Bonnie, like all children, is happy to play with her new toys. Like any apparatus or product of creation, toys are tools that teach children physicality, interactivity and imagination. From Pixar’s conclusion to its magnificent animated trilogy, Toy Story 3.
I don’t think many people have a very good understanding of leisure and the importance it plays in our lives. — Jack Nicholson, Actor
It’s funny. As kids, you’re expected and even encouraged to play, have fun and discover the world around you. You grow up, and you’re told to be serious. You learn to stiffen up, say nothing (unless it’s something to be repeated), and generally discouraged from thinking outside of the box. Sometimes, employers even want you to be ‘creative’ while still working within those same set of rules. How absurd!
Is it really possible to work in a creativity factory? In Gene Wilder’s Chocolate factory, you can. From Mel Stuart’s 1971 classic, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
I used to have a “serious” job — economics, accounting and finance – working with numbers dealing with clients and accounts that sometimes tallied in the hundreds of millions of dollars. I’ve seen the inside of the big-banks, dined in multi-million estates and even sat in the odd supercar. Honestly, it was all kinda silly. Not only did a lot of the day-to-day feel monotonous and unfulfilling, not much of it was any fun — neither the work, nor the people (even though there are good people in those fields). Money and material accumulation never turns out to be the grand (or comforting) reward it’s promised to be. It’s alarming how so many people still think so.
Alec Baldwin’s brilliant speech, from David Mamet’s marvelous screenplay-turned movie Glengarry Glen Ross, make this one of the greatest scenes in modern film history. Jobs that deal primarily with money are typically accompanied by big time personal and social-emotional stress — stress that typically brings out the very worst in people. (Warning: This scene contains strong coarse language)
The working artist has its own challenges, and working in animation, dealing continuously with deadlines and quota can be immeasurably difficult and discouraging. If you’re unlucky enough to be “stuck” at a sweatshop-type environment you really have to think twice about your vocational longevity or the career itself. Although it’ll never be as crazy as being a stockbroker glued to the screen obsessing over every half a percentage drop in the stock price, or as crappy as working at the dumpsters in a landfill, jobs in animation can lose their fun and sustainability. It’s up to you to stay awake and be aware of the on-goings of your situation. You’ve got to remember why you’re here and assess your level of happiness. In other words, you have to ensure, that in at least some way, somehow, you’re still able to sneak in the fun into your everyday work and after-work existence.
Two geniuses who brought fun to the work they did and fun to the whole world. Chuck Jones sits here with Ted “Dr. Seuss” Geisel during the production of “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!”
Working in cartoons, video games and special effects always sounds more exhilarating than it really is. To be successful at it, you must have passion, competence, and professionalism. Those latter two areas can often prove very serious — sometimes too serious. As is often mentioned in this blog, animation artists are not unlike professional athletes or medical doctors (even if they don’t receive the same kind of compensation) — they need to continually stay on top of their skills and their development. This requires a commitment to practice and to continued learning. The practice is necessary. The learning is fun. This ‘fun’ is what sustains all craftsmen in any creative field.
Andrea Blasich is a sculptor continually devoted to his craft. Andrea has contributed to numerous animated projects, including working for major studios such as Blue Sky, Dreamworks, Pixar and Walt Disney. He’s seen here making a sculpt for Tonko House, a new animation studio founded by friends, Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo. To see more of the artist’s work, go here.
If you’re working in this field already, chances are you have the aptitude. This means you probably like what you do because people tend to like what they’re good at. This is the kind of common sense that people forget or take for granted. And if you’re good at something, your job is to get EVEN BETTER at it. Make something of it because, other people, who might like to do what you’re doing but can’t, would sign a deal with the devil to change places with you. I’m not kidding here.
“Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.” – Voltaire
An old classmate (who was practically a certified genius) I went to school with a long time ago used to say to everyone “he’d give away all his smarts” if he could draw like me. It was a bizarre compliment to receive, and I didn’t know what to make of it at the time (I didn’t and still don’t think I was that good.) But I found out that he recently told his cousin (who’s a close friend of mine) that he still feels the same way, even as he’s driving his $100,000 BMW, working as a partner in a prestigious law firm. I suppose it’d be alright to enjoy this kind of financial comfort (or at least some of the security), but alas, we’re not all meant to end up in the same place. It’s a privilege to be a working artist and it’s one that I’m very grateful for.
Frédéric Back, one of my “heroes” in the animation world, was determined to do what he was meant to do – present a message to people around the world about the importance of preserving our environment. His films, like Crac! and The Man Who Planted Trees, were both recipients of an Academy Award from Hollywood. He was also an animal rights activist, a vegetarian and was awarded the Governor General’s award for lifetime achievement in his home country of Canada. Back truly believed in what he was doing everyday and lived in a way that honored those beliefs.
There is a lot of uncertainty being an artist and financial insecurity is rarely a complication that’s not periodically on the artist’s mind. Survival is instinctual and necessary before we can do anything else. As creatives, our only solace comes from the work that we do and how we do it. Yes, the world can be incredibly cruel to artists — history has proven that — but time and time again, artists find a way to say their say regardless of how they are treated.
Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest inventors in human history. Jane Alcorn, president of the Tesla Science Center, stated “Tesla did what he did for the betterment of humanity, to help people have a better quality of life.” Tesla gave his whole life to scientific discovery including advances in lasers, x-rays, radar, etc. Tesla Motors, Elon Musk’s electric car company, is named after the visionary inventor who unfortunately died penniless.
Legendary talents and cultural giants like Oscar Wilde, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Vermeer, Egon Schiele, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, William Blake and Herman Melville, among others, all died poor and even unrecognized during their lifetime. Their struggles didn’t stop them from doing what they were meant to do. Only death was able to do that. Their names live on because of the significant and lasting contributions they made to humanity. Artists today don’t live with half the discomfort and troubles that these creators had. In fact, most people today (in the western hemisphere at least) live with far greater security and access to opportunity than ever before. Plainly speaking, our excuse for not making the most of our skills, and of ourselves, is rather weak.
“An artist must never be a prisoner… (he) should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success…” — Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was one of the most inventive and playful artists in history. In the last decade of his life, Matisse focused on painting guoache onto hand cut paper. He described the process of making them as both “cutting directly into color” and “drawing with scissors.”
In my own hopes, I ask myself what am I here for? And how can I best serve this universe before my own days are up? Service and fun go together. We have to get serious about making our art because we make our contribution to humanity thru play.
“If music be the food of love, play on.” — William Shakespeare