Profile: Gary Conrad
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JF: Do you have any tips for people breaking into storyboarding?
GC: I was lucky. I actually started doing storyboard revisions for “Garfield,” and then moved into being a storyboard artist. Over the years I’ve seen lots of people become storyboard artists from starting out as doing revisions, but there are those people who just have the knack. I do think having an animation background itself is good, especially in TV. In a way, storyboarding is animating the characters. You’re posing them and doing the acting and staging the cutting. And so to have that filmmaking sense will serve you well.
Image courtesy of Gary Conrad
JF: How is directing different from producing?
GC: In my case, when I was a producer on “Bobby,” I was involved from the very beginning with the scripts until the very end at post-production. In directing, you’re more in the middle. It’s preparing the show for the animator, and you’re not involved in scheduling or budgeting or those nuts and bolts of running the show.JF: Why did you choose children’s television?
GC: I can’t say I chose it – it probably chose me. I was fortunate enough to get to work on the Garfield project, and from that it has been one thing after another. But I certainly do enjoy kids’ TV.JF: What was it like working with Bill Melendez?
GC: I thought he was a complete sweetheart. In fact, I loved the Charlie Brown specials and still do, so I deliberately wanted to work on them. It was just the greatest experience for me. That was ’87, ’88.JF: Did you ever think, when you were faced with the industry and its challenges, that maybe you chose the wrong field?
GC: A resounding yes! When I graduated in 1984, animation was dead. Anyone who knows the history of it knows that it goes through cycles, and ’84 was a colossal down year. Disney was talking about shutting down their animation department. This was also before cable TV, “The Simpsons,” Roger Rabbit, The Lion King, Pixar and “South Park.” And I was going, “What have I done? I got a degree in a dying artform.” But of course things turned around. I think now it’s taken seriously, and it’s much less limited than it was twenty or thirty of forty years ago.