Jim Woodring
Jim Woodring
James William Woodringis an American cartoonist, fine artist, writer and toy designer. He is best known for the dream-based comics he published in his magazine Jim, and as the creator of the anthropomorphic cartoon character Frank, who has appeared in a number of short comics and graphic novels...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth11 October 1952
CountryUnited States of America
tree mystery
A tree is an incomprehensibl e mystery.
chunks either people publish since sort stories term variety
I used to publish these stories in 32-page comics, and I would either do short stories or break the long ones up into chunks so there would be some variety inside the comic. But since then, people have been doing more and more long, standalone works, and the term 'graphic novel' has sort of become the codified term now.
hard
Everything I do tries to do the same thing, which is to express things that are hard to express, hidden things.
frank guess stories
I guess if I had to put it into a single phrase, the moral of the Frank stories is that the hammer never really falls.
freelance hard opportunity time whether
Like a lot of freelance cartoonists, when any opportunity like that comes along, I have a hard time saying no, whether it makes sense or not.
funny great interviews jim people seen work
It's funny, in some of the interviews I've seen that were done for the film, some people say things like, 'Oh, I was never a very big Jim Woodring fan. I've never thought his work was that great.'
becomes bit heads led people perhaps point shape whatever wherever wonder worried
In a long story like 'Weathercraft,' it becomes kind of convoluted. It can become perhaps difficult to remember what led up to whatever point you're at. I worried a little bit about people being able to keep the shape of the story in their heads while they were reading it, and not wonder how they got wherever they were.
memories drawing firsts
ONE OF THE BEST MEMORIES OF MY LIFE IS CONTEMPLATING THAT FIRST FINISHED DRAWING AND REALIZING I HAD CRACKED THE CODE, THAT I COULD MAKE DRAWINGS LIKE THIS WHENEVER I WANTED.
reality vision dull
Consensus reality seemed like a dull, dead-end street compared to the intense, mutable reality of visions or whatever they were - neurological misfires. I expected life to be full of sudden, inexplicable surprises. When these things didn't happen for a while, life seemed dull and painful.
important world might
If I had learned how to get along in the quotidian world while keeping up the search for the hidden realm, I might have gotten more out of life. But I believed I was doing hugely important work. I was elitist about it.
drawing cartoon definitions
I have a personal definition of cartooning, which is, simply, "imaginative drawing." Anything you're drawing that is not in front of you but is a mental construct that you want to express in a drawing is, to me, a cartoon.
beautiful brother powerful
To my way of thinking, the concept drawings that Rembrandt did, the drawings he made that he used to model his artists, to work out the compositions of his paintings: those are cartoons. Look at his sketch for the return of the prodigal son. The expression on the angry younger brother's face. The head is down; the eyebrow is just one curved line over the eyes. It communicates in a very shorthand way. It's beautiful, expressive, and, in a peculiar way, it's more powerful than the kind of stilted, formalized expression in the final painting.
writing everyday fiction
The fiction I tend to like is nothing like my own work. I like the kind of writing that shows me things I don't know about, and what I don't know about is the everyday, normal world.
real writing trying
I've often thought I would like to try to write a conventional novel, but I just don't know enough about the real world to write one.