His Story…

My dad says I was born with a pencil in my hand. I always loved drawing. I started out drawing really ugly pictures of my sisters. That was my "Ugly Sister" phase. Than I had my "Dinosaur" phase. Than I had my "Dinosaur Eating Caveman" phase (I used a lot of red during that one, with guts everywhere). Then I had my "Dinosaurs Eating My Sisters" phase. In school I could draw "Dinosaurs Eating Teachers" better than anyone else, so I got a lot of encouragement from classmates, but not from my teachers. Sometimes I'd draw stuff for school like "Ponce De Leon Looking for the Fountain of Youth in What Is Now Florida" and then I would get encouragement from my teachers. My parents never discouraged me. They let me take art lessons. There was never any talk about me growing up to be a rocket scientist or a plumber. It was apparent that I would be an artist no matter what. Of course, my parents thought I'd be poor, but that didn't bother them too much. As it turns out, I make more money than my dad, which is big relief for me and a really big surprise for him.

I had two great art teachers: Mrs. Hogan and Mrs. Slagle. They were wise enough to just show me the possibilities and then let me figure stuff out by myself. If I got stuck, they'd help me out, but only when I was really stuck. They encouraged me to try all the mediums: watercolors, oils, pencils, pastels, charcoal, wood, canvas, paper. You name it. I liked some more than others. But knowing how to use them is a big help. Some stories are better in pen and ink, some in watercolor or oil.

Then I went to college. I had already developed my art style, but in college some teachers wanted me to paint a different way. For some people that would have been okay. They might still have been looking for their style, but I knew what I wanted to do. So I got bad grades in art classes. Not for doing bad work, but because I wouldn't change. My parents thought it was stupid for people to try to make me change my style, too, so I quit art school and went to film school. I knew I wanted to tell stories and since movies tell their stories through pictures (they don't call them moving pictures for nothing), I thought I would learn a different way of doing my artwork. I studied animation a lot. Sometimes I would write a story and draw pictures to go with it. It seemed only natural after college to try to do children's picture books, so I did. The funny thing is now I'm working on movies based on my books. I love what I do. It's like getting paid for recess.





Where do you get your ideas from?
My ideas come from everywhere. I never know what is going to spark a story. Sometimes it's an old monster movie, sometimes it's a song, a cartoon, something a kid says, a photograph, or something I see as I walk down the street. Usually it ends up being all these things sort of mixed together.

George Shrinks, for example, has stuff from the movies King Kong, Babes in Toyland, and books like The Borrowers. A Day with Wilbur Robinson is sort of The Day the Earth Stood Still meets Leave It to Beaver, together with the book The Great Gatsby and things that happened to me when I was a kid.

What is a normal day like for you?
I have breakfast and read the paper and think for a while in the bathtub. When I become so wrinkled that I look about a thousand years old, I get out of the tub and get dressed. Then I'll write or draw until lunchtime. Then I'll either go out to munch or keep working.

I listen to music while I work. If I'm working on a chase scene, I play really exciting music like "Ride of the Valkyries" or the Batman soundtrack. By 4:00 P.M. I'm completely out of my mind from being stuck inside so I go run amok all over town. Sometimes I get sane again and come back to work for another hour or so. Then I either force my wife not to cook dinner so we can go out to eat or we stay home and all run amok together. When we're all completely exhausted from running amok together, we fall asleep in front of the TV set and have very funny dreams.

Where do you work?
In my private fortress studio stronghold that has a secret password.

Do you have any children? Any pets?
I have a daughter named Mary Katherine and a son named Jack. We have a dachshund named Rose and something else named Rex. We used to have some goldfish, but they ran away. We have a lot of lizards that live in our yard. A bunch of raccoons live (uninvited) in our attic and play rugby at two o'clock in the morning several times a week.

What do you enjoy drawing the most?
I like drawing robots, spaceships, monsters, and bugs the best.

Do you ever put people you know in your pictures?
I put people I know in almost all my books. The family in Dinosaur Bob is mine when I was little. My dad, sister, nephews, wife, and a guy named Cade Herzog posed for all the people in A Day with Wilbur Robinson. When my wife was pregnant, she posed for the egg in Bently & Egg.

What do you use to make your pictures?
I use acrylic paints, pen and ink, oil paints, watercolors, colored pencils, and really fancy paintbrushes. I have some dinosaur models that I use when I'm drawing dinosaurs. I also have tons of books that I use. Books about trains and animals and whatever I might need to help me draw. For Bently & Egg I got a frog and some goldfish at the pet store to use as models. The frog hopped away and I guess he took the fish with him, because I couldn't find them anywhere. But my cat looked like he gained weight while I was working on that book . . . Hmmmm.

How did you get to do your first book?
It was in the second grade. We had a contest at my school to see who could write the best kids' book. Mine was called Billy's Booger. I did not win. I was sent to the principal's office.

When I was almost grown-up and out of college I went to New York, where most of the publishers are, and showed them my stuff. I even showed them Billy's Booger and they still gave me a job. My first published book was called Tammy and the Gigantic Fish written by James and Catherine Gray. It's a little bitty black-and-white book and it's actually okay.

One of your picture books, A Day with Wilbur Robinson, will soon be a Disney animated feature film, Meet the Robinsons. Where did you get the idea for A Day with Wilbur Robinson?

A Day with Wilbur Robinson is about a lot of things that actually happened to me when I was a kid. My dad was always finding really cool stuff with his metal detector; my uncle told me he was from outer space; my grandfather had false teeth that were always getting lost; my sister paid me to feed her grapes while she talked to her boyfriend on the phone; and our dog was blind (I gave her glasses in the book).

The kid down the street from me lived in a big grand house. His family had a purple swimming pool and purple cars, their kitchen was purple, their furniture was purple, and their two poodles were dyed purple. His house was really fun to visit. So I mixed all these things up with some of my favorite movies like Tarzan and The Swiss Family Robinson and Bringing Up Baby and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and what I ended up with was a book about a normal kid who spends the night at this amazing house filled with robots and animals and really interesting people.

Any time you spend the night at a friend’s house, anything that their family does that’s different from what your family does seems really strange. In A Day with Wilbur Robinson I just exaggerate that feeling a lot.

What was your inspiration for Rolie Polie Olie?
The Rolie Polie family is a caricature of my own family, even down to the family dog!

I wanted to evoke the blithe, optimistic feeling of an old Mickey Mouse cartoon or The Little Rascals. Some kind of "Once upon a time" Americana in the robot world, or a "future that never was." The Polie family harks back to what we all wanted as kids; everything is uncomplicated and magically naive. This is a bright and shiny sun-drenched world, moving and swaying to its own catchy oom-pa-pa beat. Everything is round, everything is alive, everyone does the rumba dance.

What's new and different about Rolie Polie Olie?
Everything in Rolie Polie Olie is a robot or a machine. Beds, cars, kitchen appliances, and even the toilet have a personality. But rather than it seeming cold and remote, as computer animation can often feel, I wanted to see if we could make a robot world that felt warm and kind; an almost old-fashioned version of what the future could be. I wanted to take the cutting edge of cybertechnology and create something that felt as though it was done in the 1930s. It's sort of like Leave It to Beaver meets The Matrix or Blade Runner.

How does the Disney animated TV show Rolie Polie Olie relate to the book?
I had been working on a book about robots when I was approached to do a computer-animated television series. Previously, I had worked on Toy Story, which was an amazing experience, so I decided to merge my robot paintings with the computer -- to paint with the computer.

I had never collaborated on anything visual before, but with the help of 300 artists and technicians on 3 different continents, I was able to realize this vision. I was able to create an entire 3-D robot universe without ever leaving my desk in Shreveport, Louisiana. My sketches, stories, and songs traveled from my home to Toronto, Paris, and Ho Chi Minh City. I would design every antenna, tree, and doorknob, and the computer would then render my drawings. We didn't know if it would work, but here we are with an Emmy Award-winning television show on the Disney channel and two beautiful picture books.

In Snowie Rolie you bring a winter wonderland to Robot Land. Tell us about Mr. Snowie.
I thought that it would be great if a snowman could really come to life . . . and on this robot planet where everything is living, naturally a snowman would have to be alive too!

When you make a snowman, you put so much effort and personality into something that is going to melt. It is a very poignant process, for no matter what you do, soon you will still have to let go and say good-bye. In Snowie Rolie, I wanted to actually save a snowman.

What is the theme of Snowie Rolie?
Snowie Rolie is about how your life can change in a single day. Olie and Zowie wish for snow in the beginning of the book, but in the end they have gained a friend. They have learned so much about friendship and farewells, all in the course of one miraculous, snowy day.

Now another one of your classic picture books, George Shrinks, has an animated TV series on PBS. Where did the idea for George come from?
Ever since I was a little kid, I have loved stories about people who were the wrong size. King Kong was too big for everything, and Stuart Little was way too small. One day I found some of my old toys in a box. Mixed up with all the dinosaurs and army men was a little airplane that had a tiny pilot, and that got me thinking.

What if a boy named George shrank one day while his parents were away? What would he do? Would it be fun? Would it be scary? What would he eat?

So that's what I made George Shrinks about -- how neat it would be if, just for one day, you were the same size as your toys. And of course I had George fly in that toy airplane.

What influences you as an artist and author?
I'm a first-generation TV brat. My brain was welded to the solid-state circuitry of our RCA Viewmaster black-and-white television set. Every day and night I saw all the past, present, and future pulp the tube had to offer. Plus there were comic strips, my family, and other illustrators.

George Shrinks is King Kong in reverse. Nicholas Cricket is Casablanca with bugs. In The Leaf Men and Bently & Egg the characters are as dashing and heroic as Robin Hood. In Santa Calls there are elements of The Wizard of Oz, Davy Crockett, The Lone Ranger, Rin-Tin-Tin, Little Orphan Annie, Jules Verne, and the Warner Brothers cartoons. For Dinosaur Bob I thought about Paul Bunyan and Casey at the Bat. Not only does a dinosaur become the family pet, but he also plays baseball and the trumpet, and dances the hokey-pokey. A Day with Wilbur Robinson is a combination of Dr. Dolittle, The Absent-Minded Professor, Invaders from Mars, and an exaggerated version of my own childhood.