I think it’s very fresh you are doing something for the youth. We were talking to Lesean Thomas and he was saying how in the hood coming up and even now the arts are not encouraged as a career option.

It is kind of amazing when the kids come in. They may like to draw but they don’t understand how to make money [doing it]. I think there is this image of starving artists that is the out there and I think it is so deep in their mind that they think drawing it is just going out to the park and painting. [I’m trying to explain how you can have a career] especially now since I am always invited to school to speak. After doing the comic, I went to New York and I was working in Manhattan doing CD-ROM games. I did a few Pink Panther games and I went out to L.A to Klasky Csupo who do Rugrats and Wild Thornberrys. I was a character designer on the Wild Thornberrys for about two years. Pretty much a lot of characters outside the main characters me and three other guys designed them. They were grooming me to be the art supervisor but I wanted to leave LA I really left LA for the children, I think if I was single I could have stayed and made my money but I wanted to kids to have a yard and all that stuff. What is good [about] having that experience is now when I go and talk to the kids I reel them in by showing them some of the original drawings that they know. If I’m going to speak to a 3rd grade class I may pull out my Wild Thornberry collection with all of these rough drawings from the show and their mouths just drop. Then I pull out some of the characters I designed on Rugrats and then we start talking about different episodes and then I lead them into my stuff and I start teaching them entrepreneurial stuff. I tell them when you draw for all of these other companies its cool because you get the experience but what are you getting your experience for [and they all yell] starting your own thing. You’re gaining knowledge and you have to have a vision in order to apply it to something. Another thing I project in “Drawing From the Soul” is teaching kids they have power through art because a lot of them may feel they don’t have a voice. When I tell them that, they just start going off. Even when I walk out of the class, they can’t get back to the lesson because they are so hyped. So with “Drawing From the Soul” I’m trying to encapsulate that excitement because I used to have a lot of parents who wanted me to come teach their kids how to draw. I was in Chicago one time and a woman came up to me and said can you teach my baby how to draw? I was like I don’t live up here and she was like I’ll pay you to come up here but that wasn’t going to work. I always thought about that woman though because she was saying what you are doing would really help inspire my son. So I was like I need to do something that can reach a boy like that.

You mentioned a lot of stuff like with Nickelodeon. A lot of the projects you were doing, like PBS Overboard, were aimed at a younger crowd. Is that coincidence or something you transitioned to on purpose?

I was always reaching for the youth and trying to do positive things. When the PBS things came up that was thru a brother in New York who told me they were doing an anti drug comic strip and they were looking for an artist. Also when people start doing something they are looking for a certain style so they call you up. There are things I want to do now on another level but I didn’t get a chance to sit down and do some new images. Things more personal in terms of where I’m at now. It’s not related to hiphop or anything in the past and I think when I sit down and do those I’ll get a whole new clientele. Montell Jordan has a CD coming out and I did a two-page spread with different caricatures. I [also] did an illustration of Sleepy Brown (from Organized Noise) for his new album. The people at DreamWorks want it to be the cover so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. That should be hitting soon. With that project, I think I’ll be able to show people another dimension. It’s more realism but it’s distorted.

What type of mental adjustments do you have to make going from say a cover to doing things for children?

That’s the only issue I’m having now getting into doing those illustrations reflecting where I am because I have been doing the cartoons for so long you have to think differently. I was glad when the Sleepy Brown thing came along because he was my chance to switch gears. It was still along the lines of what I do but the technique, painting something realistic, was right down the alley where I wanted to go. Especially since they wanted it to look like the old blaxploitation movies and I had just been talking to my man saying that I wanted to do an up to date poster series like those blaxploitation movies. I was going to do it where it was more socially relevant to now. I still plan to do that but when the Sleepy Brown thing came around it was perfect because it kind of gets me into the mode to paint and after I did that I was ready to keep painting. Then say I get something that’s more for children I have to get more simplified so it gets tricky. Sometimes I get an assignment and I’m stuck for a minute and I have to stop drawing and look at references and sit back and try and do nothing and then all of a sudden it will come to me then I can sit down in do it. It’s kind of a challenge.

Out of all of the projects you’ve done which have you enjoyed the most?

Brotherman because it got to the point where I wanted to get it to. It didn’t reach where I think it should reach but it did do what we set out for it to do. We sat down and said its going to sit in a comic book store next to Superman and a black book store next to the autobiography of Malcolm X. It’s kinda funny because we were doing signings at comic stores for the comic book fanatics and then we were going to black book stores doing signings with the revolutionary mindset. It was a completely different crowd but everybody was buying the same book. To me I felt that was the biggest accomplishment. Working on the Thornberry’s was cool but it wasn’t revolutionary to me. I want to do something revolutionary and then follow that up with something else revolutionary because I want the younger kids coming up to be greater than I am.

What were some of the differences between all the shows you’ve worked on?

I used to work on Daria too. When I was in New York, I knew quite a few animators and a lot of people worked on different stuff. At one point I was trying to get onto Doug, I was supposed to be working on the Beavis and Butthead movie, and then I got into the Daria thing. For me it was just getting the experience to animate because I was coming straight from doing my comics and I was just learning then. Every place had a different environment. I noticed on the east coast, especially in New York, I had my hands in everything. When I was working on the Pink Panther CD-ROM game, I was the lead production artist. I storyboarded the game, I was designing game pages, characters, I did the packaging for both games, and a lil bit of animation. It was like wherever they needed you that’s where they put you. But when I went to LA it was more refined. They’re systems were more like you come in and your going to be a specific gear. You had to be specific and it was always hard for me to decide which one I wanted to do everyday. Then when I came to Atlanta I learned more hands on cell by cell frame animation. I started working at some of the smaller studios then eventually I began working directly at Turner Studios and Cartoon Network. The one that seemed most intense was MTV Animation. When I was there you just jumped into it and people were kinda stressing you. I wasn’t crazy about it that’s why I was happy when I got to LA because I could draw and no one’s on my back. Out here the birdman stuff is chill too because I pretty much work from home.

What the significance to your name and why did you change it from David Sims?

The name change was all internal, meaning it was a decision my wife and I made for our children and us. It had nothing to do with my brothers or extended family. We were figuring what direction we were going to go. When my father passed away in 1996, my wife was pregnant with my son so my father never met my second son. So I was thinking about the dichotomy of that where one relative becomes an ancestor and you have a new born baby coming at the same time. I remember when my son was born I was looking at the family tree and where the name Sims came from. All the generations carrying the name just branched off into different plantations and that was it. We were carrying these names all these years and I said I’m not going to give my son a slave name. I want to liberate him. I want him to start his life knowing his name personifies something. I was talking to some brothers in Philly, they both had African names, and they were talking about how their names affected their lives. When they were little, kids made fun of their names because it was hard to pronounce and one of them said he would shorten his name so people didn’t have to say the whole name. Then when he got older he said when he realized what his name personified he was really belittling it by saying just call me this to make it easy for them. He realized his name had purpose and if you wanted to say it, you had to learn how to pronounce it. I told him I had always thought about changing my name but when my son was born, that’s when I made it happen. The name change started with my youngest son who I named Omari, which means the highest, but I didn’t want to give him the last name Sims so we chose the name Anyabwile, which is Tanzanian and means god has unchained me. We took that as the family name, my wife and I changed our name, and we changed our oldest son’s name. It was kind of unorthodox how we did it because we didn’t have an elder to do it so I bestowed the name on my family. I was like I don’t care if people don’t know how to pronounce it they are just gonna have to learn it. At the same time, we just started being vegan. I was just concerned more about health once the children were born.

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Posted by Halftime on Sunday, December 14th, 2003 and is filed under SLICK TALKIN'.