I can speak to my experience and say that CalArts worked out very well for me. After CalArts, I went to Cartoon Network, and then came to Disney.
Luckily, I went to school at CalArts, and then ended up here at Disney, starting in the Animation Building and working my way up. I started as an animator, and then did character designing and storyboarding, and eventually, directing.
When I graduated, I sort of went from school to being a cartoonist, and I couldn't draw.
I started out wanting to be a straight adventure cartoonist, but in 1979 realized what my real bag was.
I have to throw in on a personal note that I didn't like history when I was in high school. I didn't study history when I was in college, none at all, and only started to do graduate study when my children were going to graduate school. What first intrigued me was this desire to understand my family and put it in the context of American history. That makes history so appealing and so central to what I am trying to do.
CalArts was incredible for me. It's a school that I rave about and constantly want to give back to.
I started playing piano age six. I was also singing in the choir, so my mum put me into music school. I went to study there for seven years, but it was not my passion. I quit because I wanted to study marketing. But I can still play piano.
I don't consider myself a cartoonist, because to me a cartoonist has a lot of technical ability to draw and such. However, I do consider myself to have a bit of a cartoonist character. I definitely am analyzing and satirizing pop culture and politics and whatever strikes my fancy.
I started playing piano when I was eight, and I went on to study piano in school, so I have a background in classical piano and studied composition in school. Writing music came later.
It was in Shizuoka, where my home was. I first attended this school when I was five years old. I also attended a regular elementary school, and I was taking piano lessons with a local teacher. I began to study composition at the Yamaha school. And I continued to study there until the age of 15.
An awful lot of successful technology companies ended up being in a slightly different market than they started out in. Microsoft started with programming tools, but came out with an operating system. Oracle started doing contracts for the CIA. AOL started out as an online video gaming network.
Going through secondary school in Ireland, everyone's like, 'What are you gonna do when you finish school? Go to college? Study business? Study electronics?' I was like, 'Well I kinda love wrestling, so I don't see why I should want to study anything else except wrestling.' For me, it was a no brainer.
I mean can you walk to school on your own? Can you study science? Can you study math? Can you go to a normal school? Do you need to go to a special school? What is going to become of you when you grow up? Are you going to have to live on social security and SSI?
To be perfectly honest with you, I was partying a lot in school. I didn't have any good study habits from high school because I just kind of got by on being a jock.
When I was 23, basically I stopped modelling and started going to school, and was able to study with wonderful teachers.
I'm really happy I was kicked out of CalArts (for a controversial art piece I made).