Ryan Quincy is the animation and technical supervisor at South Park. This is his short film Out There.
TRN: I love your personal work so much. When I watch Out There by myself, I start crying. This is going to sound unsophisticated, but can you explain to a non-animator how you work? I know you make paintings and I know they move in your movies, but how do you separate the elements, and what programs are used in the transition from paintings to finished films?
RYAN QUINCY: Thanks a lot, man. With the animation featuring my characters the last couple of years, I've used Flash software. When I was figuring out how to do the Dios (Malos) video, my wife suggested I give Flash a try because she always tells me what to do and I'm pussy
whipped like that....plus we already had it on our computer, so it was the most accessible, and I was able to pick it up fairly quickly.
Ryan's video for Dios Malos.
I was reluctant at first, because most of the flash animation I'd seen looked too crisp and clean...too automated, too souless...and the goal was to translate the look of my paintings and character designs through flash without compromising too much. So I was pleasantly surprised when it worked, and the guys in Dios really liked how the video turned out. So did my two year old son, so when it came time to do Out There, I stuck with Flash.
The process consisted of scanning in the artwork (painted backgrounds, hand drawn characters, body parts, props, etc.), adjusting it some in Photoshop and Illustrator, and then importing it all into Flash and animating. So, there you have it, the boring truth to my animation. Hopefully that's not too unsophisticated an answer for you...
TRN: How did you wind up doing a video for Dios Malos? Had you been thinking you wanted to do a music video, or was it something that just came along?
RYAN QUINCY: I met their keyboard player, James Cabez deVaca a.k.a. Jimi Camaro, through my brother. Dios is from Hawthorne, same hometown as the Beach Boys. Dios saw my artwork and asked me to do some t-shirt and poster designs, which was a lot of fun. They're really cool guys. They had just completed their 2nd album and were looking for video ideas for their first single, they asked if I was interested in doing an animated video, and I said, hell yeah. I had always wanted to do an animated video, and this was the perfect situation, because I really liked the band and their music, and I had complete artistic control.TRN: Have you always known that you wanted to make animated films, or was it something that grew out of painting and character design? I guess I'm curious about how you got started down the road you're on artistically. Can you shed any light on how you came to be doing the kind of work you're doing now? You can separate that into "professional" and "personal"...though I know there's a lot of technical overlap, there's a huge tonal difference between the work you do at SP and the work you do yourself.
RYAN QUINCY: I see the paintings, drawings, characters, and animation as all parts of the same body of work. They have similar motifs and recurring themes. From a very young age I always loved to draw, make up characters and stories...and that eventually led to wanting to see my characters move and act, so animation was the next road to take.
I didn't seriously pursue animation until I moved out to L.A. from Nebraska. The college I went to didn't have an animation program. It only offered one animation class, which I took and liked enough to keep with it. After about 5 months in L.A., pounding the pavement, I finally landed a job with an animation studio that did work for MAD TV. We did stuff like Raging Rudolph, which was if Martin Scorsese had directed the Rankin Bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer...and Gumby Old Men, Dennis the Menace II Society, Sex Toy Story...you get the idea. Anyway, that job came to an end and then I heard that the South Park folks were looking for animators for Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, so I applied and thankfully got a job. I've been with them ever since and it's been a blast. As for my personal work, I've focused more on the subtle humanistic stuff...with a cast of creatures whose lives are melancholic and somewhat bleak, but they have short bursts of hope and joy.
TRN: They are melancholic, but that's what I like so much about them, even though it makes me cry. So much of what I look at or watch is really loud, visually and aurally, and your work takes me back to a time when I myself was dreamier—you know, as a kid. Do you see yourself expanding on this body of work for some time, and letting it live as a universe of paintings and shorter works, or would you like to bring elements of it together as a feature, book, or show sometime? Or all of the above? I guess I'm asking where you feel like you're headed artistically...not that you have to be "headed" somewhere other than where you are...I just mean, I know I have these vague ideas of things I might want to do, and I'm wondering if you'd like to share any of yours.RYAN QUINCY: I'm currently working on expanding the Out There universe into something bigger. The short was just an introduction to that world. I'd like to do a feature length deal that could possibly lead to an episodic affair...we'll see. Those characters are occupying my mind most these days, so, yeah, I'm continually chipping away at this body of work in hopes of having my own art show where you could see my paintings, drawings and animation all together. It doesn't have to be in some fancy gallery. Maybe even have it at a 7-11, where you can enjoy a slurpee and some nachos while you look at the work.
To see more of Ryan's work go to www.ryanquincy.com.
