Inspiration at every turn
The Filipino artist tells Gary Evans how he went from dead-end jobs to directing animated movies in five years
From TV programmes to advertising, find out what gets Louie del Carmen inspired to paint.
L ouie del Carmen hadn’t done any proper drawing for nearly a decade. The Filipino was living in Los Angeles. He bounced from one boring job to the next, a career detour, while he tried to work out what to do with himself. He eventually decided on animation. The problem was: he didn’t know if he could still draw, never mind draw professionally. As for animation, he’d never had any training in it.
Louie had completed a commercial art degree in Manila in 1985. Making money from drawing seemed impossible in those days. So he switched to computer programming. Soon after, he and his brothers decided to leave the Philippines for America.
“I found out quickly,” Louie says, “that, technologically, the standards in the US far outpaced my third-world education. That career detour was a period in which I was kind of in limbo. I needed to go back to school if was to make a go in computers, which was kind of deflating. I hadn’t even really considered returning to art, let alone animation.”
But Louie had connections. His brothers had started working in animation. Even if he could get a foot in the door, he had no work to show once he got there. So Louie spent two years working on his portfolio, then showed his work to Klasky Csupo.
Louie got a job at the animation company in 1995, started as a character designer, moved on to storyboards, and by 1999 was directing episodes of Rugrats and Rocket Power.
“That kind of growth can only happen if the environment is right,” he says, ”and Klasky Csupo, for all its
perceived weird studio style and non-traditional pedigree, was a very nurturing and supportive environment to work at. I didn’t go to animation school. Klasky Csupo was my school.”
An active imagination
Louie grew up in the 1970s watching Hanna-Barbera cartoons like The Herculoids and The Flintstones. Jonny Quest was his favourite. He also got into manga, particularly the super robot stuff, Mazinger Z, Voltes-V and Macross. He noticed how American shows were episodic – each episode a complete, self-contained story – while the Japanese shows had storylines that ran over several episodes. He couldn’t articulate it then, but he knew this was a more advanced form of storytelling, way ahead of its time. These observations would pay off.
”I grew up in a small town on a peninsula surrounded by water just outside Manila. It was meagre and simple, and I found myself dreaming of worlds outside that town and what it would be like to go there. I discovered how much of an active imagination I had, especially coming up with stories and scenarios based on the things my young mind had seen on TV, movies and books.”
Having an eye for story helped him easily make the switch from character designer to storyboard artist. Working at Klasky Csupo, he was used to handling scripts and storyboards. So even though he hadn’t made one himself, he knew what a good storyboard should look like.
time well spent
A character design is a story in a single drawing. Storyboarding gives him the luxury of using multiple images to tell a story: ”It was just a matter of learning the idiosyncrasies, the process, and really putting that filmmaking hat on. And, yes, watching all those cartoons as a kid ended up paying off.” The move into directing was also a natural follow-on. He felt
Watching all those cartoons on television as a kid ended up paying off
comfortable with preproduction work – writing, character design, storyboards – but he really had to work on other areas. “Sheet timing is where the animation is timed out frame by frame as direction for the animators. It’s very technical and that took some effort in terms of trial and error. It was an intensive schooling because you were learning and experimenting, but you were responsible for the studio’s money. So retakes and corrections had to be minimal. Those high stakes really helped in learning things quickly.
“Directing for animation is so specific because your vision has to be clearly demonstrated to other artists, and the language is drawing. Not to say that a non-artist can’t be a director – especially because it’s also a management job in terms of keeping crews motivated and moving in the right direction. But being able to communicate visually is an advantage which can help eliminate ambiguity.”
A day at Disney
Louie left Klasky Csupo in 2007. He worked for DreamWorks Animation on movies Captain Underpants, Kung Fu Panda and Rise of the Guardians, then in 2015 joined Sony Pictures Animation, where he contributed to nativity movie The Star. Last year, Louie accepted a job as story artist at Walt Disney Animation.
A typical day at Disney might look like this: Louie receives an assignment
Every day you feel like you are chipping away at the story
– say, an animated sequence or full scene for a movie. Before he can get drawing, before he can start the research that sets up the drawing, he first reads and rereads the assignment to “really get to the heart of what the scene is about”. He really enjoys spending time with colleagues, who just happen to be some of the world’s best artists. And there are sessions in “the story room”, working with writers, directors and producers.
Being part of a big team means knowing when to work towards someone else’s vision and when to fight for your own ideas. It’s a balance: “Too much of the former makes you seem passive and withdrawn. But too much of the latter will cause people to tune you out. There’s a fine line.
”Every day you feel like you’re chipping away at the story, trying to find the best version of the movie. What I really like about this process is that you have the best of both worlds: you can craft on that piece of the
movie in your office, but, at the same time, collaborate with everyone to make what you’ve crafted the best that it can be.”
Make it appealing
Louie likes the balance of being busy at work and having side projects at home. “When I’m in heavy storyboarding mode at work, I’m also in the best shape drawing-wise,” he says. “Everything I generate personally benefits from that because the gap between idea and execution is at its narrowest.“
Louie has two gears for side projects. He works fast, drawing pieces he’ll post online. He takes a bit more time over “legacy” work – illustrations for books
If I liked it yesterday, I’ll still like it today. It’s also happened where I’ll look at it and say, What was I thinking?
and art for sale. But even here, Louie rarely spends more than an hour or so on initial sketches. If the idea’s working, it feels good straight away. He knows it’s worth using this “blurtedout” sketch as the foundation for something bigger. If it starts to feel laborious, if he’s having to edit a lot, then Louie knows he’s lost the initial spark. If he’s still not sure either way, he leaves it a day: “If I liked it yesterday, I’ll still like it today. It’s also happened where I’ll look at it after a day and say, What was I thinking?”
Louie is comfortable working in various styles and says this is a necessity. He tries to incorporate styles from the past and present. The aim is to be able to “flip a switch” and go from one style to another, like a character actor moulding themselves to a new part. The past couple of years, he’s focused on a style he calls female glamour.
the female mystique
“For so long drawing females intimidated me (and still does to a certain degree), so I embarked on attacking this head-on by really trying to understand what makes the female figure so difficult to translate, what makes a really appealing drawing?”
This is what separates good work from great work: appeal. Louie says it’s hard to define and even harder to quantify. But it’s the thing he’s looking for every time he draws: he hopes this picture that’s appealing to him will also be appealing to an audience.
”Styles don’t really get old, they just get recycled. Innovators simply take what was appealing all along and project things forward by suggesting what these classical ideas would look like in the contemporary,” he says.
”Things have to come together in some sort of magic alchemy that translates to something eternally interesting: colour, texture, tone, shade, subject matter. Then there’s execution, how well things are drawn and composed, and ultimately what kind of story it’s imparting. All those things have to conspire in order to create something that’s universal and charming and lasting.”