Channel Frederator Blog

Matthew I. Jenkins Interview!

December 9th, 2006

Many of you may know the very talented Matthew I. Jenkins from seeing his character design work on “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”, “The Brak Show”, and “The Venture Brothers” just to name a few. I recently got the chance to interview Matt about his work. Enjoy!

( !!WARNING!! INTERVIEW IS EXTREMELY LONG AND ENJOYABLE! )

note-images do not necessarily correspond with the questions.

Tell us a little bit about yourself
I’m from Jacksonville, Florida. As soon as I was 18 I “got out of Dodge” and moved to Georgia to attend college at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I studied to be an illustrator but never found my groove in that major. At the end of my junior year I heard about a brand new major at S.C.A.D. called Sequential Art. I had always wanted to draw comic books for a living, a dream I had since about the tenth grade, when I was also heavy into collecting comics. It was a little late to transfer into a new major, but somehow I sweet-talked the right person in Admissions who transferred three class-credits from Illustration to my new major, and wallah! –I was in the Sequential Art major. So, I spent my senior year drawing pages and pages of comic book art – all terrible! But it was a much-needed exercise. I was always pretty good at life drawing, but drawing poses at any angle from your head was a different thing altogether, and I got a lot of practice. So, it was a good thing in the long run that I was able to switch majors. I graduated with an honor of ‘outstanding achievement’, mainly because I had improved so much, going from horrible to not-so-horrible. It would be years later that I felt any of my art was worth showing, but there was progress. At this time, I never even thought about animation as a career. I was very stressed when I graduated because my student loans were due and I had to start paying a whopping $300 a month! At that time to me it might as well have been $1300. So, not knowing what to do, I searched for an internship that paid any money at all. I applied to the only two I found, and after a couple of interviews, I managed to get picked as one of three interns at a company in Atlanta that paid, I think, $5.50 an hour, to do mainly character design for an educational CD ROM game. It was for ten weeks. During this time we had received animation back from a company in North Carolina that looked unsatisfactory. The bosses started commissioning every available freelance animator in Atlanta that they could find, which in 1995 was about 4 animators, to re-do what was needed. They hired a guy named Joe Peery (now of Turner Studios) to oversee the animation production, who eventually trained me and a guy named Les Harper, Jr. (now of Harvey Birdman) in the basics of animating. This was my introduction into the world of animation and it’s been a roller-coaster ride ever since. Man, Les and I were doing some truly horrible stuff at that time! We were also inspired by what we were seeing the experienced animators do. And when I saw my drawings move and speak and act, I was hooked. And then, not too long afterward, I got lucky enough to see a little movie called Frank and Ollie in the movie theater, and it was after that, that I decided to be an animator and give up my dreams to be a comic book artist (I just didn’t have the right stuff at that time to draw comics professionally, but luckily, years later, animation brought me back to comics, and now I freelance for DC’s kids comics), but also because I saw a new dream, something that could make me just as happy. And, the rest was history. Years later, I was very fortunate to take a weekend master class with Richard Williams. Most everyone knows how cool his book is, and the class was just like that, but also filled with never before seen footage of old Art Babbitt work, or Ken Harris, and of course Dick’s crazy stories of Milt Kahl or Vincent Price or Steven Spielberg. I have to say that his class was indispensable for my animation education. So much so that I went back a couple of years later and took it again, this time for a week in Denmark. But that’s a whole other interview right there!

Why do you do what you do?
I do what I do for one, because I’m a natural at it. That is, I’ve always been drawing, as far as I can remember. Once, when I was three or four years old, we had a couch in the living room, an awful ‘70s style, white couch covered in a design of flowers, and I when my mother wasn’t looking, I drew faces in all the flowers with a magic marker! My mother never let me forget that, but as the story goes, it wasn’t too bad since the couch was repossessed not too much later. Now, I do what I do because I’m striving to find a situation that will challenge all of my skill sets and allow me to be as creative as I can be (something I’ve found only a couple of times in my career). A job like that is difficult to find. I’m not satisfied doing just one job for too long. I really enjoy the whole process of animation production, and am working to create a situation where I can oversee each phase of production. Right now, I only get this satisfaction from working on my side projects.

What is a typical day like for you?
A typical day for me, here in New York City, I get up and drink coffee while reading the internet news, usually until it’s very late and then I rush to shower and get ready to get to work around 10 a.m. Sometimes I get caught up in “blogging” in the mornings, either reading or posting. I freelance around town, currently at MTV animation. I work until quittin’ time (7pm), and then I usually go home and start working on my own stuff, after dinner. I can be quite the workaholic, especially lately. I usually work over the weekend. It really isn’t work if you have fun doing it. It’s just a blurry line though when you make cartoons during the day and then draw and make cartoons until you go to bed. I’ve been very inspired lately. I try to make time for getting out in the city and making sure I make time for inspiration that comes from not “working”, and this is the best city to do just that. Then I brush my teeth and go to bed.

How long have you been doing animation/character designs for?
My first animation of course, was always done in the lining of old books. You know, those awesome little “films” that usually involved a car jumping a ramp and either making it or crashing, a shark chasing a guy in a car, or sometimes the stick figure canon fight. We used to make tons of those. I didn’t study or do any animation until I was in the field, as I mentioned earlier, the summer after I graduated from college in 1995. I had done some of my first character animation then, and other than lip-synching, it was pretty bad stuff, really laughable. But I quickly found work as an animation inker, which paid pretty well. And I trained for about a year as an inker and pencil finisher, mostly in the commercial animation world.
I worked up to animation assistant and started working with good character drawings and timing charts and also got to do some of my first effects animation. By 1998 I was working full time as a character animator and director of commercials, mostly for Cartoon Network, with a company called Primal Screen. Later, around 2000, I left to freelance and have been doing that ever since, making animation of all types whether it’s for a show or a commercial or a children’s educational show for DVD. As for doing character design, well I think I’ve been doing that since I could hold a pencil, or crayon. I can remember drawing the Hulk and Spiderman, and Superman as early as five. I always drew. In my younger teens, I and other artistic friends would make up our own super-villains and super-heroes on notebook paper with a little description of their superpowers. I’ve always drawn different characters. Like many comic-book hopefuls I always attempted my own versions of the greats. However, I never did anything for money until that very first internship. I did a lot of character design then, but really not too many after that until years later when I got to Primal Screen. The work I did at that time combined with the work that I did at a company called Big Deal Cartoons allowed me to mature as an artist and paved the way to what I consider to really be the beginning of my career as a character designer. This was the year 2000, when I created character design and animation for two pilots soon to be aired on Cartoon Network called The Aqua Teen Hunger Force and The Brak Show.

What got you into animation/character designing?
Ultimately, I fell into animation and character designing. I couldn’t avoid it. You can tell by the story so far. I had no plan, and my first job was an internship that paid me to learn animation and then hired me when it was over to make more, and I’ve been getting paid to learn more about it ever since. I look back on it all and can see that it was there all along. I’ve always been a cartoonist of sorts. I used to make all kinds of different comics, drawings, cards, doodles. I once made a film strip, one of those static image projectors where you turn the big knob to advance the frame. Some how I had found a strip that was blank and drew tiny little pictures on them with colored sharpies and presented it with an audio cassette with me doing the voices. I used to read Mad Magazine into the cassette deck and then play it back while reading the story. I loved all the art from Mad Magazine for the differences in styles. I read every “How to Draw” book I could ever lay my hands on. I was obsessed with trees for a long time. I read every comic book I found. When I was a kid, we would frequently buy them from other kids, not comic shops. “Hey I got an old stack I’ll sell you for a dime apiece!” “Sure, I just traded in ten Coke bottles, here’s fifty cents!” I watched every cartoon I ever saw on television. I grew up on Looney Tunes every Saturday morning. One of my first memories is watching Scooby-Doo. I love HB. I absolutely loved the Superfriends. I liked it all, even the girl cartoons, when they started having lots of those. I didn’t really see the difference in any of the styles, wonderfully animated or crappy. I just liked them. So, I guess you could say I was destined to get into it.

When animating, what is your usual process?
This is a tough question, because it’s so broad of a question, simply because there are so many types of animation even within the 2-D realm. So, usually I figure out what style of animation fits the project. I’m classically trained, and have studied and used most of the traditional techniques, and try to fit some of that into everything I do. When I worked at Primal Screen, we were completely re-facing the network –replacing everything, and I directed many of the bumpers for the shows. I was very fortunate at that time to have animated a broad range of styles from Smurfs to Animaniacs, from Snorks to The New Adventures of Johnny Quest, from the Superfriends to Tom ‘n’ Jerry (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg). All are completely different and require different styles as well as different motion. Once you determine what it is you’re doing, the rest is pretty similar in approach to production. I work in passes, doing all of one thing in a broad sweep across the project (first the design, then boards, then keys, then animation, etc.) All of the above is condensed, but not necessarily different when approaching a Flash animated production. I might do a quicker version of each pass before moving on to the next thing, simply because Flash allows you to make changes so much later in the game than when animating on paper, but you’ll still save time doing your thinking up front. I’ve got a Cintiq that I use which has become indispensable. Combined with Flash, it is simply the coolest animation tool and is changing the industry.

When did you first get into doing character designs and animation for broadcast television? And How?
I first got into making animation for broadcast television (I’m going to include cable too) around 1996/1997 when I was asked to work on The Space Ghost Coast to Coast show as an assistant animator and clean-up artist. I had met C. Martin Croker (Clay) when I was a fledgling animator on that same job that I mentioned in the first question/answer. He was one of the animators hired to bail them out. I was really inspired by an envelope character he animated, but I guess he had taken notice of some of the work I had done over there, because I got a call out of the blue to come over to Big Deal Cartoons (his company) and do some work. There weren’t very many young animators in Atlanta at that time and I was able to take advantage of that in my early career. Working for Clay is a unique experience. The guy not only has more talent than most (after all these years he’s still at the top of the list) but also knows more about animation history than anyone I know. And, knows more about pop culture, and the weird world in general than anyone I know. So I soaked up everything he taught me and emulated his techniques, and became influenced by his influences, etc. Over the course of two years, I was able to help him more and more and improved quite a bit, and it was that experience that allowed me to move from an assistant for him, to a director of animation at Primal Screen, a big jump, but all I was doing was what I had seen him do countless times as an assistant. But the character design work came later. Fast forward a year or so into the Primal work, we were also making promos and interstitials, many featuring Space Ghost or Zorak and I was handling most of those jobs. I got most of the humanoid type characters too, and luckily the other directors had different tastes. After that, Cartoon Network wanted to make a show, which eventually became Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak, which I created the animation for about ninety percent of Brak and Zorak for the show. All this animation later evolved into the Brak Show. I became unhappy at Primal and left at the beginning of 2000, and the Brak Show followed me. I guess you could say that at that point was when I really started doing a lot of design for broadcast since I created a lot of the designs for the show (Brak’s Mom, Brak’s Dad, Thundercleese, etc.) The pilot for the Brak Show was my first big account, which I used to start my own animation company. I also got a call at that time from some guys about animating a meatball a French fry and a milkshake.

What are some projects that you have worked on?
I mentioned most of them already. Here’s a list:
-Space Ghost Coast to Coast
-The 1998 Cartoon Network Re-face
-Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak
-The Brak Show
-The Aqua Teen Hunger Force
-Squidbillies (Pilot)
-The Venture Brothers (season 2)
-Speed Racer (for a toy company’s DVD insert)
-Friday (what I’m currently working on at MTV)
-Oh, and I can’t forget:
The Aqua Teen Hunger Force Movie

What are some of the studios that you have worked for?
-Big Deal Cartoons
-Primal Screen
-Williams Street (Cartoon Network)
-Cartoon Network Online
-Turner
-Green Studios (Green Comics)
-Wild Hare Studios
-Funny Garbage
-Noodlesoup (now World Leaders Entertainment)
-Animagic
-MTV

What artists/animators do you feel have inspired you?
That would be divided between the greats, people from the classic cartoons and movies, and the people I’ve worked with over the years. In the beginning it was the greats, like all the artists on the original Warner Brothers cartoons, Tex Avery, Disney artists, etc. I’m only now getting into who did what in those early cartoons. I never paid attention when I was a kid to any of the names, and I never studied any of it in college, so to this day I can’t name drop along with most animators. I was very inspired by Bruce Timm’s Batman that came out when I was in college as well as Ren and Stimpy. In my later teen years it was mostly comic book artists. I use to love artists like John Byrne (though not anymore, but his older work was really nice) and of course the newer guys like Todd McFarlane, all the guys who had more of a painterly feel to the art. Used to love Eric Larsen, and also Sal Buscema’s Spiderman. I was way into Walt Simonson for a while. Years later I would get into Jack Kirby and was also discovering guys like Wally Wood (when trying to find out the influences of say, Bruce Timm). But I have been just as influenced by people I’ve worked with, for, or just been near: Clay Croker, Doug Grimmett, Michael Ouweleen, Dave Stranquest, Les Harper Jr., Richard Williams, Chris McCulloch, Chris George, Martin Wittig.

What helps you come up with new character designs?
Just about everything. Being alive and having all of my senses. It’s in my nature to study people, details, movement, attitude. I think everything, eventually, comes out in one’s designs. It’s all of you. The best thing is to have experiences, jobs, that teach you more about life. The jobs that drive you to design part of this world that you don’t already know are the best ones. When I think about the productions I’ve been involved with, most were like that. Most recently, the Venture Brothers was like that. Chris was always coming up with designs for things that I had never heard of, at all. I’d go Google them and sure enough, it existed. Like doing the design of the Klaus Nomi character, I thought, who’s that? I had no idea. That happened all throughout the season. It’s experience, practice, and imagination that fuel great design.

What was your favorite character/characters to design?
I’ve answered this before and it would have to start with Brak. Now I know I didn’t design him (Alex Toth did that) but he was re-designed for the BPBSSB production and I did most of that with help and instruction from Clay Croker, who had done a good deal of Brak design on the SGC2C as well as that other spin-off (Cartoon Planet?). But the new design made him much shorter and stockier. He’s always been one of my favorite characters. The next I would say is Carl of ATHF. I designed him straight out of my head, first shot, and the only change was adding the mustache. And, I’ve probably done the most animation of Carl than anyone on the planet. I love his character, and his design is quite a challenge to animate. Next comes Master Shake. His design was pretty simple, and I have to say it was almost complete when we started, but I worked on his final design. I’ve created many villains for ATHF that I love, Dr. Weird and Steve, Emory and Oglethorpe, the Leprechauns, Happy Time Harry, The Ringleader, Mucus Man, etc. And so many for the Brak Show too. Too many to name here, but I enjoy just about every character I get to design. It’s a real treat. Designing for the Venture Brothers (season 2) was just about the most challenging design job I’ve ever had.

What project did you have the most fun working on?
Well, I really enjoyed working at Primal Screen and making animation from script to screen. I was really challenged there and loved it for a while. I also had the most fun working on the two pilots, the Brak Show and ATHF. Just before that, I used to draw a Space Ghost Coast to Coast spin-off comic book put out by DC Comics. There was one issue where I got to draw the whole thing, twenty-two pages! That was a real dream come true, and I had a blast doing it. The Venture Brothers was one of my favorite experiences. I had fun everyday and it was cool to watch Chris run the production. It’s also a show that I’m really proud of, in the sense that it’s one of my favorite cartoons, even before I had any clue I’d work on it one day. Aside from the fun you have working with a great crew and sometimes, great friends, I have the most fun working on my own projects these days.

What shows or projects are you currently working on?
I’m working on Friday the animated series at MTV, based on the Friday movies starring Ice Cube and Chris Tucker. I’m in the layout department. We get the storyboard animatic files and make the keys of all the characters, with all their painted, Flash symbol parts, and get them ready for the animators. It can get pretty complex. Just like traditional animation that can get pretty complex with layers of your x-sheets, Flash is the same way but with vector art instead. I’m completely fascinated with Flash. It’s become a revolution in our industry. I think we’re only just starting to see the beginning of some of the best animation, simply because it’s become so much easier for any animator with talent to go from script to screen. There has never been a better time for independent film animators.

Are you currently working on any personal shorts?
I’m working on a project called Summer Camp of Death! It’s an animated parody of horror. Anyone can visit the site by going to http://www.summercampofdeath.com, although, it’s not for kids under, say, fourteen-ish. This is a show I’ve created that I’m pitching around these days. I’ve been coming up with shows and pitching them to networks since around 2001. It’s an uphill battle, but I think I come away from every meeting with something I’ve learned, which hopefully gets me a little closer each time. In this latest idea, I’ve stumbled onto something that I’m really having fun with, and it’s one of those things that I’m using all of my skills. I’ve made a couple of test movies. The first was to get a general impression, and it’s nothing more that a moving storyboard or animatic, but I really love it. The second is much farther along as far as exploring the look and feel, the mood of what I’m going for. I’m really happy with it, though like everything, it goes by so fast! I’ve created the world, the characters, the backgrounds, and the stories. I’ve even done the voices so far, but only as a temporary scratch-track. I’ve got a pilot I’ve written and gotten pretty decent feedback, positive feedback, from many different people. Now, I’m almost finished with a second script. I’ve had some real interest in the show from more than one network, but haven’t found the right home for the show yet (that’s a euphemism for getting turned down;). I’m still shopping it around, and in either case, am still producing more “webisodes” for fun. The new one I’m working on is a Friday the 13th inspired parody.

Out of which of your following talents do you feel you are most comfortable doing? Need most improvement in? Are most talented at? Like doing best? (Character Design, Animation, Comic Book illustrations, Life Drawing, Storyboards, Flash Animation)
I’m most comfortable doing character design, storyboards, animating, art directing, and directing animation. I need more improvement in script writing for animation and voice acting, though, I think I’ll always need improvement, want improvement, in all areas of production, otherwise, what’s the point? I don’t think there’s a point at which you, as an artist, level off. You should always be getting better and better as you get older and do different things. I like doing a little bit of everything the best. I’ve done so many different things over the course of my career that I’ve really gotten used to the variety, and it takes a variety of skills to make anything animated. I’d love to run a studio again. I look forward to a time when I can oversee a production and all its aspects. This is one reason why I love making independent films, which I plan to do more of. It takes forever, because there’s no budget and usually no one to help, but in the end, you have something to show, something for people to enjoy. That’s one of the things I like best about being a cartoonist and animator. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the freelance world in New York.