Learning curve
From trench coat to stripy jumper: Stephan honed his cartoon skills with Inspector Gadget and Waldo “This is a good example of my cartoon roots, from Disney to Frankin and Wasterlin. I’ve always enjoyed drawing in this style while I was very young and later in art school. I was 31 years old when I did this. Classic pencil and ink, comic book style.
“I wasn’t always that comfortable. I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to practise cartoon extensively, in fact, my first job was working on the animated series Inspector Gadget in Japan when I was 20, right after animation school, that gave me the opportunity to get better at it. The style for Inspector Gadget wasn’t as crazy as the Waldo comic strips, but it got me to draw constantly and hone my skills.
“The Where is Waldo strip gave me the opportunity to go totally nuts with the style. I was doing a strip a week for four years, It was a great experience.” Japan.’ It took me about two seconds to say yes. Even though I had no passport.”
With his documents fast-tracked, the artist found himself in Tokyo, working for DIC Entertainment’s Asian department, on its new title, Inspector Gadget. “You might remember, for that company Inspector Gadget became huge,” he says. “That was the first time a French company was trying to reach the American market. It did. It was made in Japan, and it was cheaper and better than Scooby-Doo, which was ruling the roost in the US at the time. So the TV networks were like ‘ Wow, this is a turning point in animation on TV.’ We did it so
March 2015