In the mid-1980s, I had a thought: “We animation people make humor for everyone else… How about something for us?”
I’d always had great respect for comic strip artists like Walt Kelly and Hank Ketcham, both of whom did stints at Disney Studio before they sold their strips. Ketcham was raising his kids, watching the trouble they got into and the brazen things they said. That kick-started Dennis the Menace. Kelly’s Pogo mirrored the political swamp he saw around him. I liked how they followed their interests and mined that humor, and I thought it was something I’d like to try.
My 9-to-5—and sometimes until 9 or 10—was the animation studio and its culture. I was considering leaving it for the comic strip world, but I was apprehensive about the constant pressure of the daily deadlines and if I could design a strip that would be successful enough to cover my financial obligations.
At that time, I was directing a TV special with The Family Circus characters, working closely with the comic strip’s creator Bil Keane. His background was making art and humor for newspapers, and when he was working on the special, he would knock out a gag panel or two before he came to work. I admired the dedication to his strip no matter what other obligations he had. Inspired, I pitched an idea of my own to The Pegboard, figuring that doing one strip a month for TAG’s newsletter would be a good way for me to test the waters.
Like many TV animators in those years, I had been asked to stop animating and instead write animation and camera instructions for overseas studios. People in my position were still directing, but we were called Sheet Timers. As I experienced or witnessed situations on the job, they found their way into my strip, Lou the Animator. Friendships formed, and along with mutual interests, we shared mutual gripes. Just like any team effort, there are lots of moments of fallibility. I think the humor in my strips comes from the real working relationships in the animation studio system—pointing out ironies, calling out hypocrisy, and just poking fun at situations.
Lou the Animator would run in The Pegboard for a decade. Since then, it’s become a kind of time capsule, illustrating various situations that have changed a lot for animators, as this strip shows.
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