William Joyce is a cool dude. I remember reading A Day With Wilbur Robinson as a kid and now it's movie counterpart, Meet the Robinsons is really one of my favorite animated movies.
I think what I love most about William is that his style is so very distinct; so retro and whimsical, but somehow futuristic and otherworldly at once. Like an alternate universe.
He's dabbled in both children's books and movies/tv. Among his creations are George Shrinks, Rolie Polie Olie, and the Guardians of the Childhood series. Last year he won an Academy Award for his incredible co-directed short, The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore. It's so cute, I wanted to cry.
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William Joyce was born in 1957 in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he lives today with his wife and two children. Much of his work is autobiographical. This self-avowed “first generation TV brat” grew up in a household of eccentrics. "With a household like that, writing and illustrating came easily to me,” he admits. He always loved to draw. His father said he was born with a pencil in his hand. The boy had a vivid imagination from the start and drew spaceships and ugly sisters and dinosaurs. He had wonderful art teachers who encouraged him to experiment in all sorts of media.
Joyce really wanted to do children’s books and already had a well-defined style of his own when he headed for college. Unfortunately, his teachers wanted him to paint another way so he dropped out of art school. Animation proved to be a great training ground for a picture book artist. The animator’s storyboard taught him how to tell a story visually. Even before he graduated, Joyce was already showing his work to publishers.
Joyce seems to master any medium he attempts. He may spend as much as two years on a project, drawing and redrawing and aiming for perfection. He does not hesitate to drop it if it does not click, if the work gets bogged down in “tedium, effort, and uncertainty.” And he will pick it up later if the mood strikes him.
His infectious enthusiasm affects everything he attempts. “I try to make television that actually stimulates that animation gland and drive [young viewers] almost into an imaginative conniption fit,” he explains. “I want them so jazzed after watching one of my shows that they can hardly stand it. That they have to go out and tell somebody or do something or reenact what they have seen by using imaginative play.”
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