Takeover Tuesday with Tom Van Deusen
An interview with Tom Van Deusen an animator and visual designer living in New York City.
Interviewer: Matea Losenegger
Read time: 5min
Matea:
Hey Tom! Thanks for lending your time. Can you please tell us a little about yourself?
Tom:
Thank you! I'm a visual designer and animator based out of New York City. I like to write and draw comics too. I have a cat named Spooky. I'm currently a Senior Motion Designer at a large media company. My favorite color is #CD9704..
Matea:
What is your background and how did you wind up in the motion design world?
Tom:
I grew up loving to write and draw, glued to the television during the golden age of deranged, socially irresponsible cartoons of the mid-90s. My mom was an art teacher and was fully encouraging of all my creative pursuits. I'll never forgive her. I earned a BFA in 2008 and entered the workforce fabulously ill-suited for a global recession.
Over the subsequent 11 years I worked a lot of interesting jobs, from Network Control Center Technician to Financial Operations Analyst. Very interesting. At night I did freelance illustration and wrote hundreds of pages of comics. I have some books that got published that are really screwing up my SEO.
Anyhoo, at the age of 33 I went back to school for graphic design at the advice of several designer friends who sensed how thoroughly miserable I was. There's a great program they had attended called the Seattle Creative Academy. I learned visual design, UX/UI, packaging and a bit of motion.
I had enough motion footage by graduation to put together a reel. I applied to oodles of jobs and got an offer for a visual design job and a motion design job the same week. It was then that I made the difficult decision to take the one that paid a lot better.
It’s Tom!
Matea:
Do you still use traditional mediums, and do you think it's important for digital artists to flex those more 'tactile' muscles?
Tom:
I was a bit of a luddite in my art-making before going back to school. I drew my comics with a dip pen and Rapidograph. I poo-pooed those who drew on digital tablets, knowing that I was making something physical that will be celebrated by future generations.
Now I'm drawing mostly digitally, and there will be less stuff for my grandchildren to throw into a landfill. I still draw on paper sometimes, but usually just sketches or life drawing. I feel very good about myself when I tap the paper with two fingers to undo before I realize I actually need to use my eraser. My goal is to have my life's work be inaccessible when I stop paying for Creative Cloud.
Matea:
Congratulations on cooking up a spicy new reel! It's a process many of us dread, but yours turned out great. What would you say goes into creating a compelling one?
Tom:
Thank you very much! I've made a lot of stuff over the past years and it was difficult to pare it down and objectively look at it. To make a good reel I'd say takes watching YouTube videos on how to make a good reel. It was also extremely helpful to get feedback from a lot of other, talented motion designers such as yourself. It's hard to tell what's garbage when everything is your precious baby. Sometimes your precious baby is garbage.
Check out Tom’s new reel!
Matea:
It was a really cool idea to incorporate footage of NYC in the opening and close. Has living in the city affected your work at all?
Tom:
Thanks! I moved here from Seattle about a year ago to be closer to family and because my job is in Manhattan. I wanted to incorporate some real-life video footage in addition to my animation, and filmed some stuff on my phone. Because I'm in NYC, those shots are footage of NYC.
As far as influence, I love drawing dense urban areas, and there's a lot of that here. I'd love to find a screen printing co-op in the city to print some of those drawings, so if anyone knows of one in the city please let me know!
Matea:
You have such a playful yet striking illustration style. How would you describe your creative voice and what was the process in developing it?
Tom:
That's very kind. I'm definitely a product of alternative comics. That was the "scene" I was in for a very long time. Over the years I simplified my drawings, replacing fussy cross-hatching with flat colors. I also love children's book illustration. Over the years I've been lucky enough to know a lot of talented artists and illustrators, and I'm sure I'm cribbing some of their styles. Or let's just call it osmosis, for legal reasons.
Frame from “Digital Exclusives.”
Matea:
In a similar vein, where do you find inspiration?
Tom:
I hate to say the internet, but nowadays there's such easy access to amazing artwork on the internet that I have to say the internet. I hated saying that. I've also gone to a lot of incredible museums and gallery shows in the city, and it's impossible to not be inspired by those. And usually some crazy idea will pop into my head that's funny to me, and it will make me laugh aloud in public. Not sure how or why that happens, but I wish it would stop.
Matea:
If budget and time weren't constraints, what would be your dream project to work on?
Tom:
I'd love to make an animated short based on the comic that I'm working on. It's currently about a duck and an alligator, but will soon include a snake, a mouse and a giraffe. I have a lot written for it but can barely find the time to draw it into a comic. I'm currently drip-feeding it onto my Instagram. The good news is that it's zero budget and nobody cares how long it takes me.
Matea:
Do you have any wisdom for aspiring creatives and what do you wish you had known when you first started out?
Tom:
You have to live a life to do anything creative. Don't fret if you think everyone else has their nose down at their Cintiq while you're drinking White Claws on the beach. You can't make art in a vacuum, and life's short. Enjoy it.
One of the scene’s from Tom’s recent comic.
Matea:
Do you have any upcoming projects you're excited to share with the world?
Tom:
I'm actually very excited by that comic I'm working on, even though my productivity doesn't always match that excitement. I'm having fun drawing it, and since it's a personal project that's the important part.