Chris Harding shares "We the Robots" and "Learn Self-Defense"

Animator/Illustrator Chris Harding’s new online comic strip We The Robots launches officially today and to celebrate Taylor caught up with Chris for a great look behind the scenes of his last short (Learn Self Defense) and all the new goodies Chris has planned for 08. We The Robots will be a weekly series sharing the same ideas and characters in Chris’s next animated short film planned for release sometime next year.

Chris Harding
Learn Self Defense

What burning idea did you have in you that you had to get out with this short?

I wanted to see how it would look to apply some recent American foreign policy ideas on an individual scale – to have a guy walking down the street, attacking anything that looked like a potential threat to him.

I don’t know if an animated short is the place for that sort of thing, but you write about what’s on your mind at the moment, I guess.

What were your duties on the short – animation, character modeling, direction, art direction, editing, other?

All that stuff. I made it in my basement late at night.

Talk about some artists that have influenced your design style.

When I had to start learning to animate in Flash, I found my existing scratchy drawing style didn’t fit well with vector-based art. I started looking closely at Rocky and Bullwinkle, Tim Biskup, Bobe Cannon, Ward Kimball… I thought they had some ideas I could apply. I had seen a lot of this stuff when I was a kid, and loved it. But back then I wasn’t thinking of animation as a career at all. To be great at being simple is the most difficult thing in the world.

(The thing for me now is to try to take what I’ve learned from these guys and make something that’s more my own. You don’t want the first thing people see in your work to be your influences.)

Also, when I was about thirteen I saw a cartoon on the NBC series Amazing Stories called “The Family Dog.” I probably watched it 100 times, and multiple times frame-by-frame on our VCR. (I still had no idea of being an animator at this time – I was just obsessed with this cartoon for some reason.) A couple years ago I learned that Brad Bird wrote and directed it! The timing is absolutely perfect in that short, and the characters often talk over each other.

Also when I was a kid I saw the “Coke Bottle” segment of Allegro Non Troppo as an interstitial on HBO. It’s had a big influence on the short I’m working on now.

What found materials did you surround yourself with for inspiration?

Hmm…I have some nice posters hanging in my office – Chris Ware, James Victore...things that remind you to keep in touch with your inner unreasonable bastard.

I listen a lot to people’s speaking styles. I collect phrases I hear and steal them... Visually, I like to see good work, soak it in, and then forget about it. If it’s right in front of me, the temptation to copy is too great. So I don’t keep a lot of stuff lying around or anything... uh…I don’t know if that answers the question.

How long did the production take from start to finish?

This cartoon took about three or four months to animate, working nights and weekends. But it probably took longer than that to write. It was tricky because I didn’t want the audience to know what I was talking about until about a quarter of the way through the short – and then, at a certain point, to have it dawn on them what they are watching.

Were you test-driving any new skills or technology here? Or working with anyone for the first time?

The technology was pretty familiar. The main thing was the animation, which I really struggle with. I have no idea what I’m doing, and it’s really hard.

What was the biggest technical challenge?

This was the first short I made with the intention of showing it to real audiences that weren’t friends or co-workers. So everything about getting it prepared for festival screenings was tough. I was sending out VHS tapes for the first three months because I hadn’t learned how to make DVDs yet. Just a lot of technical stuff to learn the whole way through, since I did everything myself.

Talk about your scholastic background and your professional background. What led you to animation?

I got a degree in illustration from the University of Arizona. (I also had almost enough credits for a minor in nine-ball.)

I did comic strips throughout college, and got syndicated just before graduation. I also got a job at Hallmark Cards around that time. When Hallmark started a “New Media Studio” to make e-cards, I got a gig in there. It was a lot of fun at the time – a handful of us were trying to teach ourselves animation with no training or concept of what we were supposed to be doing. A few years later I started trying to make shorts.

What’s your latest project?

My latest project is a short on the subject of “making a living,” and it features robots. I don’t really know how to describe it, but I’ll give it a shot…

Gather the following materials:
Allegro Non Troppo
Koyaanisqatsi
The Fast Runner
2001: A Space Odyssey
Wendy Carlos
the collected books of Jared Diamond
and Ed Emberley’s Fingerprint Drawing Book
Now shove all these things down the front of your pants and walk around for a day. At first, maybe it tickles a little – maybe you even get a little bit excited. But by the end of the day, it’s starting to chafe and bleed. That’s what I’m working on.

As I said, I don’t really know how to describe it. It’s a cartoon about robots working.

(I am also about to launch a Web comic called “We The Robots” that’s very closely related to the short. They are two facets of the same set of ideas.)

And is this animation thing in fact your day job?

I still make e-cards for a day job, and I draw my little people at night. I don’t really make any money at animation so far.

What is that day like, on average?

On an average day, I go to work and make e-cards. Over lunch I read, write, storyboard – any work I can get done with a notebook in a coffee shop. Then I come home and hang out with my family. When everyone is getting sleepy, I go down to the basement and try to stay awake a few more hours and do something constructive.

Where can one simultaneously learn about all things Chris Harding and freak out about the fact that it looks like some dude left big honkin’ fingerprints all our shiny clean monitors?

www.chrisharding.net

Also, the new Web comic will live here: http://www.wetherobots.com/

Terry Southern is The Man. Discuss. Also feel free to mention any other candidates for The Man in respect to your writing influences on this short.

For a long time I’ve had an obsession with Stanly Kubrick and read every book about him I could find. There was a story that Terry Southern brought a stag film to Kubrick’s house during the production of Dr. Strangelove. Kubrick, being the director he was, couldn’t get past how poorly it was filmed. He wondered what it would take to make a high-quality pornographic movie with a good script and famous actors. Apparently this was the inspiration for Southern’s book Blue Movie, which is dedicated to “Big Stan.” Rumor had it that Kubrick’s wife told him if he ever made such a movie, she’d kill him. There was a little speculation when Eyes Wide Shut was about to be released that he’d actually gone and done it... I don’t know if any of these stories are true, but that’s how I started reading Terry Southern.

Both those guys are “The Man.”

Also, I read an interview with Errol Morris several years ago. He compared the lack of objectivity and self-awareness in some of his interview subjects to the protagonist in Nabokov’s Pale Fire. So I read that and it was really great. I love the idea of an oblivious, self-interested, unreliable narrator. In Learn Self Defense, the narrator has no clue what’s actually going on, or what the consequences are of his ideas. He just keeps droning on and on with his theory of self-defense, while it’s obvious the streets are descending into chaos.

Nabokov and Errol Morris are also “The Man.”

I don’t know if any of this stuff had a direct influence on the cartoon. I read them and tell myself I’m doing research, when actually I’m probably just putting off my work.

I also stole a line from Lenny Bruce’s Thank You Mask Man short. And probably a couple other people... Chaplin...

Have you seen the short screen with a lot of different audiences? Does it earn universal laughter, or do certain audiences freeze up at the point when they realize it may actually maybe possibly be making fun of God’s Tool?

Well, it’s intended to be a little bit uncomfortable—the violence, by the end, is not supposed to be funny anymore. So usually, there’s at least a little bit of tension. I once had a screening here in Kansas City where a couple was booing it and saying “This is what’s wrong with America,” and that sort of thing. But I’ve also had some really great, enthusiastic screenings – in Austin at SXSW, for example. It’s a mixed bag, but usually people are pretty polite.

The droll Mr. Mark Cook is again narrating this short, as he narrated the classic Make Mine Shoebox. Isn’t Mr. Cook simply miles and miles away from you? Kvetch if possible about the pros and cons about working with a team whose members are spread all the hell over this country.

Actually, Mark Cook is an illustrator at Hallmark. I heard him talking one day and I liked his voice and asked him to narrate Make Mine Shoebox. I thought that came out pretty well, so I asked him to do it again on Learn Self Defense.

My brother, who lives in DC, wrote a short that I hope to animate someday. I guess we’ll have to figure out how to work at a distance, but I think it’ll be pretty easy.

Describe some of the things you have done for Los Angeles-based Duck Studios.

Not much, so far. I did a commercial once, and a couple ad banners. In my experience, the commercial business seems to consist of lots and lots of pitching, which I totally suck at. I’ve never landed a single job by pitching.

Anyway, they are very nice and professional at Duck, and I like them. They are probably a little sick of me – I never score any jobs, and half the time I turn them down at the outset. I’m not an enthusiastic seeker of commercial work. I’d normally rather be writing and drawing my own stuff in the limited time I have.

There is some startling anecdote about Learn Self-Defense that you have never revealed to this point. Perhaps some unforgettable audience reaction. Or how it causes gum disease in cats. Or how IT risk can be mitigated through a combination of careful monitoring of custom order processes, surveying risk/benefit/cost trade-offs, and usage of the word “Aplomb”. Shock us.

The one possibly interesting anecdote was that the original storyboards included a shot in which the main character pulls down his opponent’s pants and mocks him, in order to break his spirit. Over the summer of 2004, as I was animating that scene, all the crap about Abu Ghraib came out. This short was intended to be about a particular policy, not the tactics used to carry it out. So I had to cut that whole thing. I couldn’t believe that had actually happened.

As a result, at the end of “Lesson 3” there is a part where the narrator is talking, and George is just standing there with a dumb grin for a few seconds – that’s where he was supposed to be pulling the guy’s pants down. Gross, huh?