INTERVIEW WITH TINA NAWROCKI

"it's this thrill that something you drew came to life, and there's no high like it. I can't get enough of it."

I talked about creativity with Tina Nawrocki, 2D animator in TV, film and gaming. Here's what she said.

Greg Cohen: We'll start with questions that relate to you personally, about your projects, your personal habits, things of that nature.

Tina Nawrocki: Sure.

So what do you create?

I'm a traditional 2D animator, so I do animation, that is, frame by frame. Therefore, I draw every single drawing. And I've been doing that for 18 years now. So it's been a while.

Wow. Okay. And what are you working on recently that you're super excited about?

Oh, all the fun things. I'm currently working for two different studios. I'm best known for my work on the video game Cuphead. I work in video games a lot. I'm working for a studio in Austin, Texas, called Petty Karma, which is doing a really fun, beautiful side scrolling game, which I've been working on for over a year now. And it's really fun. And then I'm working on another game for a studio called Woodrunner Games in Montreal, which is completely different style. So one of them is very kind of serious, very epic, and the second one is very cute, very fun. 

And I am also directing and animating my own short film, all hand drawn, 2D animated. It's called Syrenka: Legend of the Warrior Mermaid, and it's based on my Polish heritage. I'm an immigrant. I was born in Poland. So I'm animating a seven to eight minutes short about the Warsaw mermaid legend with a little bit of a feminist twist to it.

That sounds awesome. What is your signature? What distinguishes your work from everybody else's?

I think my calling card has become artisanal animation, I would call it. I think there's a lot of 3D out there. There's a lot of puppet animation, which is where you kind of manipulate a drawing in the computer to make it move. Whereas I kind of focus on the old school retro style of animating, which has become kind of my calling card. So if people want that good old fashioned, hand drawn feel, that's what they come to me for.

Okay. And when do your most creative work, and why do you think that is?

I'm a freelancer. I've been working from home for a really long time. Even before the pandemic, for years I used to work from home. I have a very not nine to five schedule. I am not creative in the mornings. I feel I draw like garbage. So instead I do a workout. I walk my dog. I do some things like, take care of house plants, maybe do a few chores in the yard and then maybe move around. 

I'm very fast, and this is something that's very genetic, and it's not something that's learned. I know very different types of animators, and I'm just very quick at what I do. So once I get into it, I can produce a lot in a short amount of time. 

So that's why for me, focusing on having those moments when I'm most productive is really useful, because then I could get a lot done in a short period of time. And then I can have a good work/life balance and do other things, take care of my body. Move around. Not sit for too long and kind of break up my day into chunks.

You've mentioned that about eight years into your career, you got promoted to a level that you were separated from your craft. And how are you avoiding that, being at the helm of your own project?

By animating everything myself. I am managing people, but being the director of a short indie production, you really get to choose the type of people you want to work with. And I want to work with people that inspire me, that uplift the project, and that I can have a more hands off relationship with. So I trust them, that they do amazing work. I don't need to micromanage. I have an amazing layout artist. I have an amazing background artist. 

For example, backgrounds are not my forte, and so I chose to work with a team on that, and I get to see their work. And generally speaking, I'm like, “High five! Looks great!” And if anything, there's, like, maybe a small thing that is not fitting within the vision, and it doesn't take up too much of my mental space because I can trust my team, and I know they'll make beautiful things, which allows me to focus on the creative vision, but also focus on the animation, which is why I'm doing this. 

When you've been working on something very successful, like Cuphead, which is the 1930s style of animation, you kind of get pigeonholed into a certain style, and then all future clients want to work with you in order for you to do that style. And although I really love cartooning and 1930s style, it's not my favorite. And so part of a reason I'm doing Syrenka amongst a whole other creative reasons is that I want to practice a different style of animation. And so I'm allowing myself to be the driving force in the animation and then leaning on my team for all the other elements. So background, color, music, VFX, compositing, that is all different people. But I am focusing on the animation. 

So I get best of both worlds. I get to manage a team that is really easy to manage, and then I get to focus on what I love to do, which is animation.

That's awesome. Moving on to questions surrounding your process and getting started. So when you're creating something from scratch, how do you start?

I think it's interesting because I started working at a very young age. I took my art seriously at age eight, and I started having clients at age twelve. I am not one of those people that feel you need to have inspiration or some kind of magic sauce in order to be creative. I have to be creative on demand. It's part of a routine. Whether you feel like it or not, you have to do it. So for me, it was a few things. It was really not forcing myself. I'm not a morning person. I find it really hard to be creative and productive that early. So being kind to myself and allowing myself to work in the hours that I feel the most inspired. I feel the most like, “Okay, my hands are doing the right thing.” They're all weird in the morning. They're not following my brain too well. And then you kind of force yourself. There's no excuse. You sit down and you do it. 

And I think that really helps also if you're stuck having people that you can brainstorm things with. I'm very lucky. I have an older sister who's absolutely amazing. She's not an artist. She's a professor. She works in history. She's a historian, but she has an insanely beautiful creative mind. And sometimes when I'm stuck, I'll just call her and tell her I have this and this idea, and then she'll bounce off of that and she'll give me more and more ideas and then that will trigger more ideas in me. And I think that really helps to have somebody else there that you trust. So I think that really helps being kind to yourself, having time of day that you feel that you're going to be creative and then having somebody out there that could push your creativity as well. 

And also being disciplined enough to know how to be creative on demand. Because this is my job, this is my livelihood. I need to be creative. So you're just disciplined enough that I intertwine creativity with productivity. It has to be a bit of both. Like, you have to be creative and productive. So, I hope that answers the question. I'm not sure if that did, a little bit.

Yeah. I've seen in your other interviews that you were talking about, when you're starting, you actually create a written list.

Yes, I do. I write stuff down. I really like writing stuff on lists. It helps.

Okay. And then when you're getting started, do you begin with the end in mind, or do you let it evolve organically?

I definitely am a planner, so I rarely let things be organic. I think it's because of the medium I'm working with. 2D animation, especially if you're drawing by hand, drawn on paper. There are some people that have a very kind of.. It's called straight ahead. It's a very organic style where you just keep going and the character changes and evolves and it becomes very abstract. But because I have a background in more commercial animation, and also I admire more consistent character animation. 

You need to have a plan. You need to know exactly where you're going from beginning to end. The creative process really is at the very start, and then it's all planning, so you know what your scene is going to look like. I do reference footage, so I'll act it out in my body. I love theater. I used to do a lot of stage acting, so I'll act it out in my body. And I feel that's a creative process for me to see how I move, how I feel, the feelings. And after I've done that, I analyze the footage. 

I do thumbnails, which is also fairly creative, trying to get the best pose. But then it's all about timing, about charts, about planning your shot, making sure everything happens in the correct area. And then it's basically, I wouldn't call it mechanical, but it's all skill based. And the creative bit is at the very beginning, and everything else has to be very planned.

That acting it out step, is that common in your industry, or is that something you do?

That’s what it used to be like. It was so beautiful, back in the day. In the older Disney days, the studio would hire professional actors. You can still see a bunch of reference footage of the actress who acted out Little Mermaid or Pocahontas or Peter Pan. And you'll see they would film the actors acting out the scene so that animators can draw inspiration from the actors. As budget cuts have happened, this no longer happens on big productions. They don't allow you to have these amazing actors to feed off of. So you have to become the actor. Now that we have phones and it's a lot easier to film yourself. A lot of us take the time to act it out. 

On Syrenka, though, because I've always wanted to experience that… When you're acting yourself, you always fall into certain things that are your own experience, which could be great, but when you're trying to do a vast variety of characters, sometimes it can fall a bit flat. So I hired some actors to do some reference footage for me, for Syrenka, so that I don't only have myself, I also have their kind of take on it as inspiration as well, for the movement, for how they feel things, how they interpret the shot or the acting sequence. So, it's great. I do it very often and a lot of animators do it. The good ones, anyway.

It seems like a good way to get the embodied cognition or to really, truly feel what the character is feeling.

I'm, like, a bit crazy about it, though. So at one point, I was hired to animate a ballerina, and I know shit about ballet. It's a really weird dance because it's, like, very specific muscles. So I signed up to a beginner ballet class because I was like, I need to feel it in my body so that I could animate it correctly. I tried to analyze footage of ballerinas, but I'm like, I have no idea what they're doing. It just seems so weird to me. 

And so it's an adult ballet class, and they go around the circle and be like, “Oh, why did you sign up for ballet?” And most people are like, “Oh, I did it when I was a kid and I had a ballerina dream and I want to go back into it.” I'm like, “I'm animator. I need this as reference.” And they're like, “Okay, that's one of the weirdest reasons.” And I did, I think, four or five sessions until I figured out what does turnout feel like, what is Pas de Bourree, and how does that all work? And then I managed to animate Pas de Bourree, which is really cool.

Awesome. So how do you set up your environment or conditions to create, creating the fertile soil or getting in the mood?

So I'm really lucky that in the last few years, I managed to have my own office. I lived in a tiny basement apartment in Toronto for ten years, where my office was also. The living room was also my partner's room. It was really cramped and very small and there wasn't a lot of space and it wasn't very soothing. So to speak, but I still managed to be creative in that space. 

However, now I have an office that I've decorated with inspiration, animation on the walls. I have my animation desk here. I have my computer here. And then I have this giant, I don't know if you can see it, this bookshelf full of amazing books with lots of concept art and animation and all these artists that I admire. And the colors, I want it to be very soothing so that it doesn't throw a glare of a color on what I'm doing. It's full of light versus plants, and it feels so good, and it makes me happy to be here. 

And I've seen a huge change in how productive I am in how my work feels. So, space does matter. And taking the time to make a space that you love, and I spend most of my life here. This is where you work. You spend most of your life working. So it's so beautiful to have the honor of having a dedicated space to your creativity. And it's only been two years out of my 18 years that I've had a dedicated space. And I think it's wonderful, and I love it, and I'm so grateful.

Moving on to questions of evolving the work. So what are your building blocks or algorithms, or the steps to your creative process?

So there's a few things that I'm very structured when I approach animation. As I said, reference footage is usually my first step. Once I have a general idea of what the shot is going to be, then I do thumbnails. Thumbnails are called shit sketches. They're like teeny, tiny little sketches of the pose. And it's meant to be very kind of brainstorming, very loose. You're not making pretty drawings. You're just drawing little poses to kind of brainstorm the best way of telling the story. 

And then once you have those thumbnails, you can start with keys. And I start with very rough keys. One of my main things is energy flowing through animation. So I think this is one thing that a lot of animation lacks, is feeling the energy through a pose. And this comes with theater and dance, too. When you tell a story with dance, or when you tell a story with acting, there is energy in the poses that you take, and making sure that translates in the drawing is through a line of action. So you make sure the energy is flowing. And I start very rough. So I start with only the storytelling poses with just thinking about the energy. So we're not thinking about details. We're not thinking even about proportions of a character. Thinking about energy and once the energy is moving beautifully, I've timed it all out, and then I start building on that process. 

So then I start doing breakdowns. Breakdowns are between two keys, and then rough in-betweens. And then I start bringing it on model. So then it's, like, really fiddly. You start making sure the character is consistent. Then you start doing overlapping action, which is like hair and fabric and all that kind of nice stuff. And then you start doing the little fiddly bits, like, it's called tie downs, where you make pretty drawings. 

The pretty drawings are the end, and it's actually the mindless part. I do not listen to music while I'm animating, because you can actually start animating to that rhythm, which is really awkward. So if you're listening to a beat, you can start animating to that beat, and you don't want that. So I'm in complete silence till it's the pretty drawing phase. The pretty drawing phase is mindless. You can put on podcasts. You can put on music. You can do whatever. But when you need to focus on the action, I kind of work in complete silence.

Okay. And what percentage of your creative time is spent prototyping or experimenting?

Percentage? Like animation is very labor intensive. There's a lot of work involved. It's a lot of hours. So I would say for any given shot, like, the creative bit may be an hour or two, and then you can have, like, 18 hours to finish the animation. So the really creative part is at the very beginning. It's figuring out that action, trying different things. The thumbnail phase and the rough key phase, that's the meat of the creativity. And then everything else kind of softens in the sense of it's just like skill. It becomes a craft, becomes like making furniture. You're very focused on the craft of it. So the burst of energy is at the very beginning, I would say.

And what makes one idea more promising than another?

That's really hard. Some of it, I think, is experience. Knowing when a pose or a certain part of your storytelling is stronger than another. And I think that's part of the thumbnail process. Right? Your first idea is rarely the best idea. I find sometimes it is, very rarely, but sometimes you really know where you're going. But generally, through exploration, you hit on something better. And knowing it's better becomes instinctual with learning. 

And so learning is something that I'm really passionate about. I never want to stagnate and feel like I've arrived. I want to keep learning till I'm 97. I want to learn from mentors. I want to keep pushing myself. I want to try things that I think are hard. And so by learning for those 18 years from different animators and different people that are better than me, you start picking up what makes a strong pose, what makes a strong storytelling idea. And then yourself kind of instinctually know, like, I should go for this one. 

Also, teaching helps, I find. So I hate teaching, but I've been teaching on and off. I do online workshops. Sometimes when I get invited as a speaker to festivals, I teach. And when you have to verbalize to young people, or, people who are less experienced than you, why this pose is better than another pose, or what would you do to make the idea stronger? By having to tell somebody else makes you rethink your process a lot more and makes you more aware of what makes strong storytelling, if that makes sense at all.

Yeah, that's good. Your timescale is much different than the other people I've interviewed because animation takes a long time. How do you stay motivated and keep yourself pointed in the right direction for such a long period of time?

That is a fascinating question. Animators are strange beasts. And I always go back to the first time I ever animated anything, because I started off as a traditional painter. I did oil paint. I did portraiture. I was really into realism, and I was really into stage acting. And then I took one teeny, tiny animation course at college, and I was like, this is both. This is acting with drawings. 

And my first animation the teacher ever assigned us was the bouncing ball, which is the first exercise all animators do. It's a ball that bounces. It's very boring. It just goes boom, boink. And he explained to us, we're going to have to do something like 38 drawings for this, and we're going to have to scan them all, and we're going to have to test it and then do it again and again. It's going to take forever. And then it's going to be like, less than a second of animation. And he's like, so why do we do it? Why are we doing this? And he's like, I guarantee you won't be able to watch that ball bounce just one time. You're going to see it bounce, and you're going to go like, “Look at it go. Let's see that again. Look at it go. Oh, my God, it's moving.” 

And so it's this thrill that something you drew came to life, and there's no high like it. It’s the biggest high. And especially when you gain more skill, and you start seeing these drawings have feelings, and people tear up. It's just little drawings that you made move, and it's laborious and time consuming and awful, but it's such a high. It came to life, it's alive, it's moving, and you made it happen. I can't get enough of it. And I think as animators, we all share that kind of, that crazy, psychotic high when you see the thing come to life, and that makes it all worth it.

So when you're in the creative phase, how do you distinguish when it's time to test and try new things, or when it's time to double down and dig deeper on an idea?

I think it depends on schedule. Sometimes when there's a client and there's a deadline, you kind of have to limit yourself to how much experimentation you can do. And then when you're doing your own personal work, or where you have a client who's a little bit more lenient or relaxed, I think that's when I feel I can relax a bit more and experiment and try new things. So for my own film, I'm definitely feeling that a lot better, a lot more where I can be like, “Wow, this is the time where I can really try something.” But I don't want to ever stray on the road to perfectionism. I feel perfectionism is a disease.

I always strive for good enough. I think good enough is a great bar if you hit that, and if you keep learning, if you see progress over time, so definitely time. I think time constraints really change how creative you feel you can be. And I think that's why it's important as artists to have some kind of a personal project, something that is not client based, where you're in charge. It's not meant to make money or sell plushies or I don't know what the fuck else. It's not an agenda, it's not some CEO who's looking at numbers, and then you can be a lot more creative. 

Same thing with, I've worked mostly in the indie space, but I've worked for some really big companies, on feature films, on TV shows. And you can see the level of creativity dip as soon as there's a big CEO at the helm of a project. When it's a small independent studio who's really passionate about the product, about the art form, really the gaming studios that I worked on, where it's a small team and the people who are in charge care, and they want for audience to have fun. They want to make something that they love. It creates an atmosphere that is a lot more conducive to being creative versus kind of like crunching numbers, kind of leadership at the helm of a project.

Okay. And with regard to honing your craft, which is a nonlinear process, sometimes you make leaps and bounds. And to what events or practices would you attribute your greatest gains and skill?

Finding mentors, because I find you can learn and improve on your own. I was self-taught for a really long time. I would try and learn from dead masters by copying their work or by trying to find books, learning from books, learning from analyzing other people's animations. And I think that takes you to a certain level and you can keep improving. But as soon as I found a mentor who really took the time to unpack my work, really push me, really give me solid advice, my little progression suddenly took like a giant leap forward. 

And for me, that person was Samantha Yusef. She's an amazing 2D animator, and she had an online school called Studio Technique where she would go over your work, redraw your work, and give you tips and pointers and really tell you what's wrong and how you can improve. And that was pivotal to my learning, and I still want to do that. 

So with my film Syrenka, I found three senior animators that I admire greatly. And I've asked them to be consultants on the film so that I'll send them some important shots while I'm doing them in rough. And “Can you please give me your feedback? What do you think I could improve? How do you feel this is reading?” And hopefully I'll get three different perspectives from very different animators and see if that pushes me forward again. And I want to keep learning forever. So hopefully I'll keep trying to find mentors along the way to help me out.

That's a great goal. I love lifelong learning. Moving on to questions about finishing. How do you know when you're done?

I have that standard. Good enough. I'm very good at it. I'm not a natural perfectionist. I prefer to be like, “Oh, that's fine. The next one will better.” And I feel that way. I improve a lot more. I've known a lot of perfectionists in my life. My dad is a psychotic perfectionist and I find it crippling because you never know if you're finished. You don't want to let something go. Whereas I have a very easy time going, “Okay, this is fine. Let's move on.” And it's natural to. You can be like, sometimes it's time constraint where it has to be finished by a deadline. Great. But for my own project, not a problem. Looks fine. There's some mistakes in it. I can see them. I'm going to move on and the next one will have fewer mistakes.

You have to be very comfortable with yourself to have that approach.

I think so. And I think it's partially just personality, like, who you are, because I just have the gift of being like, “Yeah, that's fine.” Honestly, I want on my grave slab, “Good enough”. I think it's going to be my “it was good enough.” That's a life lived. That's the goal.

What makes a creative project successful?

Interesting. I do think it's the passion of the people who are driving it and their belief in. About working on the video game Cuphead is that we all knew that this was special, that it was something that was delightful, that were having a blast working on, even if we were slightly underpaid. And we knew that our studio leads, the driving force behind it, were passionate, were in love with the project, believed in it, and it was just like a beautiful, happy atmosphere. 

And I think every project that I feel is going to be success has that element of just people making art for art's sake in a way. Like, people who are in charge of it actually care, then I feel like that makes it a success. And the audience can tell. They can always tell. I feel like as soon as something is done just for marketing or just for making something just for profit, an audience, not them, they'll suss that out very quickly. Whereas when they feel the human kind of passion about telling a story, it's all about storytelling, isn't it? Like, all art is telling a story. And if a storyteller cares about the story, then I think that makes it a success.

And moving on to questions about inspiration. Where do you find your inspiration?

Ooo. I love looking at other filmmakers, I was a huge fan of Miyazaki films from a young age. I also love fine art, so I grew up knowing basically all of art history. I love the art nouveau movement. There was, I guess, post realism movement in Poland that I absolutely adored. I love literature. I used to read so many books as a kid. I don't read as much, but I still love reading. 

And also I do this creepy thing where I watch people, just, like, seeing how humans move. If somebody has an interesting walk on the street, I'll sometimes turn around and follow them at a safe distance just to see, like, “Oh, my God. They have a really cool walk cycle. Why? Let's analyze it.” And so I'll just creepily follow them for a bit and then write down in a notebook what was so cool about that walk cycle. 

Other artists, like contemporary artists that are around me on Syrenka, it's just a pure joy to be surrounded by such talented individuals who bring ideas to the table and bring their own skill set and their own experience and different backgrounds. Because my team is all around the world, it's very diverse. So seeing their experiences make the project stronger is super inspiring as well. All the inspiration everywhere.

What's your highest yield source material or your most frequently revisited sources of inspiration?

I don't know. I don't have that. I think I'm a little bit all over the place. Depending on the project, I seek out different sources of inspiration, whether it be fine art or other animators or contemporary artists. So I don't think I have one thing that I go back to. And maybe that's also why my style is a little bit all over the place, because I tend to really dig deep on the project that I'm doing. 

So when we were doing Cuphead, which is 1930s, I watched like hundreds of hours of old cartoons. And I would go frame by frame, and I would see how they did it and try and really immerse myself into that time period and that animation style. Whereas for Syrenka, for example, I'm looking more at fine art as inspiration versus other animators. So it's a little bit all over the place. I think it really changes depending on the project.

When and where do your lightning bolt ideas occur?

Oh, I don't know if I have those. I think I'm too consistent. I don't have lightning bolt ideas because I force myself to be creative daily on a schedule. I think it's more of like a consistent flow of creativity versus lightning bolts. Maybe I had those a lot more when I was younger, like a younger kid, these kind of flashes, but not for the last, I would say, decade. It's a consistent flow versus lightning bolts, if that makes sense. Yeah, like more like a trickling river. Like a little brook of creativity versus giant flashes.

And how much of your creative process is solitary and how much of it is collaboration with others?

50/50, I would say. Or maybe 70/30. I love being alone. I'm very much an introvert, and so I really enjoy taking my time and my process by myself. But as I kind of mentioned before, sometimes I love bouncing ideas off another person. And in those instances, especially when I'm stuck, I really, 30% of the time and 70% of the time it's solitary.

And when you collaborate with others, what is that like? How does it work?

Usually it's through talking. So over the phone or over Zoom call, it's brainstorming ideas verbally and then writing them down. I think that, to me, is the best way of doing it with the people I find most supportive to my creativity. So, yeah, talking.

What role, if any, does feedback play in your creativity?

It creates constraints, which I think is always very good for creativity. So when you're working with a client, they have a certain idea, and you could be creative within boundaries. And I think that's the easiest way to be creative. And I think it's wonderful because instead of like a million things, it becomes more secluded. And then you have boundaries within to work, and you can be creative at problem solving as well. Sometimes you have constraints of frames. Like this animation can be no more than 20 frames. How do you tell the story within that time? 

I went back to school as a mature student at Sheridan College when I was 27 and most of the kids were 17. And I remember them complaining about, “Oh, this is killing my creativity, having all these rules and boundaries to my art,” whereas I just came from working for eight years for clients to school, and I thought it was so free and so open because I get to work with my own characters, I get to do these projects that are, to me, so creative. 

So it's really funny to see that perspective of people who never had constraints suddenly have them. And me, who had a lot of constraints, having less constraints, I felt like, “This is amazing freedom.” So I actually find constraints very useful. I find the best projects in school when I watch these kids were when they had constraints, when it was like, “Do whatever you want.” You kind of get overwhelmed. You don't know where to start. There's no hook where you can grab something and bounce off of it. So I think constraints and critique or feedback do help, if anything.

Okay. Moving on to questions about challenges or obstacles and overcoming them for you. What is the hardest part of creation?

Fighting exhaustion, I guess I feel it's hard to be creative when you're exhausted. So throughout my career, balance. But when you're young and you're struggling to pay the bills and you're trying to get a foot in the door, you feel forced to go above and beyond. And then I burned out definitely once. And a second time, I was very close to burnout. And then nothing matters. You're just so tired, so exhausted, so sad that you can't be creative. And I think our industry, the animation industry, kind of pushes young artists into that, sadly. 

It's something that I try and talk to young people about a lot, about taking care of yourself, taking care of your body. Because if you fuck up your body, you're not going to produce good art. You're not going to be creative, and it's going to be awful. So, yeah, exhaustion, burnout.

What stops your creative flow faster than anything?

Being hungry.

That’s a good one. That works. Do you have any notable failures that other people could learn from?

Again, I think I'm a fairly positive person when it comes to my career, where I don't think of anything as a failure. Because if something didn't work out, it was just a learning opportunity. I don't think anything is a failure as long as you're doing what you love and you're trying to get better at it. If a client doesn't like it or you lose a contract, at least you tried. And so you learn something from it and you'll do it differently next time. So I don't find it as failures throughout my kind of career. I find it like, more I learned something. It was a learning opportunity. 

I got screwed over once by a client, and then I learned I should write contracts. So that was nice. That was a good learning opportunity. Write a contract, get a down payment from them, which is really nice. 

Also learning to stand up for yourself. It's really hard at the beginning because beggars can’t be choosers. You're trying to get anything you can get. And the more confident you get in your work, the more you feel you can stand up for yourself. And I think that's a great learning process, which takes time. But yeah, learning experiences, definitely.

How do you make progress when you are blocked or feel like you're at a dead end?

I just do something different. So again, this is what's glorious about not living in an office where a boss is watching your every move. If I really can't keep going and it's just not working and I feel blocked and it's terrible, I get up and walk my dog, or I go and I water some plants or I eat something because sometimes it's just you're hungry. A lot of the times I'm just like, “I'm probably hungry” and I'm like, “This is not working out for me.” So I change my physiological state, I change my body, I do something else, and then I come back refreshed. And usually that helps a lot.

How do you avoid ruts or preconceptions?

What do you mean by ruts?

Doing the same thing over and over again and getting diminishing or no returns.

So this is something fascinating to me. I don't know if you've ever watched, there's a cool documentary about the hero's journey. And it was fascinating to me as a person to find out, there's two reasons why we love the hero's journey as a human. One, we've been on a hero's journey of our own. We did something scary. We got out of a norm, had a lot of experiences. A lot of bad things happen to us, and then we learn and come out stronger, and then it goes back to normal, and then you do it again and so on. And so a lot of people have several heroes journey throughout their lives, and they love watching stories about it because they can understand it. 

And then the second type of people, which I didn't know existed are people who never go on the hero's journey, who just stagnate and stay in the norm, in their comfort zone and hear the call but ignore it and never change. And they're usually very miserable people, and they love watching the hero's journey because it's something that they've always longed for but never had the bravery to do.  And being the first type of person, I didn't realize the second type of person exists. 

So whenever I'm stagnating, and this happened to me before I went back to school, as you pointed out, I was being promoted too much, and I was managing people and I was not doing what I love. And I was becoming really sad. I was probably depressed, but I didn't know therapy was a thing at that time. And I was just like, “Just power through it.” And then I was like, “Okay. Well, I have to change something. I have to shake things up because it's obviously not working.” And I thought, okay, I can quit my well paid job, my nice apartment, move cities, and go back to school for a few years just to refocus myself on what I love to do, which was 2D animation. 

But I was terrified because I did all the things an adult is supposed to do. I got promoted. I got better salaries. I was living in my own condo, paying a mortgage, doing the things that society says you should be doing. And then my mom, bless her, she's like such a wise woman. So she's like, “Okay, so do you want to be happy or rich?” And I'm like, “Shit, if you put it that way, it's very simple, the answer.” So it's like, “I want to be happy.” She's like, “Okay. So quit your job, do your thing. Go out there, be scared. Change things up.” And that's what I did. I became, again a poor student in debt, living in a shitty basement apartment with cockroaches and centipedes. But I was so much happier, and I did a lot of terrifying things after that. And then I got my dream job, Cuphead, because of it. 

So when you stagnate, you just have to go on a hero's quest. Do something terrifying, change it, and don't just stay in the kind of stagnating pool that you're in. Got to climb out. Yeah.

You're a very brave person.

Thank you. I feel like maybe I was a warrior in another life. I was such a tomboy growing up. I used to love sword fighting and archery. And I feel like in another life, I was out there going to war on horseback or something. It was great.

That's amazing. So what's a telltale sign that it's time to abandon an idea?

I think it's a very hard thing to do that, but I feel like I'm fairly okay, or I don't think it's sometimes like you abandon it. You can just shelve it for a while, and then maybe you'll come back to it. So I thought of Syrenka ten years ago, and I was like, “Oh, this is a great idea. I really want to do this.” And then I was like, “Is this the right time to do this? Do I feel ready for it? I really want to make this the best that it can be.” And I was like, “You know what? No, it's not the right time.” And so I very quickly realized that it's fine. It's still a great idea. I still have it. I had little notes I put it in a drawer and forgot about it for a while. 

And then I started coming back to it a decade later, and I was like, “You know what? This was a great idea. Let's do it now.” And then I'm all in and decided, like, this is the time. So I think it's a little bit of self-knowledge and wisdom of when to put an idea to the side, and maybe nothing will come of it, but then maybe return to it later when you feel ready for it or where the time is right. So I think it's about timing more than anything, figuring out the right time for something.

What kind or type of work would you like to do that you haven't done yet?

I've always wanted to direct a film, and that's what I'm doing right now. I'm very much one of those people like, “You know what? You know what would be great is…” And I say something and then I go for it, right? So I've always wanted a dog. And I'm like, “You know what would be great?” And then it's been five years since I have my dog. And then you're like, “You know what would be great? I've always wanted to have a Mini Cooper. It's like my dream car.” And so then I got myself a Mini Cooper. 

And I was like, “You know what would be great? I want to buy a house. And I can't do that in Toronto because it's terrifying. The prices are super high.” I don't know what part of the world you're in, if it's the United States or Canada, but Toronto's like, it's become insane. The prices are nasty. And so I was like, “You know what? I want a house. It's not going to happen here.” So I randomly moved to Ottawa, and now I own a home. So I very much like, when I set my mind to something, I kind of just go for it until either success or failure, and we'll see what happens next. So it's pretty good.

Moving on to questions of creative crossover. Do you have any other creative skill, hobby or interest?

I have so many. I think I told you about theater. I love theater. I love to dance. I'm not very good at it, but I really like it. So I learned ballet. I did swing dancing, which I really enjoy. I love to read. And I've just for the first time got a garden. And now I'm like reading books about garden design and learning about bulbs. And so hopefully that will be another creative outlet. 

And this is really silly, I love clothing. I love retro clothing. And to me, putting an outfit together is creative. And I do it every day, regardless of if I have a meeting or not. If I'm going to see just my partner and the postman, I still like putting together an outfit and putting the colors together, like sometimes jewelry. And I feel like that's a really fun creative outlet. So all the creative outlets, absolutely.

What do you think different creative fields have in common? Is there anything universal?

I think storytelling, to me, because every art form to me tells a story. Garden design tells a story. An outfit tells a story. Film, painting, all of it is about telling stories to me.

What skill or technique from a different field would you like to bring into your own work?

So I brought theater, which I think is crucial. And then I learned dance, and I feel dance helped a lot, which is really fascinating. So I think those two were the most… The theater one was like hand in hand, but when I started focusing on dance, I realized you could bring a lot of those elements into your animation. So to me, that was kind of eye opening, which was really exciting.

For someone just starting out on the path to learning 2D animation, what should they practice to get up to speed as quickly?

For 2D animation, you have to kind of learn a few things at once, and so you have to kind of push all these different things. So first of all, you have to work on your drawing skill. So learning how to draw from life, doing model drawing, still lives, like researching great masters, trying to learn how to draw realism, really, before you start cartooning. 

Then you have to learn about acting and timing. So timing is something that you develop a sense for. So you have to keep doing animations in order to get there. And one of the easiest way to get there is to do walks and runs. So walks are really hard to do. It's a loop, so you can see your mistakes over and over again, and you can put a lot of personality into a walk. And it's a short animation, so you can practice very quickly. So I always suggest doing walks. 

And then for all young animators, I say take at least one theater class, like an improv class or one theater course. Just learn the basics of theater and acting, and that will help you a lot in your animation journey.

Okay, I have three more questions. Who do you think of when I say most creative person?

Oh, God. That one caught me by surprise. Most creative person... I think to me, it'd be Hayao Miyazaki. I think through the body of his work, he's never repeated something. It's always so cool and wacky and out there. His storytelling style is absolutely amazing, and he doesn't kind of fall into the trap of saying the same story over and over again. It's always completely different, completely new. So I'd say Miyazaki to me, and yay on the Oscar for him. Like, absolutely awesome.

Who else can you think of that we should talk to for this project?

I have quite a few people, if you want. My producer on Syrenka, her name is Felicity Morland, and she just finished a documentary, which is called Hand Drawn Film, which explores the world of 2D animation today. Which I think is a delightful type of creativity because filmmaking is very different to animation in itself, but her film is about animation. So she's kind of at the intersection of both worlds, which I think is super cool. 

I also have a stop motion animator called Terry Ibele, who runs a podcast called The Animation Industry Podcast, and he's a delightfully wacky creative person. If you want to talk to him, I think that's really great, too. And I can think of more. I will write you an email if you want, even more ideas or more contacts.

That'd be amazing.

Thank you.

Last question, and it's a tough one. It's difficult to choose between your children, but what is your favorite work you have done so far in your career?

I think to me, it's still my work on the original Cuphead game. I think it was the first project that I was proud of as animator, and I had already ten years experience in the industry. So it's one of those things which is such an amazing breakthrough to have something that you're truly proud of, and also which was so surprisingly successful that everybody loved it, everybody appreciated it. There was this kind of, this high that I feel you only experience several times in your career while creating it. I knew it was something amazing, and I think I've never kind of felt that before, and it was just a lovely experience. So, the first Cuphead game for me.

I said that was it. But one more question. What's the ETA for Syrenka? When can we see it?

It depends on quite a few factors. I was hoping to give myself a two-year deadline, which I know is not a lot of time. It will happen faster if we get another grant, because we got two fundings so far. We got a crowdfunding campaign and one grant, which is enough to pay my team. But currently the animation is unpaid, which is like, the bulk of the work. So I still have to work full time to pay my bills. So if I get one more grant, I can allot more time to animating, because then I could pay myself, which would be amazing. If I can't, I'm saying two years. If we do get the funding, then hopefully I'll go faster. But yes, 2026 probably is when it's going to come out.

It'll be amazing when it comes out. I can't wait to see it. Well, thank you for your time, and you've been very illuminating and charming and incisive in the creative process.

I just wanted to ask, what's your project about? What's this study for? You kind of very vaguely told me about it. I just want to know, what is the end goal of interviewing all these creatives?

Actually, probably for me, it's more like therapy. Because in high school, I was the most artistic in my high school graduating class. But somehow my life has veered away from artistry. And now I'm a project manager for a construction company, which is why I'm sitting in my car currently. But me and a high school buddy of mine, who's an advertising professor, we both are geeks about the creative process, and we love everything creative. There's no bad art. Everything is amazing. And we just wanted to research how different fields relate and if there's anything in common, anything we could teach people and ourselves. 

I want to get back to my creative process, and I just wanted to learn from amazing creative geniuses such as yourself and see if I could provide any worth to the world with getting the insights out there.

There's a book that I want to recommend. Have you ever heard of Studies In Creativity?

I've not heard of that one.

So when I went to Sheridan College, there was like an elective class that I took, which was exactly that. It was about different theories of creativity. I will find that book and I'll take a picture of it. It's like more of a textbook, but you can still find it online, and it is amazing. It has several really cool approaches to kind of analyzing creativity and creative people and different types of creatives. And I think for somebody who's looking to get more knowledge about that, I think you would find it a really fun read. 

There's like one where they split people into different categories and how different types of creatives either get along really well or butt heads and why. And some of these theories were created to help people in offices work together because they saw various tensions between certain type of character types. And they created different ways to analyze creativity and different types of creative people and how they approach creativity. It's a great book. So I'll take a picture of it and I'll send it to you because I think you would really enjoy it.

Yeah, sounds amazing. Sounds right up my alley.

Great.

So I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your time. I know you have a lot to do and you're a very busy person, but thank you so much for all your insights.

No worries. It was a pleasure talking to you. Have a lovely day.

Have a good one. Thank you.