I remember first seeing cartoons and marveling at what I saw. I knew how to draw but I didn’t know how to make my drawings come alive. I was naturally drawn to animation and probably had the most fun doing little flip books in the corners of my school textbooks. I set a goal to one day be an animator.
What I know now, but didn’t know then, is that animation is easy enough on flip books, or even in my high school puppet animation, but to get good enough to be a professional animator was above my skill set for how undisciplined I was with drawing. You see, I’ve always drawn because I enjoyed it. I didn’t do it because I was good at it, though I got better simply because I drew so much. But merely loving to draw isn’t enough to become a great animator, you have to be psycho about it.
So while I made it to professional animation status for animated television and for video games, I couldn’t cut it for feature animation. I don’t know for certain I couldn’t do it, I just tried once at a feature submission and quickly gave up. I was far more turned on to story-telling, and I mean telling the whole story, not just animating a few scenes of a movie.
Over the years, I’ve told hundreds of stories, some as director, some as storyboard artist, even some as a video game developer. Here’s a list of some of my work that made it to IMDB, though this is not a complete list of my 25 years of work:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0855066/
One thing I’ve learned is that my career has ups and downs, and battle-worn creators learn to get a thick skin when the money truck doesn’t back up every day to your house. My art is a commitment, and where my career has failed me every so often, my love for art and story-telling has not.