When JG Quintel picked up the phone, his “Hello” ringing on the other end of the line, I knew his voice immediately. After all, I’d heard it before, just in a different form the first time, that is to say a form married to an animated character from his short film 2 in the AM PM. For a second, it stopped me, the warm familiarity of his voice, and after a quick pause to separate character from creator, I realigned my thoughts, pulling them away from a fantasy world of black-and-white sketches and back to the vivid colors and three-dimensionality of the “real” world.

Now we’re talking about 2 in the AM PM and all its playfulness, subtly and drug-induced humor. “I was really close to doing some work with MTV on it, and when they called me with interest, they were asking me about how I came up with it. The woman said, “You must trip a lot.” I almost said, “No, I don’t travel that much,” he starts. “No, I don’t do acid! I just wrote it. It’s animation. You can do whatever you want.”

From a childhood spent drawing Ninja Turtles and helicopters, college days spent at both CSE and CalArts, to now landing a coveted job with Cartoon Network, Quintel’s work occupies a space between edgy and innocent, his The Naïve Man of Lolliland, which picked up kudos from the 2005 Nickelodeon Film Festival, a perfect blend of both. Just a few days before heading to San Diego to catch Comic Con, Quintel dished some information about storytelling, what he really hates about criticisms and his work on the upcoming show The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.

SM: What was the evolution of your work up until you got to CalArts?

JGQ: When I was a sophomore in high school, I begged my dad to get me a video camera that would shoot still frames. I had met a guy in one of my classes—he was using a camera to animate Lego men running around and fighting people…He was using a camera where he would just press the button really fast so that he could get short clips of time. It was all very all over the place; there’d be too many frames on one shot, and it would go too fast on others. But, you could see them moving around, which I thought was awesome. So, I finally convinced my dad to get me a camera, and when he got it for me, I started doing animations instead of class projects. Every time you were supposed to stand up in front of the class and give a presentation, I would always just bring in a videotape and put it in. That’s how I got started.

It was mainly cut-outs that I would animate. The camera would only do quarters of a second, and so that was four frames per second. It was really slow paced, but my brother and I figured out how to get dialogue onto the tapes. We had this really complicated method: We’d record all the animation, and whatever the dialogue was supposed to be, we’d time it out with a stopwatch and make sure that was the amount of time allotted for the characters when their mouths were moving. Then we’d take that tape once it was finished, we’d put it into the VCR and record off of the TV as it was playing. We’d set up a camera recording the TV, and as it was playing, we’d do the voice-overs for it. Then we’d take that tape, run its audio into a VCR, take the VCR to play the original tape in with the video to sync them up just right so that it wouldn’t be a tape that was recorded off of a TV. We’d get friends to come over who played music so they could do sound effects for us. It was really fun all the way up until getting out of high school and then trying to do something a little more complex.

SM: Now, the earliest piece of yours from CalArts that I’ve been able to track down is Not That Bad a Dad. That was meant to be primarily a character piece, right?

JGQ: …Not That Bad a Dad was my first attempt at dialogue, and it was my most disappointing film. I really don’t like that film very much.

SM: What!

JGQ: When I came up with it, I assumed that it would get a much different reaction at the show at CalArts, and it really didn’t attain that. I was hoping that people would be “Ahhh!” and laughing really loud, but it just ended up being a character piece that was like, “Oh, okay.” I felt like it was a failure because it didn’t get the reaction that I was looking for, and then I was really bummed out for that whole next year, like “Oh, I have to do something better than that.”  

SM: In terms of looking at it against 2 in the AM PM and The Naïve Man from Lolliland, Not That Bad a Dad: number one—you’re opening shot is much more camera driven than [in the other shorts]. The later films get much more entrenched in storytelling, and so camera movement goes out the window…I don’t think you should down on that piece. All right, I was on my soapbox. I’m going to get off my soapbox now.

JGQ: Oh, no, I don’t mind the piece. I’m glad that I did it, but I feel like I learned a lot—you mentioned the camera moves, like the one where he’s spinning around, the camera is rotating in the opposite direction and he feels really lost, that was one of the things that got a verbal response of “Ugh,” from people. I was like, “That’s the only thing that people are going to respond to?”

SM: I guess I came from a totally different place. I thought you were spoofing how dramatically filmmakers usually use that shot.

JGQ: I totally was,…but then the dialogue that I wrote, it just felt like it could have been done in live action. I think that’s what bothered me about it so much, that it was just “meh.”

SM: From that experience, how have you changed the way you write dialogue now?

JGQ: I went through a weird evolution after I got to CalArts. When I got there, I wanted to be an animator, and I felt like, “Ah, animation is so awesome. I can’t wait.” Then after I started doing tests in class for animation, I quickly realized that I hated animation. I don’t really like making the characters move and all that stuff. What I really liked was story and going to a story class for the first time, realizing that the story was what was making everyone go nuts. Nobody really cares about the animation persay unless it’s bad; that’s when they’ll speak up about it.

When I saw Rejected from Don Hertzfeldt, I was like, “Man, everybody’s going crazy for that.” Anybody could draw that, but the way he told the story was so amazing that it really opened my eyes, like “Oh man, story is what I’ve got to focus on.” The animating, doing crazy camera moves, being perfect at the animation, I started neglecting those sides of it and really started focusing on story.

So, my second year film, we got into this thing at school where we were trying to warm up and get ready to start our films in October. A bunch of animators got together, and we decided to do these 48-hour films, which were basically these intense things, where on a Friday night, we would all get together and throw a single word into a hat. Then we would draw the word at midnight, and everybody would go back to their cubes, make up a film, animate it and do it in two days based on whatever that word was. The word that got drawn was lollipop.

I liked the reaction I got from showing a really basic version of (The Naïve Man from Lolliland) that wasn’t animated at all. It was basically just drawings, but I decided that I actually wanted to do it as my regular film for that year. So, I had to go and re-record the dialogue; I had recorded the dialogue off of a video camera, just so that it would be really fast because we only had two days. And, I did some tweaks to the story that weren’t really working and then added the ending. It was a weird way to come up with an idea, but then it worked really well, and I kind of liked the pressure. It seems like good ideas for me come out when I’m rushed and have to do it, otherwise I’ll procrastinate.

SM: What part of your imagination were you writing from with that piece?

JGQ: At the beginning of the 48-hour film festival that we were doing, when the word that came up was lollipop, I just sat down in my cube for probably three or four hours after midnight. So, I was up until about four in the morning where I was just trying to come up with something. I was like, “Lollipop?” I kept drawing weird drawings, nothing was really coming to me, and I was trying to think of what I was going to do with it. Then I doodled a drawing of that character with the big head, the Lollipop guy with a top hat. I think I wrote something in a word bubble next to his face that said something about, “Don’t make fun of me, son of a bitch!” After I wrote that, everything started pouring out: The lines were just coming out, and it started to develop into this (story) where this guy doesn’t know any better. He’s from somewhere else, and he’s going to pay [his restaurant bill] in lollipops. He thinks he’s doing a good job, but this guy—he’s a waiter—he’s pissed. It just wrote itself, and I just imagined two people talking back-and-forth and what would happen if this really happened.

Then it was pushing it, making it more British. I was—I still am—really into British comedy. At the time I was just getting into it, so the whole accent was really fun to add in—having him say stupid things like “billfold.”

SM: Moving from that piece to 2 in the AM PM, I’ve noticed throughout all the pieces we’re talking about an innocent sweetness. That’s not to say that the characters are unaware of what’s going on, but there’s sweetness in all of the pieces, just based on their sense of humanity. I don’t know if I was misreading that, but I was wondering where that comes from?

JGQ: I write usually what I think feels natural, and maybe that’s part of my personality. I’m not a mean person, so I don’t like writing mean people. For 2 in the AM PM specifically, I wrote that based on me and my friend Devin. I did the voice of myself, and another friend of mine does the voice of Devin’s character. I just imagined, “What would happen if this had happened?” It seems like if you can relate to the character, and you like them, then you’ll care for them more. So, I try to write them so that people like them right away.

SM: How do you know when you’re creating a piece of art and you feel like, “I’ve hit on something. I really did something I was trying to achieve,”?—that not coming from validation from others but just a feeling internally.

JGQ: When I’m trying to think of an idea, I’ll have periods where nothing’s really happening: Don’t have anything on paper, I’m just trying to think of something that’s going to work. Usually, I’ll just be doodling, and everything I’m doing I really don’t like. Then finally, I’ll draw something and start to think of lines for that. Usually, if I can make myself laugh with something that I think of, I figure there are bound to be other people with similar sensibilities who will laugh as well. Then I look at the joke and try to plus it…I like to try to do things that aren’t normal, stuff that wouldn’t normally happen, so that people can’t guess it as it’s coming on.

Whenever I do films, and I think this happened early on when I was in high school, I would get really upset if people saw something and then offer criticisms that were like, “You should have done it like this, or you should do it like that.” It would always make me upset because I’d be like, “Why don’t you do a film like that, or why don’t you do it your way?” So, I started not showing people anything, and just doing it all the way I thought was the way it was supposed to be done. The other thing with that—especially at CalArts—was that I didn’t want to ruin anything or have people know what was going to happen. Part of those stories is just that you’re not sure what’s going to go on, and when it happens, it’s like, “Oh, I wasn’t expecting that.”

SM: Two other big ideas that we haven’t talked about yet: the first is Net Hat Co. and the second is Flapjack. So, I’ll throw those into your ballpark and see what you’ve got.

JGQ: Net Hat Co. was created by me and Devin Roth back in 2003, my freshman year at CalArts. We were influenced by this group of guys who we’d met who were seniors at the time we were freshman…This logo would pop up before [their] films that said Millionaire Entertainment. It would have a dud with a wine glass or a brandy glass, and he would say, “Golden, baby, golden.” Then the film would start, and every time that logo came on, the film was really good, and I would laugh really hard.

So, when I got to CalArts, and I met my buddy Devin, we were both really into those films and influenced to be like, “Ah, we want to do that,” so that when our films come on people will be excited. So, we made the [Net Hat Co.] logo and started tagging it onto our films. Then the next year, after the first year show—because then it was just me and him. We had three films: I did two, and he did one.—but after that we met some people incoming in the next class. I remembered talking to the Millionaire guys about it, and I guess they didn’t really pass it on at all. They just did it as their group of friends and then killed it. But, then we had the idea of passing it on, and what we decided to do was pick two artists from each year level that we really liked their work and ask them to be a part of it…Our senior year we had a ton of guys in it who were all like-minded artists that were making animation; we all had similar story sensibilities, we all respected each other’s work, and we were going to stick together after school was over. Even at that, after we left, Devin and I, (Erik Fountain) took over and made sure they picked two more from the next year level. Then the guys who are in it from there are going to pick. We’re really curious to see how long it will even last, if it will or not.

It turned into a bit of a fraternity in a way because CalArts doesn’t have sports, and the college doesn’t have fraternities. It’s just a small arts school. In a dorky way, it was just a club for us to meet the people we really respected and all be a part of the same thing. Then we ended up putting all of our work onto a Website recently, and we wanted to try to make our own company so that we could make whatever we wanted. Then we realized how hard that actually is…We all had jobs as well, so it didn’t seem feasible to follow up on it. It’s just going to be more an online portfolio with all of our work together and contacts for all of those guys, growing it for whoever gets in on it. Maybe in the future we’ll try to do more with it, but for now I think it’s on the back burners.

SM: The other biggie I threw out there was Flapjack.

JGQ: The creator’s name is Thurop Van Orman, and he went to CalArts. He was a few years ahead of me, but when I first got in, I took a screenwriting class with Nicole Panter, and Thurop was in that class. I remember writing a whole bunch of scripts on hobos, and I think Thurop’s really into hobos, so he came up to me afterwards and said that he liked them. We met after that screenwriting class, became friends, and his film the year prior to that—which I’d seen when I went to the show—was Flapjack.

...I was doing revision work [for Camp Lazlo on Cartoon Network] and then eventually got to be a board artist through that, did boards for two seasons of Lazlo. Toward the end of that, Thurop was finishing up his pilot for Flapjack, and (Cartoon Network was) unsure whether or not they were going to pick it up. He decided—or rather they decided—that they wanted to see some more boards.

(Cartoon Network) sat on those for a while—they liked them, but it didn’t get a pick-up. Then they wanted two more boards, and what we did then, Thurop asked if he could hire me on to work with him on the boards. So, we were both in this really tiny office with no windows, back-to-back at desks. It was very much like CalArts in the size—actually CalArts would have bigger cubes than this for two people. But, we’d just come in, work on these boards, and then they flew us out to Atlanta to pitch to the executives. We were really nervous about it. We’d worked really hard on this thing, and we weren’t sure if they were going to like it. So, we pitched it to them, and they laughed, seemed to really like it. But, then, we still didn’t hear anything back about whether or not they were going to pick up this board or the show that we already had five boards for—that’s almost a quarter of the season I think. They gave us news about doing five two-minute intersticials to get kids excited about Flapjack, even though they hadn’t greenlit it. They were just like, “Oh, we want to keep you guys working.” So, we ended up writing these two-minute shorts, which is really fun to do. Halfway in between doing those shorts, (Cartoon Network) called us randomly one day to say, “You got the show!” So that was really exciting, to know that it was actually for real, and all the work wasn’t a waste.

It took a long time even after that, but all the sudden (Kent Osborne) came on as the head writer, and we started writing premises. Then we got the board crew starting to come on, and now we have a full crew. Everybody’s here, and we’re starting to ship things to Korea. I think we even shipped those intersticials that we did not too long ago. They’re all done with color, and so in a few months, we should be hearing back about animation, seeing stuff move for the first time. We’re all really excited about it. It’s been quite an ordeal. From the time that Thurop conceived the idea that far back at CalArts to now, it’s been four or five years almost. So, it’s really nice that it actually worked out.

For more information on the animator's work visit www.nethatco.com.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form