BD: How’d you get into this?

 

SM: I went to CSUN, knowing I wanted to be an artist. But in ’92 I was scared and wasn’t ready for a school like Art Center, for instance. The stars aligned, though, and during my time at CSUN, my core illustration teachers were from Art Center! They helped me get a solid understanding of illustration. One of my instructors could see how much I wanted to succeed and told me about another little school called California Art Institute, formerly known as Brandeis Art Institute on Reseda, started by a man named Fred Fixler. He came out of New York with great illustrators and founded his own school, west of Topanga in the hills. I entered the small school and was instantly blown away by the amazing charcoal studies of figures that hung on the walls. So I quickly signed up and studied on the weekends and at night while I earned my B.A. in illustration from CSUN.

 

I liked the idea of becoming an illustrator, but I had one particular teacher who was a working professional freelance illustrator doing movie posters and such, and he just hated it. I think I learned to dislike it as well based on his stories of the crazy deadlines. So I made the choice to enter Disney for two reasons: I have loved Disney animation my entire life and the security of knowing where and for how long I would be working. I grew up with modest means and just couldn’t see myself being poor for another five years while I established my brand. But how could I get into the biggest studios in the world? I was a student member of Society of Illustrators. I would volunteer and helped hang shows. Every month they would host a working illustrator who would share their stories of the industry and how they started. I lived for these events. Back in September of ’91, there was an artist named Terry Naughton speaking at the Pacific Design Center. He was creating magazine illustrations for Sports Illustrated. My MO was to be the last person in the room and help him carry all of his stuff back to his car so that when I called him in a month he’d remember who I was. I told him what I wanted to do and he said he was an animator, and I told him I didn’t want to be an animator. I tried animating while in high school and just knew, even though I loved it, it wasn’t for me. I wanted to be a layout artist and Terry said he didn’t know much about that department but would think of a way to help me out!

 

At the same time, I was also taking Bill Matthews’ class at CSUN. He was a recruiter for Disney. I was doing live action boards, which are very different from animation boards. And the lesson that I always tell my students is: Know who you’re interviewing with, make your work feel applicable to that person. I didn’t do that: It was a standard student book and had a few nice things, but it didn’t look like an animation book and it was devoid of emotion — just renderings from my illustration classes. So one night I decided to show him my book, hoping to get a job. He opened my book, got to the third page and slammed it shut. “You don’t know how to draw!” I was devastated, especially because I was set to graduate in four months. I went home and reworked my book over the next 24 hours, remembering my belief that we can work these hours if needed, and showed him again. But unfortunately he already made up his mind that I couldn’t draw! That was a blow and a huge life lesson! Thankfully, Terry came through for me and set up a meeting with a co-worker.  It turned out to be Bill Perkins [from the art department at Disney]. Bill had been the art director for Aladdin. Bill was awesome and gave me a ton of notes, but I promptly addressed every one of them and showed up a month later for another round. He endorsed me and ultimately, after I dropped his name to Bill Matthews, was hired into the layout department on The Lion King a couple months before graduating. What a crazy ride, but persistence will reward you back.

 

BD: And what was it like being there at the beginning of DreamWorks?

 

SM: Anyone who worked on The Prince of Egypt reminisces about how DreamWorks was like a renaissance of animation for us. The crew was very small by Disney standards. But all of us came from big studios world wide. We had so many countries represented at the studio and it made the experience wonderful. On POE, since the crew was so small, it was all hands on deck, which meant you could work across departments and do just about any job you wanted — as long as you didn’t fail at it! That almost never happens in the big studios. I was very fortunate to style most of the Red Sea sequence and even more fortunate to work side by side with some of the most talented artists ever.

 

After POE, I was an assistant art director on El Dorado. I was 27 and in hindsight, I feel I was too young to maneuver the management side of the job. And I was disillusioned with the show and my performance. That soured me for a few years to go back into management. I would work 100 hours a week honing my craft while working on many of the early films, before returning to art directing.

 

BD: You were on the cusp of CG at DreamWorks, so what was that like?

 

SM: I worked as an art director on Shark Tale. But since it was my first CG film, it was frustrating. Back then I was adamant about painting traditionally, as we had for years, and initially did not want to make the transition to digital painting. I was so new to the world of CG and Shark Tale was an amazing introduction and after that film I was much more comfortable dealing with digital films. That film set me up for the next chapter on my journey — how to bend the will of the computer toward more of an artistic expression. After Shark Tale, I was offered my first production designer role on Monsters vs. Aliens, but it was short lived. Though I helped initially style and greenlight the film, I ultimately decided to leave DreamWorks after 10 years. I was very interested in new opportunities and wanted to build a more efficient art department, which would include much more CG tool sets and new skills from a new generation of artists. This goal led me to work with Imagi, a small Chinese studio, who had just finished TMNT. The results were outstanding so I joined and finally realized my goals of creating a new art department. We had such amazing talent and did things faster than I thought possible because we were utilizing new methods and tools to get things done quickly.

 

BD: What do you think of CG now?

 

SM: It blows my mind what can be achieved with computers. And desite all the amazing results we have seen over the past 15 years, I feel the art form is just starting to realize some serious efforts. I love CG because it offers so much opportunity that hasn’t been tapped. But to bend the will of the computer and make it be something that’s more artistic is not an easy thing to do.