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I first considered a Chinese localized name for Firewatch when I gave a talk at GDC China 2015, and they had translated the session title as <看火人> (word for word, this is “Watch Fire Man”). I grew up in Hong Kong reading Chinese, and I thought the localized name was well chosen—because while it mostly suggests “fire lookout” (which doesn’t specifically imply “firefighting”), it also allows a more ominous interpretation of “person watching the fire burn.”
This was long before we had ever decided Firewatch would have a simplified Chinese localization, but the name stuck with me.
Jump to 2017. When we began working with Tencent on a localized Chinese voiceover, it was natural for us to suggest <看火人> as the official localized title. We began to play around with the idea of having a properly thought-out Chinese logo to go with the localized title.
Chinese typography presents fascinating and challenging problems; here’s a great article about the breadth and complexity of the art form. Luckily, we are only attempting to create 3 relatively simple glyphs, all three of which are the same in both simplified and traditional Chinese, so we decided to try to do it ourselves rather than outsourcing it.
For reference, Jake, Claire, and I picked out three existing Chinese fonts that we thought were closest to the feel of Verlag, our English font. Claire, who doesn’t read Chinese, made a pretty great first attempt, seen in the lower right above. I’ve never had to think about Chinese characters as a design, but as someone who can read the language, I knew it didn’t “feel” very finished.
It was fun and educational for me, as someone with elementary Chinese penmanship, to sit down and try to analyze and articulate why some of the glyphs looked like “a kid wrote it.” It was also a fun exercise for me to give Claire, our art director, some direction notes for a change!
Further revisions include:
making the middle “Fire” character symmetrical
making sure all three glyphs take up about equal amount of space
The characters look great now! Then the attention went to how to resolve some of the harsh points in the graphic, in terms of just the visual design:
adjusting the gutter width so they are not identical (yellow)
making the cut in the shield shape more pleasing (red)
deciding whether the “Watch” glyph should have “feet” flourishes (green)
By the end of the third day, we’d settled on a design we’re very proud of. Here is Claire’s fantastic final vector version of the logo. We hope you like how it looks on a shirt as much as we do!
So damn proud of how this logo turned out, and I owe so so much to Jane’s pointed direction and tutelage.
…also I will never get over “looks slightly like a kid wrote it,” arguably the best critique I’ve ever gotten in my career 👌🏼
Regardless Infinity Train - Tulip had some interestingly complex lines in the pilot. Wanted to ask, is it is just a character quirk to make her appear "nerdy", or the plot of the show will have a relationship with some scientific concepts?
I don’t really know what people are talking about when they say “these lines are just to make her look nerdy.”
Every line that every character says in everything is to make them be like their character. That’s how writing works. If they aren’t saying something that matches who they are as a character, then what are they doing? Just being exposition? That’s bad writing.
If a character knows a lot of stuff, then they say things that show they know a lot of stuff. If the character is dumb as hell, then they say things that are dumb as hell. If they’re evil, they say evil things.
Here are a bunch of things no one says:
“They had Han Solo say ‘better her than me’ about the princess just to show he’s selfish”
“Robocop says ‘dead or alive, you’re coming with me’ just to show he’s a tough cop”
“Batman says ‘A hero can be anyone. Even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a little boy’s shoulders to let him know that the world hadn’t ended’ in Dark Night Rises just because they wanted him to seem heroic and strong.”
Tulip says things the way they made sense to me for her to say them. Same with One-One and Atticus, because their characters speak, think, and act certain ways.
Tulip is logical person, so she says things logically and tries to make sense of her world in a way that feels logical. That’s why she’s the perfect foil for the train. The train doesn’t make sense, so if you want conflict in your story then the best character to have to interact with something that is completely illogical and doesn’t make sense is someone who is logical and wants things to make sense. She doesn’t know everything, but she certainly knows words that are outside her peer group.
My mom went to school for science and one of my dad’s degrees was in mathematics. I was brought up in a very scientifically literate household. In some ways, I was very similar to Tulip when I was 12. I read a lot, I was learning programming and 3D computer art, all kinds of stuff. She doesn’t know anything I didn’t know when I was 12. She’s more assertive in her approach to things, but I understand the core of where she’s coming from.
As far as scientific concepts in the show would go, I mean the show is science fiction, it’s gonna use some things here and there as a jumping off point but I won’t strictly adhere to it. People love Star Wars but spaceships don’t move like airplanes in space. Having a show be entertaining is the most important thing. Making sure your rules are consistent within the universe helps to that end, but those rules might not always be the rules of the real world.
Hi, I just wondered if you had any advice. I just hit 24 and still have a few of years to go in my school and I already feel too old. Am I? Also, the school Im at sucks (and rhymes with Fart Lintstitute). Am I utterly screwed over in terms of getting a job somewhere like CN? Should I drop out while I still can? Theres no other schools in my state and I think Im worse than these kids, so Im feeling discouraged. And how do I get into storyboarding? I just recently realized its a path I could take.
There are a lot of different things to cover here so I’ll separate them out:
Are you too old?
You’re not too old. This isn’t like Logan’s Run where once you turn thirty you float around in a room where you explode on the ceiling. If it is, I’m in for a very rude awakening in a few months.
My school is shitty, does that mean I’m shitty and will never get a job?
If you think you will get better at your art by not being in school, then by all means, drop out. There’s no reason to put yourself into debt for something that isn’t helping you. I know lots of people that dropped out of school or went to schools that “sucked” that have great careers in this industry.
I’ve got plenty of complaints about my school from when I attended, but I know that overall it helped me even though it’s a lesser known school. A lesser known school, by the way, that produced Toby Jones, Madeline Queripel, Julia Vickerman, and many others that have good careers in animation in other studios.
There’s an unhelpful meme going around that says you can’t get a job in animation unless you go to CalArts. It’s simply not true. I will give you that if you ask someone where they’re from, the school that the most people have in common is CalArts, but the vast majority of people didn’t go there. What’s more likely, that an industry full of thousands and thousands of people only hires from one school even though they get someone from another school or no school submitting to them with high quality work? Or that someone who makes sub-par work has been submitting to studios for years, but they can’t find a job, they’re starting to get bitter, and they’re looking for someone to blame other than themselves so they choose CalArts? This is understandable, and it can feel immensely frustrating when people seem like they don’t take your work seriously. You have this drive and desire to get in, but people keep telling you no without telling you why, or even worse, not responding at all!
Then, on the internet, you have people like me who say things like “Just keep working at it” and “keep submitting! Draw all the time!” This can be somewhat misleading because we want to remain positive and usually leave out the part where we think “Also this process can take anywhere from 1-10 years or more and, if you get offered a job at all, it will most likely be at a small studio working on something you don’t particularly like or care about, but you’ll at least make money and after a couple years of doing that you might move on to something you like a little more!”
For most people, it takes a long time to get into these big studios. It’s intimidating, scary, frustrating, and unfair. It’s unfair because people who know people in the industry have an advantage over you, but that’s also the case in EVERY industry in the world. However, while it’s an advantage, it’s far from a guarantee. If you know people, they let you know when and where there’s a job opening and can vouch for you, but that’s it. People don’t just hire their friends, no weirdo introverted artist showrunner has as many friends as there are jobs to fill. That vouch still can’t actually get you the job. It’s art. If you can’t draw what you’re being asked to draw, it becomes quickly obvious and it’s really the one thing you have to do, so you either won’t be hired or will be out of a job as soon as they’re able to let you go. There’s simply no time for nepotism, we have a schedule and we need to get shit done.
Hell, after you work at a small studio, you might find you don’t even want to work at a big studio and all of this will be moot!
Should I drop out of school? I’m worse than everyone else.
Here’s some questions you should think about: Why do you think you’re worse than your peers? What qualities does their work have that, in your mind, makes it better? Why is that important to you? How could you get those qualities into your work? What separates you from them? What qualities do you have that they don’t have? Will your artistic education be better if you aren’t in school and are able to do things on your own, or will it be better with instruction and learning from other students around you? Is it possible you’re just burned out because this is an intense field of study? Are you actually answering these questions truthfully?
If your work is at least like a 6.5 out of 10 in quality, then all you need is two of these three things:
1) You turn your stuff in on time
2) You’re easy to work with
3) You make incredible work
Neil Gaiman wrote those as a venn diagram and he’s absolutely right. I would say living in the area where you want to be employed also helps, but if you’re good enough, they’ll find a way. Someone who makes great work will always be more obvious to employers and, right out of school, those people tend to get hired first because it’s the easiest quality to look for. However, if that person doesn’t have either of those other two qualities, that person will quickly lose credibility. I would rather hire a workhorse who makes ok art, but I like working with them and they do it on time, than someone who makes the most incredible artwork ever but they never turn their stuff in and they’re an asshole.
Now all that up there is probably reading as a bit of a downer. It’s okay though, everything has its downers and its uppers. That’s why the whole world is so crazy, it’s meds are all mixed up.
You CAN do it. You can. Seriously. People work in TV. Los Angeles isn’t some mythical, faraway land that’s somehow better than where you live. We’re all just a bunch of flawed people, really mediocre people, that have somehow tricked other people into giving us money to make whatever art we want. You can join the rest of us con artists and we’ll accept you as one of our own and we can all trick everyone together.
What is the path for storyboarding?
There are a million and one ways to get into it. It’s more of a branching spider web than a path. I know a lot of people who got into it through comics. If a show runner can quickly read a comic you’ve made, then they know a lot about you: your writing style, your drawing style, your sense of humor, and the fact that you can finish what you start.
Toby got hired because JG said on twitter that he was looking for new board artists. Toby was making comics in his free time, responded to him via Facebook, and sent him some of his comics. That’s how Toby got the job and he immediately moved from Minneapolis to LA to take it.
My path:
Before I started school I wanted to do 3D animation, so I went to art school. While there, I found out that I liked 2D animation even more, so I focused on that. It was really hard because while I found I liked the look and idea of 2D more, I didn’t like drawing variations on practically the same thing over and over again for days just to make 4 seconds of animation. There were definitely other animators and artists who were better than me.
I considered dropping out at the end of my junior year. I laid down in the hallway of my apartment and cried while staring at the ceiling and ants crawled all over body (we had an ant problem). I didn’t know if I wanted to keep going through college or drop out. My parents said I sounded burned out. They recommended doing something completely, totally different, that has nothing to do with art or my career over the summer. My mom said she got a job in Yellowstone for a summer when she was in college, so I decided to give that a shot.
So I did! I became a housekeeper in Grant Village in Yellowstone. It was transformative. I met new friends who did things that weren’t related to art, I found new stories from new people, new ways to think. I even met some Chinese people who introduced me to the idea that it’s super easy to get an english teaching job in China if you’re a native speaker, a job I’d never even heard of until they mentioned it.
When it came time to answer whether I wanted to go back to school, my brain had had enough time to recuperate over the summer from doing completely different work. I felt healed and had a lot more insight as to what my life needed. I answered those questions up there and decided that yes, I did still want to finish school.
So I finished, but still felt burned out and decided to move to China to be an English teacher. I did that for 3 years, even though all my friends told me not to and said I was crazy. I agreed somewhat, but it felt like something I needed to do. I had no idea how I was ever going to get back into working in art.
While I was there I learned more about music production, made two albums, and made an animated music video. When I decided to move back to LA, I sent out some feelers to people and Toby, who had been my freshman year roommate in college, said they were looking for people on Regular Show. This was for a job position called “storyboarder/writer” and I’d never heard of that job before. They sent me the test, I took it, he showed JG some of my work (including the music video I had made while in China). JG decided to take the chance on hiring some random English teacher from China that he’d never met or even interviewed over the phone.
That is my path to storyboarding. You can try taking that same path, but as you can see, it all requires a bit of serendipity and preparation for when that serendipity happens.
Wow that was a lot of stuff. Why do you write so much? Jeez, summarize it.
Because I work in TV and I have to edit myself down all the time so THIS IS MY FREE SPACE OKAY??
You don’t have to go to the most amazing school in the world. You don’t have to be the most incredible artist in the world. You don’t have to know people. You DO have to have drive and decent art. You CAN do it, you just have be realistic about who you are and what you need in order to get there.
I got another ask from someone who is also 24 and facing a similar issue, so I thought I would reblog this post for those who might need it.
Please don’t send me your Infinity Train ideas. I can’t accept them.
Let me run you through a scenario (pretending that the show exists):
1) I come up with an idea for the show.
2) I start implementing the idea.
3) Someone else comes up with a similar idea and sends it to me.
4) The idea that I had ends up in the show.
5) The person who sent me the idea says “hey, that was basically MY idea! You owe me money now!”
6) Some sort of legal battle ensues.
I can’t accept ideas, stories, new characters, new cars, or anything like that for the show because it opens me up to legal ramifications down the line. I don’t seek out fan fiction, as much as I love it, specifically because that’s a legit possibility. I don’t wanna get sued.
So please don’t send me your ideas. I appreciate your enthusiasm, I love how excited everyone is, but we have to have some limits and this is one of them. If I ever read something in a message from you and it has even a whiff of “I had an idea for the show…” I am closing that tab and never looking at the rest of your message because I don’t want to jeopardize anything.
Also, please don’t contact me on Facebook. For me, Facebook is for friends and family only. There are plenty of other ways to get in contact with me online, it’s just facebook that is off limits.
Again, thanks so much for liking and sharing the pilot! I hope to one day have the chance to make you even happier with more Infinity Train!
One day my friend nickbachman asked me if I could own any ship in the non-expanded star wars universe, which would it be? I said the A-Wing. He thought Y-Wings were better cause they look cooler. I disagree because Y-Wings are slow as hell. He thinks that is a dumb reason to dislike a ship.
He is wrong.
I made this gif in honor of the A-Wing and how wrong he is.
I just remembered this A-Wing gif I made. I’m still happy with it! Neato!
Hey dude! I'm a big fan of your work and you're basically living like my ideal life. You probably get this a lot, but I gotta ask "how would I land a job at CN as a story board artists?" I'm 15 rn and a sophomore in high school. I just wanna know if I could actually grow up to work at Cartoon Network.
Yes, you can work at Cartoon Network.
HOWEVER
In a couple years, you might not even be interested in being a storyboard artist, much less want to work at a specific company. When I was a teen I was making 3D art all the time and I wanted to go into special effects. Then I got into level design in video games. When I went to college, I discovered how cool 2D animation could be and that I liked to tell stories most of all. Then I moved to china and became an English teacher and eventually got the job on Regular Show. It was kind of a weird path and my interests and desires shifted and changed constantly.
I mean think about it, if you end up going to college (which you don’t have to, but if you do) you would graduate about 7 years from now. Think about what sorts of things you liked 3 years ago. I bet it’s pretty different. Now what do you think you’ll be like 7 years from now?? There’s no telling where your interests are going to go and take you, so I wouldn’t get too hung up on being a board artist specifically. Just experience stuff. Try out other jobs and other things and you might realize you like stuff you didn’t even know about just because you’d never heard of it or tried it before.
I also recommend not solely working toward being an artist, but working toward being a fully realized person. I’ve met many artists who are basically the most boring people I’ve ever met because all they ever did was focus on their art, but not any experiences. They never got in trouble, they never had any adventures or strange experiences because all they did was stay inside and use their cintiq all day. You don’t even have to be someone that goes out and does stuff all the time, but at least have some other hobbies to work different parts of your brain. Every time you make art, whether it’s for someone else or for yourself, it always has a part of you in it. If you don’t experience life, your art becomes meaningless because you have nothing to say. No one will find themselves drawn to it because there’s no shared human experiences there, just lifelessness.
It’s good to have a goal and a general area you’d like to go into (it’s also ok if you don’t right now, for everyone else reading this), but don’t put all your time and investment into one job when there might be others you don’t even know about that you can find just as interesting.
ALSO: Don’t put all your faith into working for one company. Companies come and go and the only thing they really care about in the end is making money. They’re not beholden to morals or honor or anything like the rest of us actual human beings. Corporations can and will take advantage of you, so you have to be able to say “screw ‘em” if they’re being a-holes.
Are you looking at any new (to you) inspirations for close enough stuff or do you stick to what inspired you for regular show stuff?
I can’t really speak to Close Enough as I’m not working on it anymore and I know there were a lot of changes after I left. All I know is that it’s very much JG’s thing and it’s about stuff that he finds meaningful and funny. I think there are a lot of people who like Regular Show who will like Close Enough too.
I made this piece for the Cartoon Network 25th Anniversary art show. I forgot to take a scan of it, so I had to run down and take some photos with my phone. Anyway, here it is! It’s ink on an 8″x10″ piece of illustration paper.
How many storyboards did the Infinity Train pilot have?
There was only one storyboard and a couple different versions of it. The pilot was about 8:30 minutes long. There were roughly 300 pages and 179 scenes. That adds up to about 600 storyboard panels. It sounds like a lot, and it is, but it’s much less than a regular 11 minute episode of other shows. I was brought up in Regular Show where we always kept really limited on how much we drew in any given scene. OKKO, if I were to guess, is probably much bigger. Same with Steven Universe and just about any CG show.
Basically, any show that has a bunch of cool animation in it that’s really intricate and beautiful has a ton of storyboard panels to go along with it, increasing how much their board artists end up drawing (practically keyframes sometimes).
Hello, I'm a big fan of your work, and have been thinking about making my own videos and putting them on Youtube or something. I have lots of good ideas for potential videos or shows, but I am only 14. Am I too young to be making stuff? Should I be sitting on these ideas until I mature and get better at doing this sort of stuff, or should I work on it now?
Man, I was making videos when I was 10, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re already late to the game!
I just don’t understand not making stuff. You wanna make stuff, you have the drive to make stuff, so make it. You’re never too young to start making whatever you want. Why would you not make the stuff you wanna see? You’ll just be unhappy and wish you were making it anyway. When I was a kid, we didn’t have youtube, so we would just end up showing the videos to our entire fourth grade class. We made a trilogy of movies we called “The Three Idiots” and it was just me and two friends making up a movie as we went along, acting stupid. Bless my teacher for putting up with it.
The “better when I’m more mature” outlook doesn’t make any sense. Why would you think that later you’re going to be better at making stuff if you’re not practicing making stuff right now? It takes years to be good at a sport or instrument and it’s the same thing with art.
Sometimes people get nervous because they’re afraid their peers will make fun of them, but remember this: what are they doing with their time? Nothing? Probably. So why care what they have to say? They’re boring. You’re not.
