During school holidays, summer 1982, I was given the envious job of helping out my uncle. He worked for DC Thompsons drawing Banana Man (The Beano) & Desperate Dan (The Dandy) amongst others. My job entailed inking neat boxes with a Rotring around his pencil sketches before he inked, painting in black bits he'd indicated with a cross and probably most important, sharpening his pencils. I was promoted to inking foliage and clouds before the end of the summer. There were of course many times I found myself with nothing more to do than sit and watch him work. This had a huge effect on me and I used to practice for hours when I got home.

When it came to going to college my mother wanted me to study engineering, I wanted to go to art college. The compromise was technical illustration. I can't remember ever really enjoying the course. I do remember 2 years of perspective theory and cross sections of centrifugal speed switches. Lots of ellipse guides, rotring pens and proportional dividers. In the third year I was lucky enough to get an Interview at the animation studio, Cosgrove Hall in Manchester. Projects of theirs at the time included, Danger Mouse and Wind in the Willows. They were just starting production on their first feature, Roald Dahl's The BFG. I got the job and packed in college the next day.

You worked on a series of animated TV shows now considered classics. What was involved with your work on them?

I spent my first weeks working the photocopier and painting cells before starting in "special effects" ,which was really cell painting with an airbrush. Working on the BFG I started to learn the basics of animation but what really got my attention was painting backgrounds. I started to learn watercolors/ gouache and acrylics in the evenings and at weekends. With a bit of hard work a found myself in the background department. My first series was Count Duckula. The bg style was a mixture of pencil drawings copied onto cell and over laid with a mixture of cut out paper and cell paint. I then used pastels working on Danger Mouse. After a couple of years at this I progressed into layouts (also on Danger Mouse) then storyboards and character design.

After Thames TV lost its TV franchise (Cosgrove Hall was a subsidiary) in 1991, I was made redundant and found myself in Dublin. Here I worked on Teenage Ninja Turtles, later I was the Art Director for the Fred Wolf animation studio on Budgie the little Helicopter and The Amazing adventures of Sinbad. I've had a love hate relationship with animation but I still find myself working on storyboards, designing characters and now animating in Flash.

Which was your favorite to work on?

I'd have to say Danger Mouse was my favorite. Technically, it wasn't the best animation the world has ever seen. The amount of re-use of stock scenes was incredible and the drawing count was very low. But the scripts, written by Brian Trueman, and the voice talents of David Jason and Terry Scott were fantastic. On occasion the film would be a minute or two short and to pad it out a suitable point in the film would be chosen where DM and Penfold were walking along a street or corridor and a hole would open up. The duo would fall into it and there would follow a sequence of bouncing/ blinking eyes (two for Penfold and one for DM) against a black background and shouts of "eek!" "ouchh!" and "aarrghhh!". They would then climb out of another hole and carry on with the film. It worked very well.

Are animated TV shows still being made or have traditional animation firms declined?

The animation industry is still out there, making possibly more series than ever. What has changed is the technology. It's now much easier to make an animated series using a lot less people. The traditional studio of over 100 people has completely disappeared from Ireland. Over the last 10 years we have lost 4 large studios, Sullivan Bluth, Animedia, Fred Wolf and now Terraglph has let a huge chunk of their staff go. That's around 400 jobs and most of those people have had to go abroad to get work. The smaller firms have been the ones better suited to survival. Illusion animation, Brown Bag & Monster, small animation studios who have managed to utilise technology very efficiently and draw on the freelance talent base that still exits in Ireland.

What did your work on The Beano comic involve?

A few years ago I was in touch with The Beano. I did a test for them and I was given a new character to work on called "Even Steven". He appeared every week for about 6 months or so, but was eventually given the boot (poor fan base in the under 7 age group I think). It used to take me over a day to pencil/ ink single page. I'd seen my uncle complete a page in little over a hour. I couldn't really make it pay and it wasn't as much fun as I'd expected all those years earlier.

Recently you produced a series of animated TV adverts for the food safety council using flash. What was involved in this project? Do you think we will see more flash technology used for broadcast use in the future?

I've produced 7 safe food ads so far. They have been produced in association with Grey advertising, who approached me to work on the pitch. We had to figure how we were going to output from flash to broadcast. Once we had this worked out it became increasingly simple to produce. The ads were animated in less than a week each and really were great fun to work on. John Carvil, the CD in Grey, had some great ideas and really pushed me and Flash to extremes. I think when clients start to realise what they can get from the flash they will start to use it more. I know the feed back I've had has been great. It's cheaper to produce than traditional methods with faster turnarounds and still manages to retain a look of quality.

Has flash technology and the web had a big impact upon the animation community?

About 5 years ago I directed a series of animated rugby Ad's for Heineken and the Sunday Trib. I had a team of 10, inc. animators, background artists, painters, checkers and a camera man. I also had to hire a studio. The whole process took about three weeks. Now I can do all that on my computer in a matter of days. The fact that animators can solely produce a rendered, interactive film and put it up on their web site is fantastic. Having said that, a lot of animators in traditional studios still don't use computers.

You have also produced a short to be shown on Atomfilms. Can you explain the short and how you were approached to produce it?

This is a 150 second film produced for Irish Flash. It's a competition run by the Irish Film Board and AtomFilms. Myself and seven others were chosen to produce short films in Flash for showing on AtomFilms.com. My film is called "Krappe Park". It's due to go up on Atomfilms/shockwave soon. If you want to see a preview it's on my website www.stevesimpson.com. It's a little crude but it's all good fun.

Who are some of your illustration/animation influences?

Brad Holland of course. I've been an admirer of PJ Lynch for many years. We have some great home grown talent over here, if you click through the various illustrators on www.illustratorsIreland.com you can see the great diversity of styles. In the UK, you should check out www.loop-land.co.uk, a recent addition to Heart Agency.

Do you have your own web site?

yes, I've had my site for almost 2 years which I update every 2 months. At this stage it's fairly extensive and covers editorial/advertising and corporate illustration as well as the Flash animation. http://www.stevesimpson.com and I'm also a member of the IGI, Illustrators' Guild of Ireland.

Has royalty free stock had a detrimental influence upon the growth of illustration in ireland?

There are always going to be clients who are too tight to commission illustration or photography. These tend to be the main users of royalty free stock. I think this puts it into the same arena as clip art and hopefully it will find it's rightful level in the market in such notable publications as PTA newsletters and church pamphlets.

Do you find advertising agencies use more illustration than design agencies?

To be honest most of the illustration work I've done over the last few years has been for design studios and it's only recently I've started approaching the ad agencies. In general ad agencies seem in a better position to sell illustration to their clients. They have the ability to pull an unknown illustrator from obscurity and place them in centre of an ad campaign.

What are your plans for the future?

I'm hoping to get a lot more in the way of personal projects underway, maybe some flash animation onto CI. I really enjoy editorial work and I'd love to push that side of my illustration more. Maybe children's books. I really enjoy working on wide variety of projects in different mediums.

Visit Steve Simpson at:
www.stevesimpson.com

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