Animator, comic artist Bob Scott, who has worked with big players like Pixar, DreamWorks, Warner Bros., Turner is bringing his new comic strip compilation, Bear with Me for the readers.
Bear with Me is a classic all ages comic strip. The jokes and storylines spring from Bear and Molly’s real world, she has real world problems and he has problems with the real world! There is no controversy, no satire, nothing that kids can’t enjoy. Like Scott, it’s just plain fun.
Scott, in his interview with Animation Xpress, takes us all through his journey in this wonderful industry.
“I love both mediums- animation and comics very much. They have some similarities, but they fill different artistic needs for me,” he said. Animation in the major studios is the work of hundreds of artists working together as one. Artists work to tell a story, to make drawings or pixels come to life. According to Scott, it is rewarding to contribute to these projects.
Animation is his full-time job, and he creates his strip in the evenings and weekends. “Drawing Bear with Me gives me the artistic freedom I crave. I like being my own boss! I draw Bear with Me the old-fashioned way, pencilled on Bristol board and inked with a Windsor Newton brush. Over the years my job has become more and more computer based, so I really love putting pencil to paper for my strip. I miss the activity of drawing with pencils and paper in animation,” expressed Scott.
When asked about using bear as his main character, Scott added, “Since I was little, I have always drawn bears. They are just really fun to draw. I like the big silliness of bears. The strip was created almost accidentally; I drew a really scared bear and a little girl next to him. The pair of them looked so funny together I laughed out loud. That’s when Bear with Me was born.”
According to Scott, comic strips are the best story-telling medium for a fast-paced world. “A daily strip is three or four square panels, with just black ink on a whiteboard. It is like a haiku (a type of short-form poetry) to me. Everything that doesn’t need to be there to tell the joke has to be removed. It is a creative challenge every time I sit down to work. I love it.”
Bear with Me collection of comic strips will be coming out in February 2021 from Hermes Press. “Hermes Press does an incredible job of publishing high quality comic strip collections, Garfield and Pogo are two stand-outs. Publisher Dan Herman and Sabrina Herman are absolute joys to work with, and I trust them implicitly to publish a spectacular book for me. I feel tremendously grateful that they believe in my work.”
It is a hardback book filled with over 405 daily comic strips. Scott’s old boss, mentor and friend Garfield creator Jim Davis was kind enough to write the foreword for the book. Along with the compilation of strips, the book features the step by step process on how Scott creates a finished comic strip. Added to that are never-before-seen samples of some of his very early work, character sketches and a bonus of the popular colour Sunday comics.
Scott has been working for over 35 years in the animation industry. He has worked at Pixar (for over 11 years from Monsters Inc to Cars 2) and Dreamworks (from Prince of Egypt to El Dorado), and Warner Bros.
The classic Looney Tunes style of animation is his favourite animation style to do. “I spent my whole childhood watching those cartoons and to be able to animate with those great blur drawings and exaggerations made me feel like I was in heaven.” He was part of the team led by director Darrell Van Citters, where they made a short called Box Office Bunny and the first Nike Air Jordan commercial with Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny.
At Turner, Scott was the co-supervising animator with Jay Jackson on Danny the Cat in the animated feature Cats Don’t Dance. At Pixar, he was part of the small team that animated the 2D portion of the short Day and Night and he co-supervised the 2D animation on the short Your Friend the Rat directed by Jim Capobianco. “The common thread between all of these projects is that they are cartoony 2D projects. That’s the style of animation I enjoy more than any other,” he added.
Scott also worked at Disney on a couple of projects, including the Roger Rabbit short, Tummy Trouble. Currently, he is once again working with Mark Dindal, on a new all animated Garfield movie.