call them “layout storyboards”; they need to be closer to model and the acting must be spot on.  

Animation timing was also something I had to get control of; At first, Duckman didn’t have a supervising timing director, who could maintain the quality and the timing aesthetics particular to the show. It was up to the director to check timing. I had almost no experience and it was a new show. No one person had the answers. I could review the timer’s work (so often a dreaded freelancer) and I could see it wasn’t at all right and I’d wholesale erase it, but then I panicked that I might have done more damage than good; suddenly in over my head. It took time, but I got it.

I believe that the director who masters his x-sheets is true master of his show.  I could add quality and personal aesthetics in a new dimension.

Does you background as a storyboard artist influence the way in which you direct?

Absolutely. In animation history, there were directors who didn’t storyboard or even draw. There were a few of these “dinosaurs” on Rugrats. They sat and read the paper when we boarded their shows. But because of the overseas process of animation and the loss of layouts here at home, if you are going to direct at all, you have to be comfortable drawing a detailed, informed layout storyboard. It is literally the blueprint of your show.

That said, I had to mature as a director who storyboarded. It was insane to try and board all my episodes personally, though directors will put some work aside for themselves, especially if its a sequence that would be too hard to delegate to another artist. If a sequence involves a new character, location or prop integral to the story, it may not be designed yet, so I’ll take it on and “feel it out;” designing as I board.

I had to learn how to be a good delegator and a clear communicator. I pitch sequences to the board artist before they begin and give them roughs of designs, poses or staging I think is important for the sequence. From my boarding experience, I don’t like directors who don’t tell you what they want until after you’ve drawn the storyboard. That wastes time and effort. And morale. I want the artists to know my take and hopefully that will inform the storyboard they do. I also know from my board experience that you should balance criticism with praise. Communicate what you like about how they do this and that before you go through critiquing the parts that aren’t working. Ultimately, you want to help the board artists be successful in storyboarding it their way, not my way. If it works, don’t change it just because it isn’t the way you’d do it. Lean into and support what they’ve done.

‘Duckman’ had a cavalcade of guest stars throughout the shows run, did you ever get to meet any of them, and if so, do you have a favourite encounter?

I was always of two minds regarding using live-action stars for animation. Yeah, it’s fun to meet them and some like Jason Alexander can knock-it-out-of-the-park, but sometimes this kind of “stunt casting” backfires. In my first episode, we used Crispin Glover in a stunt role as a crazed maniac with only one line. He showed up brandishing an eight inch hunting knife acting like a REAL maniac. Maybe it was method acting, but we were scared of him and got him in and out as fast as we could. His delivery didn’t work for the line and it spoiled the joke in my opinion, but it remained in the episode. If we used one of the legion of professional voice actors available, we could have worked with them for the perfect “voice” and delivery and nailed it.

We also used Teri Garr for an episode (not one I was directing) and I attended because I was a huge fan of hers. I got to see her behind the mike as she looked over her pages and said acidly, “This isn’t exactly Tolstoy, is it.” That is the opposite attitude you should have when you’re hired. She was soon pitching underwear afterwards...obviously not Tolstoy either.

So I’ll say it again: using celebrities can bite you on the ass.

Performances aside, I certainly did enjoy meeting legends. Carl Reiner played a priest in Noir Gang. Mind you we recorded in a small studio that was in the back of the Rugrats building that was essentially a cavernous storage room. Ed Asner looked visibly uncomfortable when we huddled around him in there. I’ll never forget the look on Marina Sirtis’ face when she arrived to record an episode. Me and a couple of other guys were laying in wait in this sketchy storage area eating our lunches. She was concerned: “is this the right place?” I felt like a lech and stopped going to records that I didn’t have to be at.

Overall, if the celebrity you’ve cast for a voice roll has theater experience, you are more likely to get a good vocal performance. Especially musical theater experience. They are more aware of their voice and have the tools. This goes for Jason and others like Tim Curry and Bebe Neuwirth; all great voice talent to have behind the mic.

You worked on the second run of Futurama, had you been a fan of the original seasons?

No. I didn’t watch the show before. I had to catch up and learn the “canon” when I was hired.

How did you get involved in working on Futurama?

The animating studio, Rough Draft, was something of a clique. They didn’t just hire “anybody” and unlike most studios, they maintain a staff of lifers who usually have the choice positions. I knew Peter Avanzino from our Simpsons days doing storyboards together, so he vouched for me. I was hired to direct on the 2nd season of Drawn Together. So they had a taste of what they could expect from me. I was no longer an unknown quantity when Futurama came around.

One of the eight episodes you directed was, ‘The Mutants are Revolting’, the shows hundredth episode. How special was it to work on such a landmark episode?

It had the most visibility of my episodes, at least internally. They made T-shirts and some publicity art and even the script had a nicer cover. But it was the episode with the most headaches. The scope of the story was huge with multiple set pieces. The opening newsreel, movie in a movie of the Land-Titanic, the asteroid delivery, the party at Planet Express, the riot in the sewers and the flood and “parting of the red sea” climax all required a ton of designs and characters; plus more hand-drawn and CG effects. That’s a lot to manage and marshall for a TV show. Most episodes don’t require the director to do this kind of heavy lifting. I find that when a show demands this much visually, the story ends up being more superficial, gag driven and episodic feeling. Such is the case for this episode. It was visually pumped up because it was representing the 100th episode; meaning I was saddled with managing lots of logistics rather than the usual character-based comedy and emotion of say, Tip of The Zoidberg, which is a relationship story that--as a director--I feel I give more time to flourish and shine with.

‘The Mutants are Revolting’ features some fantastic animation, most notably a brief sequence of Bender standing perfectly still as the Planet Express ship moves around him. Can you explain the challenges of a sequence like that?

That’s a good, insightful question. A shot like this shows off the resources Rough Draft has that aren’t available at just any other studio doing TV animation. The interior of the Planet Express Ship was built and animated in CG. At it’s gimbal point was a CG version of a stationary Bender; locked to field, but who’s feet move with the CG ship. Once the CG elements were approved, they were printed out as wire frame drawings printed onto pegged paper. My Assistant Director drew key poses of the characters on a separate layer in register with the CG print outs, old school on a light box animation disc. This all was sent to our overseas studio Rough Draft Korea for inbetweening and color of the characters only. That came back as an alpha-channeled digital file and layered over the CG animation in our digital compositing department.

Scott Vanzo runs the department and directs all the CG animation effects. I can’t remember who exactly built the interior of the PE ship and animated it, so I’ll rely on IMDb: Don Kim and Jason Plapp. But all the guys in the digital department do tremendous work and allowed us to fine tune a lot of animation (that doesn’t have CG in it); giving us the ability that raises the quality and takes the curse off of overseas animation limitations.

‘The Tip of the Zoidberg’ was nominated for a Primetime Emmy, how proud were you of that achievement and the episode itself?

The episode was one of my favorites; it was character focused and elaborating on canon so a director couldn’t ask for more. As for the Emmy nomination, it’s one of those show business awards that I realized early I can’t get emotionally vested in. The Futurama guys have a formula for figuring out which episode will be submitted. I think it has something to do with each writer getting a shot at the statue. And then from then on it’s just politics.

You’ve also done work on ‘Disenchantment’, giving you the distinction of having worked on all three of Matt Groening’s shows. What’s your relationship like with him?

I can’t help but laugh at this question. I’ve run into him twice out in public over the years and he didn’t recognize me. Once at the Moscow Cat Circus! But that humbling fact aside, he’s a genuinely nice, funny person devoid of pretence and he’s said some very complementary things about my work. However, it’s all business. Like virtually all primetime shows, he’s with the writers at their separate production office. Animation production takes place in a different geographical location. My face time is limited to usually 2-3 meeting points in a show’s schedule. Anything in between are fielded via emails routed through coordinators and assistants.

As well as short form animation you’ve been involved with several feature length productions, including ‘The Rugrats Movie’ and ‘Despicable Me’, what are the key differences between long from and short form animated projects?

I don’t think I’ve ever had a purely feature production experience. The Rugrats Movie(s) were spin-offs from TV series so some processes were grandfathered in from TV production. Despicable Me was truly off-the-wall in that the storyboard artists were working remotely from literally all over the world. No one met each other. I met with Chris Renaud once. I was not allowed to see the entire script, only pages here and there. It was called “Evil Me” at the time. I was truly working in the dark and ultimately, they didn’t use anything I drew. Which to me seemed par-for-the-course: this was one harebrained, inefficient, right-hand-doesn’t-know-what-the-left-hand-is-doing way to make a show. Again, I predicted it would fail. Again, I was wrong.

At the time I was working on Despicable Me, Gru looked like Snape from Harry Potter and there were no minions yet, just an “Igor” kind of 2nd banana that was a shorter version of the final Gru design.  

So my takeaway from those experiences is that I prefer TV production. You don’t have the luxury of a feature schedule, but there is less time for executives to get replaced, sundry monkey-business and creatives pulling the rug out from under you. However, TV is catching up in those regards. See below.

Do you have a scene or episode you’re particularly proud of working on?

I feel fulfilled and proud of directing and being supervising producer on Hey Arnold: The Jungle Movie. I was empowered to work in every aspect of the process and benefit from my experience to make it the smoothest running ship and happiest crew ever. Only at the very end did the executives get into overdrive meddling. But it ran well and looked good. It may not be as funny as my prime time stuff, but I think we elevated the material across the board; writing, design, animation quality. And it was a project put in mothballs 15 years before being resurrected. So it completes me in a way.

Ultimately, I believe work is about relationships and quality of life. The shows where you were empowered and respected and not overworked due to inefficiency are the shows I’m proud to work on. As Jim Duffy would always say, “It’s only a cartoon.”

Often sequences are cut or revised before broadcast. Do you have any favourites that didn’t make it in?

If I had, I’ve forgotten them.  

What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in the industry over your time and what do you think the next big change will be?

The trend seems to be as I get better and more efficient at my job, creators and writers (especially in streaming prime-time) are becoming more entitled, indecisive, mecurial and demanding. As processes have evolved in digital technology, we’ve opened the door for those in power indulging in more rewrites, revisions, reviews, etc. Despite the technical advancements, animation remains expensive and time intensive and good artists (especially in TV) have to work intelligently and diligently on tight schedules to produce funny, inspired, detail-oriented work. Rewrites and revisions burn out artists and make us feel like office machines and though our overlords pay for the last minute re-dos, they are often throwing out higher quality work for patchwork revisions that lower the overall quality of a show.

Who inspired you as a young animator and who do you look to now?

Ironically, I never saw myself becoming an animator. I did do some stop-motion on Super 8 as a kid. But that was because I didn’t have access to peers to act and help. What inspired me were live action directors with strong, individual styles: Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, Peter Greenaway and Terry Gilliam. I think of these guys in essence as “live-action-animation directors”. The stylization in their sequence planning, shot selection and composition as well as how production design integrates in their storytelling reminds me of how background design and art direction naturally occur in animation production.  

I’m sure there are new visionaries out there, but I’ve become so disenchanted with modern cinema, I rarely see new movies anymore. I find streaming TV much more interesting. Current movies strike me as self-consciously mannered and hyperactive. I find it endlessly fascinating looking back into cinema history before movies had to begin with three or four production company logos whooshing noisily about.

What advice would you give to people looking to break into the animation industry?

I’ve seen an improvement in the college educated animation students over the years. They seem to be of a higher intellectual standard than before. They aren’t as thrown by the rigors of schedule and they ALL can draw circles around me.  

Be original in your own work, but also be a craftsman (as opposed to purely an artist) who can take criticism neutrally and have the tools to fit in the grand scheme of a show that might challenge your personal aesthetics.  

Denis Sanders, a directing teacher I had in college said the director’s job is to be “an expert at all things”. In animation, that translates into intellegently knowing what to draw. If a character is looking under the hood of a car, know what an internal combustion engine looks like and what reasonable pieces you can have your character toss out of said engine. The distributor, the carburettor. Find and use reference! Go that extra step and inform your work with the texture of reality.

Don’t regurgitate old tropes. A trite example of what I’m talking about: If a character is peeking at another, avoid the obvious keyhole in the door trope. Keyholes aren’t in doors anymore. It’s been a cliche from the beginning of cinema. Rather, crack the door open, slide your cellphone under the door, look through a window or punch a hole in the door and look in. Like I said, this is a trite example, but making non-obvious choices rather than knee-jerk non-choices makes cartoons fresh and funnier.

What animated shows do you currently watch and what’s your opinion on the current state of animation?

It’s a terrible admission, but I’m not watching anything in animation. There’s a lot of animation that seems to be just writer-driven, animated live-action sit-coms. There isn’t a reason for them to be animated. Those are the kind of jobs I get offered a lot. It seems like a more trouble than it’s worth.

Who are some young animators you think we should be looking out for?

Gosh, I don’t know.

What projects are you currently working on?

I’m productively unemployed at the moment.

Where can people follow you on social media?

I only do tumblr: mashymilkiesinc.tumblr.com