Lessons from Jim Feeley, Animator and Character Designer
Hi, wonderful listeners welcome to episode four of the creation stories podcast, and our first episode of the new year. Today I'm here with another visual artist, Jim Feeley, whose work as an animator can be seen on American Dad and Big Mouth. Jim started his work as a character designer after transitioning from a business role, and he talks about how he went through that transition and learned animation along the way.
Below is the full transcript that I encourage you to check out, and we’ll share some of our learnings over our newsletter which you can subscribe to online.
Full Interview Transcript:
Jack: Hi, wonderful listeners welcome to episode four of the creation stories podcast, and our first episode of the new year. Today I'm here with another visual artist, Jim Feeley, whose work as an animator can be seen on American Dad and Big Mouth. Jim started his work as a character designer after transitioning from a business role, and he talks about how he went through that transition and learned animation along the way
if you liked this episode, I really encourage you to check us out online, where we have write-ups with creative exercises atwww.creationstoriesmedia.com, and to give us a review on Apple or Spotify, which helps us improve our content.
Thanks as always for listening and let's get into the show.
Jack: So I'll, I'll start first with, so I read in this interview with Interlochen that originally you had studied English literature, and drawing was always something on the side. Before we got thinking into the work side, what were you drawing when it was just drawing for yourself?
What were the kinds of things that you like to draw?
Jim: Well it started with doodle margins and I mean, if we're really going back I was the kid in class that I guess showed some talent at a young age. I went to Catholic school. So in third grade there we're going to decorate the hallway. And I was the kid that got pulled out of class, whatever it was, social studies or science to go design the hallway with construction paper and do the stations of the cross for all you Catholics out there is the. During lent, they decorate these Catholic schools and stuff.
So
Jack: ah, Decorate the stations of the cross of that's brutal scenery for third grade
Jim: no, but it was, I loved it. It was soldiers and lots of Jesus, obviously every station. I remember getting pulled out of class to do that. It was pretty fun. So that's not why I did art, but that I as a young kid really identified, I guess, as the kid in the class, who had a talent.
And art was a class in the same way that, like I said, social studies or history was, it was every day and we also had music class. So it was always just another subject, just one that I happened to be good at. And then when I got into high school and some of the classes were pretty standard.
I would search elsewhere. So what was I doing at the time? Well, drawing and painting and sculpting was your traditional stuff. But then I would seek out classes at the community center and , I was the one 11 year old with a bunch of old ladies doing sand coloring, sand and jars, and paper cut out stuff and doilies crafts, you know, and then airbrushing was coming on is like the new medium, the cool medium back in 1987.
And so I went to the community college and I did airbrushing class and so I was always looking for any outlet to, in any medium. I loved it all. And
Jack: That's great. I can imagine that the the kid in the airbrushing class with the old ladies in the community center
Jim: The airbrushing class I was a freshman in high school. So 13 and that was college kids. Cause this was a medium I mean the community center was all the crafty stuff. And then when I got into high school, I started going out to the college kids, now I thought I had arrived. I was pretty cool, you know, in class with college kids. But airbrushing was just like blew my mind. You got the compressor, the airbrush itself, the hose all the materials were all like high tech and what you can do with, it was, next level right. Now all these things you can do in Photoshop, but that was pretty wild
Jack: So how did it start, thinking in terms of turning into something you would actually do for work, I understand that it kind of happened by almost if by accident is the right word
Jim: I mean you create your own accidents I guess. When I was applying to college
how do you get into college? Well, you talk up all your, your strongest assets and contributions. How are you going to be a a contributing student to their university? Right. So I targeted all the art programs of these schools out east that weren't known for art, but art school wasn't even on the radar.
My dad was an ad guy and it was a creative. He himself wasn't a creative at the time. Now he's a painter, but he was an account executive, but advertising was a creative industry. And so visiting dad at work he would always, introduce me to the, the art department guys.
And I thought they were cool and he had all their work hanging in his office. And so however, from my career and the way I imagined post-graduate opportunities were never artistic. I was going to go into marketing or legal. I was more confused as a kid to even know what career opportunities were out there, but art wasn't one of them however, I knew that I could use that to leverage maybe just to set me aside and apart in my college application process.
So I targeted all the art departments like at Dartmouth and Boston College. When I got into college I continued to take every class they offered and I continued along that path creatively, but still not targeting and focusing my my time towards a creative career.
It's just something that I enjoy doing, this is kind of what I am asked to talk to young artists and students and stuff. This is the advice that I give them is do art because you love it. Even if you are already decided you want to be an artist, a professional , explore all sorts of creative outlets, , writing , music, whatever, that gets your brain going.
Because for me, I actually started off as an economics major trudging off to learn about rent and debt ceilings. And my brain needed something else. And I, so I love just packing up my canvases and putting in the four hours into an art class.
, it gave me that, that therapy, you know, to now going to study in a lab or something. So by accident. Yeah, but I was driving in that direction the whole time.
Jack: So you were in school taking a bunch of these classes.
Then how did it start to turn into work you were doing it started when you were working , on a show and then you we're doing some drawing, or were you drawing something else? And then the show kind of, you know, someone reached out to you from TV who thought, Hey, you might be a good at doing animation.
Jim: That's fast forward. A
Jack: few years.
Jim: No, I mean, no, we'll get there. So I when I was at school in Boston, I took an internship at an animation studio and it obviously put me in that world, but I was and then they hired me out of college. But I was the suit. I was the producer. I was managing schedules and budgets
, I want to be in the business now. I've decided I want to be in the creative business, but I still thought of myself as the guy going to the meetings, not going to the set. And so that put me in the world. I made lots of contacts with creatives and one of them was a gal who was directing for the Simpsons who's doing a commercials for Marshall's we were doing Marshall's commercials that had this animated character called Marsha. She was doing this from LA FedExing all her scenes to Boston. I mean, back in the day, it was hand shot in camera and she would come out occasionally and she had, she had, I mean, Boston and the studio is where she got her start and she is a Harvard gal who hung out with all the Lampoon people, and she was awesome she had a new show that when I decided to go out to LA she hired me on and I was still on the production side, meeting new artists and then she put me in with the design team. And I got to know how that world worked.
The television world I had come from, we were doing commercials and like little interstitials in Boston and really creative, cool stuff, stop motion stuff. But now I was in the 2d television world working at the same studio that the Simpsons and king of the hill. The studio is called the film Roman.
So I would walk through the Simpsons bullpen and it was like a museum to be in that world. And see, I mean, every cubicle is just like ladden with these toy collections before like McFarlane toys had like made an industry out of that, but you had to search high and low to get these cool toys.
But anyway, again, seeding this ultimate switch to the creative was being in and just falling in love with this, these creative worlds that I kept surrounding myself and, so crossing from production to creative was really just a matter of, and I've told this, you probably read the story.
So forgive me for being redundant, but the studio had like weekly life drawing workshops. They weren't taught. It was just a bunch of professional artists getting together and with a live model and you workshopped for an hour and then you went home.
There was no teacher. There's just a, although no teacher except 15 professional artists sitting to the left and right of me who would come over and be like, Hey, that's pretty good. ,think about it this way. And so I actually was getting some incredible instruction. But what also came out of that is some of these people saw and said, Hey, you've got talent.
Why are you? Why aren't you? Are you cause a lot of in LA. Every PA is a, that doesn't mean they want to be a producer a lot of times. It means they got job at the studio, and this is your future, writer. This is your future director. Everyone starts as a production assistant.
And so a lot of people asked if I was, you know Tried to get a job as an animator. And it didn't even really occur to me. I didn't have the training. All these guys went to art school to learn how to animate animating is not something you just drop in to doing it's however, design that's something I had an eye for and character design, especially.
And I got to know. A lot of those guys and gals one in particular who still one of my great friends Bill Schwab, he designs for Disney feature now showed me like, okay. Here's yeah, for animation, when you're drawing or designing, how to think about it, volumetrically cause these characters need to animate and move rather than just drawing a cool character.
It's gotta be drawn designed for animation. And so he bridged that gap for me, between being just I wouldn't say necessarily good, but proficient in, you know drawing anatomy to drawing anatomically for animation. And then I started from there. He started letting me clean up some of his designs.
So in animation, it's kind of like comic books where you have the rough design and then you have usually an assigned apprentice artist who's a clean-up artist who traces the design with the final what would be an inclined on the show in particular that we were working on. Now it's a digital, like vector line
or there's no line, maybe it's a self color kind of thing. But so I was doing cleanup work and now I was holding a brush every day. From there I was on the path to being a character designer.
Jack: I have a couple of questions on it. The first one would be, was part of that also just being a bit worried about like, could I actually make money if I were to be an artist? Was that kind of why you're like, okay, I can stay around that interest, but actually have a job rather than just trying to make it work from, from the art standpoint, or maybe you didn't know where to start.
Was that something that you considered?
Jim: To be honest, I, I can't really put my I've thought about this often why, when I was growing up a career in art wasn't even on the table. It just wasn't even on my radar I look at now the paths of a lot of my peers who just in high school, like a good friend of mine, Rodney Clouden
and who's a director that I've worked with at a number of shows. He went to a technical art high school.
. I knew that I loved it, but he was already like, I'm going to be an animator or a comic book artist, or why that was not on the radar n I was too young to think money was, would have been, and I don't know the world I grew up in, although creative
It just, for some reason, it, it wasn't something that I, I imagined. A horrible answer, but the answer is I've always asked myself that I don't know. I don't know why.
No, it wasn't money.
Jack: No, that's interesting. Cause I think a lot of people also have that too. Obviously sometimes it's money when you're in college and you're seeing other friends getting jobs. But I think this is interesting too, when you're just saying, you know, you just didn't see that path or you're in Traverse City, Michigan versus in New York or LA, it's a bit different.
I'm curious on the second part, if you look at the path of some of those friends, would you change the experience of first starting from the business side and seeing how the business side worked before going to the art? Or would you rather have just like jumped right into the, to the art world?
I mean, to, to say I would've done something differently. I suggest that or admit that I made bad decisions. Although honestly I see advantages of having done it my way, although obviously would have had a quicker path to where I'm at.
But I'm here and okay. I'm not Brad Bird, but we all find our place in the industry. But what I do feel is that it's kind of the whole, I went to a liberal arts, it's more well-rounded citizen perspective. And by the way being a professional artist you need to be in the business of art and to be able to manage and negotiate your own contracts. I don't have an agent. Some people do. I mean, there are so many intangibles, just, What is your work ethic? Do you show up, are deadlines important these are all things that I don't want to take away from someone who went to art school and I think there's even classes, like when you go to art school, they teach it.
Jim: I feel just the path it has put me on, it's worked out for me, I guess in short no I wouldn't change.
Jack: I imagine to your point, the one reason I was asking that is obviously when you're animating, I'm sure you have a bunch of other artists with you in the bullpen. You have the writers, you have the producers, you have the voice actors, like all of these different stakeholders that you're working with.
And I imagine there, there may be some advantage to going in your path and having been in the other person's seat at another point. So you know their expectations.
Jim: Well, even
Traverse city and kind of about nine years ago and that move took me out of the, the physical studio space,
which kind of locked me into, what I'm able to do in this industry now. I mean, within reason. When I was in LA . And this is not uncommon. This is more common is that people are still malleable in their contribution to the production in some way in, or their career is, is always evolving in some way.
So at the time I had just sold and I produced a presentation, a pilot for Fox, which was two years of writing, directing, and pitching and doing that whole world. And having some successes, having some .Failures Storyboarded on a number of shows. And wanted to see if that's something that appeal to my interests, talents, schedule all that stuff. So I think the path is one thing, but we're still always on a path or at least I was more so until I moved to Michigan. And that's kinda hamstrung , my ability to walk into the collaborators room and start pitching ideas. Hey, wouldn't it be great, let's do this.
And then got to go and pitch those ideas to a studio executive or at the time this is pre Netflix. This is pre streaming and so we were still pitching in that networks, but now, I mean, there's so much content and I have a lot of friends who have and still continue to not just be a one tool artist . And that's what I was doing a lot more of before I moved to Michigan.
Jack: Since you've moved to Michigan, it's been more focused like you're working with shows on specific asks is that how it works? And this is just a side curiosity on, is it more prescriptive? Like Hey Jim, can you work on this exact thing?
Jim: What's happened is I've pretty much when I moved here, I've since pretty much limited my focus to character design, as opposed to developing show development.
Other aspects like storyboard, the storyboarding route was taking me on the path to directing and that's all these avenues I could've and may have, or I might've resigned to character designer, which in the end it's still my favorite part of the production. But by doing that I've Opened up the ability to work remotely.
And that opened up a lot of hours in my schedule to take on a lot more projects. And so, whereas I'm still doing the one job character design I'm working on a lot more projects than I would have.
So character design there are a lot of different parts of the job, depending on what stage project you're involved with.
I do a lot of visual development, character design for projects that don't exist yet. So it's basically can you design the style of what the characters are gonna look like in our show? You know, it's a writer, usually who's coming to me and saying, I've got a show idea all the way from that, which is just a blank paper and start, give me whatever idea you want to the 16 season of American dad that I'm still working on. The style set we're on our 300 and whatever episode, and you get the script that script has these new characters that need to be designed. And we need to put Roger in a new persona all the way to put, you know, put a pair of gloves on Stan. So there's a gamut .
Jack: That's a super interesting when you're starting with the, let's go through to the white page kind of blank check. How do you source inspiration? Is it through reading the material? Do they give you some idea of how it looks in their mind?
Or how do you come up with something that's, like kind of getting a blank assignment in school where it's like, go do whatever.
Jim: Sure. Yeah. Obviously the first creative step is the discussion with the developer, the writer, in most cases whoever came to me and said, this is my show.
It's not mine. They wrote this cast of characters that exist in this certain world that encounter these certain hi-jinks. And these characters could be organic, they could be mechanical, it could be human, they could be creature. And so we talk it out and I get a sense of what they want, , I want to appeal to what their vision is for their show and
then I obviously bring my experience, knowing what will work for that vision. So is this a kid's show? Is this an adult swim indie kind of animation? Or is this like going to go on sunday night Fox, this is a prime time show for demographic 18 to 34.
I actually worked on a project with Brad Neely called 18 to 34. I mean, he was basically breaking the fourth wall and saying I'm just going to call it what it is, what all these shows are. And then I just start vomiting every bad idea, good idea on to a page with no filter, like I, I have no problem sending a really bad drawing because at that stage, it's just getting ideas out and starting now a visual conversation.
And in a lot of times, Someone will see something that in one of those sketches that maybe I hadn't even intended by drawing. And they'll say, I really think it's a great idea that this guy was missing a leg and I'm thinking I didn't intend to draw.
And now he's written this character, this one leg, character , but that is the epitome of the creative process, you know?
Jack: Do you ever have a drawing block where you're like, okay, you've had this conversation and you're still don't really know where to start.
Jim: I would say every time I start, I have that fear. However I would say I don't want to curse it, but every time I also surprise myself once I get drawing. It's just letting it flow. Right. And so back when I was actually working on a sketchbook now I'll do everything digitally there was a project that was kangaroos. Right. And I started drawing kangaroos and , a lot of times they're really bad drawings or I thought it was a great drawing, you know, and I turned the page because I can't just turn in one, say I did it here it is. I want to explore, you know, different shapes and ideas. And sketchbooks force you to flip a page, right? And so now I'm six pages, deep of thumbnails. And this was almost always the case. I would go back to my first page. And like, that was what you were the, the question was, you know, are you, do you have drawing block
like that was, I needed to work through that bad design, that bad first page and that bad second page, but it got the visual kinda language started , it evolved and it arrived at a place I'm happy with that, but I know I've always got a breakthrough by just drawing
Really, if you just sit and I guess if the same would be how they tell writers to write every day journal, just cause you gotta be doing it. Rather than sitting down to write your masterpiece, everything's going to come with rough drafts.
Jack: That's great. It's interesting to hear how many parallels there are just because it's, I'm less familiar of course, with doing the art or animation. Are there any other kind of habits or practices, maybe little rituals you do to like put you in that zone to get ready?
Jim: Yeah, it was really not. I read or, or watch these kinds of interviews artists talking about how they will do something every morning, start off with, sketch. There's this guy, Pascal Campion, who is a visual development artist who, and the animator who's the most prolific animation, blogger.
And he posts his daily warmups sketch, and these are masterpieces . And I always think they can only be masterpieces because he does it every day. And then he goes off to Fox or Sony or whoever is working for at the time does the production work, but, I don't do that.
Of course I do other work outside network art outside of What's asked of me , in my job, but I don't use it as like warm up though.
Jack: Is it more just for your personal enjoyment a mind cleanse rather than it being like, oh, I'm going to later try and sell this into something, you know,
Jim: never sell it.
This is going to unfortunately, sound less glamorous than maybe you had mind, but a birthday card for my buddy or , my kid or you know, my wife wanted me to do a portrait of all the kids. Honestly a lot of times it's like, it's kinda like a bit of a A heavy kind of weight to be like, oh, I got it.
I got it. Cause I can't just, I can't just do a crappy sketch. A good buddy of mine, he does the best birthday card drawings 'cause he doesn't give a shit. I feel like if I put something bad down, someone's going to be like, geez, I thought this guy was so the creative process should tell you, you shouldn't care. about if it was good or not. Right. But I do feel that responsibility sometimes. And because of that, if someone says, Hey, can you do this birthday card for my dad or something? I'll be like, all right, this will take me three hours because I got to do a sketch. I got to do a clean up, I gotta do.
The guy is telling you abouthe'll be like sure. And just get a Sharpie and just do something. And it's always funny. It's always it's just awesome. That's a discipline though.
Jack: Yeah. I would have a really hard time not to be perfectionist about these things.
I saw that you did some classes also that you've done some teaching in the past. Curious if there's advice, obviously you're focused a lot on the technical side, but maybe you talked also about these talks with other artists, some advice that you often find yourself going back to and giving besides some that you mentioned earlier.
Jim: Honestly, I, I generally don't focus much on the technical side. It's more about breaking down the expectations of what it is to Create a work of art very much in the same vein is what I was just talking about the birthday car or what I was talking about before with the process of starting design or look or picture or whatever.
I do this a lot with my kids. I have a 15, 13, and nine-year-old and one of my favorite inventions that you can find at toys R us is that it's not an Etch-A-Sketch, but it's a, it's kind of the same, like magnetic kind of whatever creates the. When you touch the tip of the pen, it creates a line magnetically.
It's a gray on a white background, and then you can you draw it. And then at the bottom, there's a slider that just erases. And the idea is that we've hit on this a couple times in this conversation, is that I can't, so this is how I approach it. I can't sit down and do a a final or a master drawing.
And a lot of what animators are taught, you know, we do 15 second, 30 second life drawing poses. You're just, you're getting it out there and then you gotta move on and you don't fall in love with that sketch you move on to the next one. This is the training that when I do in classes is we do a lot of this stuff, a lot of workshop stuff training you to just get your ideas out on paper. Roughly, and again, if it's a birthday card and I got to hand this off to someone, it won't make sense, but when it's, when it's me approaching my work, it does make sense. Cause I know the person, the eyeballs looking at this are going to understand that these are ideas and really art is about ideas.
If you're writing, if you're creating a composition a piano if you are Marcel Duchamp who puts a a Urinal and science name to it. That was an idea that he had. I mean, that's what art is and it's getting your ideas out without inhibition. That is I think what makes a great animator artists.
And by the way, if you have talent for any of this stuff whether it be writing or composing music that will always take hold of what you're doing. That's one of my favorite stories is probably was my buddy, Dave Filoni, who is now over at Lucas directing pretty much everything star wars. Now he's going to be charged with that brand. but he was directing on the show called mission hill that I was working with him on at Film Roman and the president of the studio came into his office and said, I've got an auditorium full of college kids
I need someone to come and just talk to them and kind of like we are now, give them some inspiration. And Dave was not the office to walk into because he was a serious professional who was buried in his work and his mind was in the work he was doing and by the way, you got to speak to an auditorium full of people without having prepared anything
he thought it was the biggest insult for this guy to kind of flex his power, to say, I need you to go in there and do that for me because I'm your boss. And and so as kind of an F you to his guy, he walked into the auditorium and he said to this group of kids work hard, have talent. Then he walked off the stage and I learned more from those four words than pretty much anything.
And I, I hope those kids did too, because ultimately we're professionals in an industry, you got to have the talent. But then you got to work really, really hard.
Jack: Oh, that's great. I love that can imagine being in that class. This is super helpful and also super interesting for me.
Thank you so much for the time, Jim.
Jack: Thanks again to Jim Feeley for joining us. And thank you, the listeners for engaging with us along the way. Stay tuned for next week's episode, which features an incredibly creative voice, and as always check us out on www.creationstoriesmedia.com thanks to coma media, whose music is licensed under creative comments for this podcast.
And as always feel free to check out our stories and reviews online at the same website.
