DEFENDING YOUR LIFE

My rep, Diane Boston at Way Art, sent me a list of biographical questions for use in promotional materials. I started reading them and right off the bat, she's asking for my theories about storyboards and advertising. So of course my first thought is, how am I going to bullshit my way through this? But as I got into the writing I discovered that I actually have some deeply-held beliefs about what my job is for. Stuff I'd never really articulated to myself.

It was a therapeutic experience to start to put some shape to a career that has lurched mindlessly in so many directions. If I try hard enough I can almost create some kind of illusion of forward progress. 

In short, I bullshitted the fuck out if it!

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KEVIN KOBASIC grew up around the advertising business. His father, John Kobasic, worked as an account executive at Doyle Dane Bernbach and Cole & Weber, before founding Kobasic Hadley in Seattle, WA. “When I was a kid I didn’t really understand that my dad had a cool job,” he says. “I think I assumed that everyone’s fathers used them as extras in TV commercials.”

Kevin studied painting for a year at a fine arts college, but soon quit school to take a job at Marvel Comics. He spent several years as a penciler drawing action-oriented comics such as DEATHLOK and THE PUNISHER. He later moved into the animation field, designing and storyboarding for cartoon shows such as COURAGE THE COWARDLY DOG, CODENAME: KIDS NEXT DOOR and WORDWORLD.

Eventually Kevin set his sights on a career in advertising, and brings his colorful experience to bear on a style that is highly adaptable yet uniquely his own. Constantly developing and refining his technique, Kevin has carved out a high-energy style at once dynamic and whimsical. He lives in New York City with his wife Faith and their daughters Edie and Roxy.



In your opinion what makes a killer storyboard and why do you think it is so crucial when an agency is trying to sell a concept?

Energy! Our little corner of the business is all about selling an idea. My job isn’t just to help communicate an idea, It’s to help make a client fall in love with it. So many of the technical aspects of drawing have been overtaken by technology, but drawings can communicate an ineffable sense of energy, of humor, of life. There’s something about a drawing that can charm the eye and fire the imagination like nothing else. And an experienced visual storyteller can create a sequence of images that propels you through the story. It’s the “X” factor that allows a creative’s idea to come to life in the mind of a client.


Describe for us your process from start to finish.

We start with a phone conference. This usually consists of the A.D. apologizing a lot for the crudeness of the thumbnail drawings, which I never understand, but I guess they need to get it out of their systems. I take copious notes and pay very close attention to the thumbs, because I’m trying to mind-meld with what the creatives are seeing in their heads. I want to understand the marketing strategy—what emotional effect they’re seeking.

When I’m penciling I try to use my whole arm and go for the bold strokes, sometimes going as far as to wear a brace on my wrist. When the pencils are approved I paint the final art with brush markers. I like the sensual, tactile feel of a brush stroke. Then I do a layer of digital painting over that, often stitching together photographic elements to add an extra dash of realism.


Your work is not super tight compared to some styles out there. Why do you think your work is so appealing in comparison?

You have to play to your strengths. I’m more interested the line having a feeling of spontaneity, which can get lost if the illustration is tremendously rendered. I try very hard to retain the energy of the initial sketch. I find that there’re art directors out there who prefer a more impressionistic approach, so that’s the niche I try to fill. I think it allows viewers to project themselves into the concept a little bit and not get hung up on meaningless details.


How do you cut corners when you have a crazy deadline. Please share a real example.

It usually comes down to just sweating a lot, gutting it out and forcing myself to work more intuitively. I do the frames all at once in assembly-line fashion, as if I were attaching widgets on a conveyor belt. You can also target which frames need to be the beauties and which you can do faster to make up time. There’s an Outback Steakhouse frame on www.wayart.com, that I drew lighning-fast when I was up against the wall. I was a little embarrassed to find it on the site, but looking at it now I guess there’s something to the simplicity and boldness of it. I love working in a business that demands so much be done in a crunch, because you often get better work when pushed out of your comfort zone.


What motivates you to constantly improve and evolve your style? Technology changes? Other artists influence?

At a tender age I asked my father, who owned an agency for 20 years, what qualities the best creatives tended to have in common. He thought for a second and said, “an insatiable curiosity about how the work could be improved”. That made a big impression on me. He may as well have carved that quote onto a stone tablet. Years later I asked him how I could go about breaking into storyboarding, and he said, “Storyboarding? I don’t think anyone does that anymore”. Oh well, they can’t all be jewels!


“Everybody loves Kevin” is something we often find ourselves saying here at Way Art. Why do you think clients fall in love with working with you?

Who said what, now?


Tell us about your animation and character development experience.

The level of quality control in animation created a huge learning curve. In comics you can draw Spider-Man a hundred different ways, but in animation you have to know exactly how thick each eyelash on a character is. I fell into the business, so I didn’t have the benefit of a three-year animation school. I had two weeks to learn it on the fly or get out.

As a designer you’re an extra hand to a showrunner who’s too busy to draw the whole show himself. So you have to be able to get into his head and design in virtually any style on demand. You work in a pressure cooker with very talented people and can solicit a lot of feedback and criticism. Ideally you’re trying to produce something that makes everybody in the room erupt in laughter. A popular pastime was to do really brutal caricatures of each other, which sometimes resulted in bruised feelings. But trying to hold your own in that environment, you develop an ability to grab a funny idea out if the ether and immortalize it in seconds.


What was your all time best gig?

I designed a brand mascot for an animated Pepperidge Farm campaign, and acted as the lead illustrator for TV and print. I had to hustle a lot to get the gig, and nobody had a clear idea of what the character should be. I pumped out hundreds of different character designs in an effort to find something that everyone could hang their hat on.

It was wonderful to be the key artist and feel like I was working on “my” character. It made me extremely invested in the work, and also meant some very long hours since I was the go-to guy. When we were producing the animatics that won the business I remember pulling a 72 hour shift. I also learned a lot about how the tiniest detail could make or break a concept. We went through endless rounds of revisions trying to get the arch of an eyebrow right to properly sell a joke.


What are some of the things you do to get "a firm idea" of what the client is after?

I thin k I have a strong intuitive sense, possibly from years of drawing comics from only the bare bones of a plot. I actively solicit feedback, and some people have to be coaxed. I pay attention to those little pauses that say, “I’m not happy with this one but I don’t want to seem high-maintenance”. I always figure, if the work comes out good it’s better for both of us. My most high-maintenance clients are also the ones who force me to improve.


How much of a role do you have in the creative process?

I try to get a read on how welcome I am to throw ideas into the mix. It’s immensely rewarding when I can come up with something that helps sell the concept. Moving forward I hope to have more involvement on that side of things.


What was your funniest or most embarrassing moment on a job?

Not long ago I storyboarded a music video for Wyclef Jean from the Fugees. The director asked me to sit in on the concept meeting and draw some character studies of the singer. Wyclef had no idea who I was or why I was there, but he was too polite to say anything as I sat across the table staring holes into him. When he found out what I had been doing he was relieved that I hadn’t been trying to hit on him. He was very gracious and complimentary, even telling me that if he could draw like me he’d be getting tons of girls. I thought that was funny, as if he’d trade the life of a rock star for the life of a dorky cartoonist.


Based on your experience getting started what advice would you give someone interested in a career in storyboard art?

Storyboarding? I don’t think anyone does that anymore.

AFLAC REDUX

Had to repurpose some frames from an old Aflac/NASCAR pitch. Once I started tweaking them it was hard to stop. My style's changed a bit in the last 6 months.

ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES

Pictured: the Pace company demonstrates their safety measures against salmonella poisoning.

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I was listening to the news coverage of the big tomato scare, kind of laughing it off, and then I realized, oh I think I had that salmonella thingy. It was a couple of weeks ago and I blamed it on improperly cooked seafood, but I had all the signs they say to watch for, the runs, the fever, the whole thing, so now I figure it was the 'maters. On the news they also say to go to a doctor but that sort of thing never occurs to me.

The sickness hit me at the worst imaginable time. Not only were my mother and sister in town for a too-brief visit with the kids, but I was also looking at two days of sitting in a jury pool. By the second day it became obvious that it was going to be sitting in a jury pool and signing out a lot to run to the bathroom.

Jury service wreaks havoc on my business. No one cuts me a break for the time off, it usually just means that I'll have to turn down work that I can't afford to turn down.  I feel duty-bound to go, but if I ever actually got tapped for a case I don't know what I'd do. I don't have the balls to be one of those guys who pulls a psycho neo-nazi routine at the interview. I already had one day down, and they settled all their cases that day without paneling  any jurors, thus reducing my chances of getting picked by half. I could tap out due to illness, but they'd just reschedule me for a couple months down the line, and the lottery would start all over. My second day was Friday before Memorial Day. The odds were too good to pass up.

By noon when they let us out I was already a wreck, but I now had unexpected time on my hands to spend with my Mom and Sis. Their hotel was nearby, and it was still morning West Coast time, so I went to collect them.

Now I don't want to make the women in my family out to be a couple of horrible meddlers, because they're not. All I'm saying is that they had stayed out good and late in Soho, that bottles of wine were opened and consumed, and that the topic that was fresh on their minds was the parenting skills I had been displaying, or lack thereof. By the time I turned up the next morning, the rhetorical saws were sharpened, oiled and ready to go.

Look, I'm philosophical about this. It's inevitable that you're going to screw your kid up in a million ways, just like it's inevitable that you're the last one to notice everything you're doing wrong. I know that it comes with the territory that everyone has an opinion. God knows I do it to other parents. When all is said and done I appreciate them giving me an objective outlook, and that they respect me enough to make the suggestions directly to me rather than just nattering behind my back about it. I just wasn't prepared for how defensive and hostile it made me. When someone tells you you're handling your kid wrong, even in a small way, it hurts your feelings, and it's up to you to manage those feelings. Add in a mean case of food poisoning, and I'm afraid I just didn't handle my side of the conversation very well at all.

After about an hour of failing to contain my worst impulses, I was released to lead us to a restaurant. But I still couldn't let it go and the argument continued down the street. I think at this point my mother was starting to lose her patience with me quite frankly. She had very respectfully offered a point of view that I might find useful on a topic of great interest to us both, and I could have just said, "that's interesting, I'll have to think about that". (And it should be noted, her ideas have since been examined and found helpful in the rational light of day.) But you would have thought I was on trial for my life the way I was arguing the case, and I may have made use of personal invective where it suited me. I think eventually she was ready to hit me back on something.

When I happened to mentioned my illness, my mother started to wonder whether I really had food poisoning. Impyling, I guess, that I was merely the victim of a weak constitution and a flair for the dramatic. Now I'm really angry. It's bad enough I have to defend my parenting, now I have to defend whatever it is that's going on in my bowels. And I did. Vigorously.

"Look, you both said you had a touch of something the morning after the Italian restaurant. You both had a bit of my meal. I ate the whole thing and I got the full-on diarrhea and the fever. Ergo ipso facto, my dinner gave me food poisoning."

"All I'm saying is that maybe you touched something in the restroom that someone touched who didn't wash his hands."

Why is this important to her? My head is going to explode. Oh no. Don't say it. Do not say what you're thinking, you idiot. Respect your mother and let the matter drop right here and now.

I hold it in a good two seconds, and then:

"So you're saying maybe it was that guy's cock I sucked in the restroom when I was away from the table?"

We found something else to talk about.

EDIE'S NEW STORE

VEHICLE WRAP

A wrap I illustrated that was shown at a car show in Orlando.

LI'L KANYE AND PALS

Some illustrations commissioned for the Wyclef video, echoing the song's references to Kanye West, Biggie, Tupac, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, and Sean Bell. I was asked me to draw them as children, in a bit of artistic license. So cute!

I did multiples of all of these because everyone likes to have options to pick from. I did many more of Kanye because the director didn't like my original versions, and was too busy to spend all day going back and forth with revisions. I figured if I just threw enough options at him one of them would have to hit if only by accident. (I even pasted in the reference photos. As if to say, "See, he really does wear sweaters like that.") You can see the versions that got picked bouncing around in the animated backgrounds in the video.

I think "Li'l Biggie & Tupac" could be a cartoon show, don't you?

Teshkeel trailer 2

AFLAC DOES NASCAR

Racer girl

some frames from a music video job. I'm going to post on it if they ever get the video out of post-production and onto the web. but I like these frames a lot; I don't think I'm spoiling anything for anybody by posting them. For pre-vis purposes, the illustrated figures are combined with backgrounds captured from a video game.

What’s So Funny ‘Bout PJs, Love and Understanding

A Monday night a few weeks ago:

Working at the house, three days into a monster of a job for Olive Garden with a super tight deadline. I suddenly had what I thought was a cool idea: let’s pack the girls up and hit up the Olive Garden in Poughkeepsie for dinner! It’ll be ironic or something. Now before you feel all superior to me, please consider my situation: I had gone three days almost without food or sleep, with nothing but propaganda for Olive Garden in front of my face. Those are pretty much prison-camp brainwashing conditions, you know.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, Faith leapt into action. She’s learned through experience that she can’t stop me from working insane hours, or from becoming a strung-out stress goblin over the course of a heavy job. But by God, a heartwarming family trip to Olive Garden was something she could damn well put a stop to. In a flash she dug out the lonely jar of Prego in the back of the pantry and tarted It up with fresh garlic and leftover shrimp and vegetables. When the smell hit me it was like my body suddenly registered three days of hunger, stress and exhaustion all at once. It was all I could do not to shove my face into the pan while it was still on the stove. Just as we’re about to dig in, baby Roxy decided it was time to shred what few nerves I had left with a monster screaming fit.

I happen to be the black belt in baby kung fu around our house. It's sort of the one thing I bring to the table, not being able to say, lactate, or balance a checkbook. This was the sort of five-alarm barn-burner of a meltdown that was going to last a good hour and can only ever be marginally contained. If I made her mom handle it I would get to eat, but we were still going to have to listen to it. What could I do. I let Faith and Edie enjoy their meal and walked Roxy around the house, using every secret Tibetan fussy-baby trick in the book to keep her from blowing our ears out. An eternity later she exhausted herself, and I was able to pass her off to mom for feeding and bed.

A broken shell of a human, I stumbled and collapsed at the table next to Edie. She sat and watched me struggling numbly to push my fork at the cold noodles. One of the hundreds of reasons that I’m madly in love with this kid is her way of exhibiting empathy at times. Or maybe she just thought it would be funny if it was her turn to feed me for a change. In any event, she looked me up and down, and showed that there was more to her than diabolical master plans to score cookies and stall her bedtime. She took my fork and started lifting big long strands of pasta, waving them menacingly in my general direction. Even if I wanted to say no to a two-year-old, she pretty much could have overpowered me at that moment. I bobbed and weaved and sort of aimed my mouth at it as she stabbed at my face. She even did the running commentary that people do to her when she gets fed: "Here it comes! Thassa big bite! I guess you like it!" She didn’t stop until the plate was empty.

I sucked down a beer and we mutually helped each other up the stairs. Faith had the light in the bedroom off so the baby could sleep, and I managed to put Edie’s one-piece pajamas on her body all wrong, which she found hilarious. Even after I figured it out and fixed it, she was still laughing at me and giving me crap: “That’s notta arm, thassa leg!” She tumbled into the crib and wished me nice dreams. My three girls went to sleep and I went back to work.

YOU'RE EITHER WITH US OR YOU'RE WITH THE TERMINATORS!

I've gotten completely hooked on the Terminator TV show.

Over vacation I was hanging out with my presumptive brother-in-law and T3 came on the tube. I didn't let loose my loads of bile for that film since he's a fan of it (except for the scene where Arnie actually says "talk to the hand". For fuck's sake man!) It's embarrassing how little T3 has going for it besides a special effects budget and a willingness to go for the dark ending. No atmosphere, no point of view, not an original idea in it's self-referential little head.

When the film was over I whipped out the laptop and played the first handful of episodes of the series off iTunes. It made a believer of him too. Holy fuck does the series blow away the third film. What's more, it continues the storyline from T2 and completely ignores the continuity of T3.

The series has a TV-size budget for special effects, but that's a good thing: it makes it a throwback to the first film, which after all had no budget either. They have to make do with the same things that Cameron did: suspense, good casting, creepy photography and a good script. I'm happy to say that Arnie's rapidly-aging ass is not missed; the casting of the Terminators is right on. (And mercifully, they wear regular street clothes. Here's an idea: the audience might be smart enough to understand that it's a Terminator even if it wears jeans. You don't have to contrive a reason for it to shake down some goddamn leather bar whenever it needs new pants.)

There's so many cool ideas floating around in the stories: A Terminator skeleton walking around LA in a hoodie to hide its face, figuring out how to re-grow it's skin using today's technology; a super-advanced chess computer as the possible ancestor of the Terminators; a human trapped in a bomb shelter with a Terminator whose mission is to hibernate through WW3; the revelation that the Terminators are smart enough to get what they want through commerce if it's more expediant than using force; a "good" Terminator who's that much scarier for the human qualities she's able to exhibit.

The fact that I like this show is a sure sign that it's headed for early cancellation, but what are you gonna do. It was good while it lasted.

odds & whatnot

A video "trailer" I did for Teshkeel comics (motion graphics by Lorenzo Campanis). It basically summarizes the backstory to their comic book and sets up the first issue. I had planned to cannibalize all the art from the comic book and set it up for a little animation to be added. But nothing can be so easy. Each shot in the video had to communicate multiple story points clearly, and be set up in such a way that a lot of action could be implied using very little animation. The panels in the comic weren't tailored for a video animatic of course. So in no time I talked myself into doing almost all new art.

I'm currently failing to finish the second trailer in the series.



On the same day I ran across some old art of mine on two different blogs.

One from someone I know (thanks Dan)...


...and one from someone I don't. Mine is the image of the pink-haired lady near the end of the post. Done as a pinup in the G.I.Joe book at Marvel many years ago. I can tell from the hair that I was in my phase of trying to draw like Larry Stroman would draw if he were much less talented.

1/1/08

New Year's Eve, 2008:

Picking our way through the East Village bar crowds, we walk through a cloud of Marajuana smoke. I almost asked them to give my wife a hit.

Screaming up the West Side Highway (literally, my wife was screaming), trying to get to St. Luke's while avoiding drunk drivers, passing a stone's throw from Times Square about 20 minutes before the ball was going to drop. I tried to make Faith laugh by telling her that we'd probably hit gridlock and the whole thing would end up like a Very Special Episode of some terrible sit-com: I'd wind up delivering the baby myself on 42nd Street at the stroke of midnight, perhaps assisted by a tart-tongued but lovable hobo, or a gruff kebab vendor who, it turns out, used to be an obstetrician in his native Pakistan. Laughter and tears abound, followed by slaps on the back and confetti from a Greek chorus of drunken frat boys.

Edie was at home under the care of her Russian babysitter. Zina is the kind of neighbor who usually only does exist on TV. I don't know what we would do without her. I called her at 11pm New Years Eve, and she toddled up the stairs in her bathrobe with a stack of magazines, thrilled to be able to help.

I called Zina from the hospital the next day and she told me that they had been having a roaring good time as always, but that Edie had fallen asleep exhausted because of "tension in my apartment". I don't always track Zina's use of English and I figured she meant that there had been some kind of drama with her adult son who lives in her apartment with her. "Tension?" I asked. "Yes, my God, she is tense like a professional." Okay, I thought, no doubt a trait she inherited from her mother, but I still asked her to clarify. "She tense! You know, I put on Ukranian music in my apartment, and she tense all over the room!"

Faith came through like a champ once again, powering the baby out through some difficulty, without the benefit of drugs. She has since announced her intention to retire from the sport while at the top of her game.

I have discovered that the second child's birth is every bit as meaningful, but perhaps not the same pan-dimensional spiritual mind-blast that the first one is. The first time around, we laid there all night in the loudest silence you ever heard, completely existing in another dimension. This time, after the nurses finished up and left the room, I dug my laptop out of my bag and we finished watching the episode of Lost we had been partway through when she went into labor.

We read some dopey book that says you should let the older kid discover the baby in its bassonet. Edie knew something was up, but was too young to really understand our explanations. She had been using the new co-sleeper as a play house. When she caught sight of the new occupant, she froze. She turned around, sank to her knees and stared into the middle distance. I don't know how to convince her to be excited about not ruling the roost anymore. I just held her for the longest time and told her how much we love her.