Fanboy and Chum Chum

Eric Robles at Nickeldeon from fredseibert on Vimeo.

Creator Eric Robles and head writer/executive producer Steve Tompkins were in New York today visiting Nickelodeon HQ and spending them with the dozens of people who take up a show after it’s produced. Programmers, marketers, press and promo folks all gathered together to tell us more about what they’re doing to let America know about “Fanboy & Chum Chum.”

Anne Mullen, Nickelodeon promotion honcho, saw on the PR sheet that Eric’s story was a possible pitch to newspapers and magazines, and wondered exactly what his “story” was anyway. So, as Eric was telling them his path into the biz I started up my crappy phone video. The quality’s not too good so I’ll transcribe it below.

Eric drew his first fan drawings of Superman for friends in the first grade in a not so good neighborhood in Los Angeles. The son of Mexican immigrants, he lived in one room with his parents and by the time he graduated high school knew there was no money for art school. He signed up as a security guard and starting training to be a policeman. One of his teachers was related to animation veteran Stephanie Graziano.  With no formal portfolio, Eric bought a blank book and worked literally day and night over a weekend to fill the book with drawings. Stephanie took one look and offered him an internship. Eric takes it from there:

“…so all I would do at night is draw as soon as I got home. What’s crazy is I had this little light box that Cary Silver, the production manager, gave me. My parents, God bless ‘em, we all slept in the same room so I’d be there in the middle of the night going [the sounds of pencil sharpening] drawing on my light box while they’re trying to sleep. And it’d be like this… I’d hear my Dad snore and I’d go [faster pencil sharpening, and laughter].

“What I would do is every morning as soon as I got in I’d make a bunch of copies of my drawings and I’d put them out to all the directors and producers. So, within a week and a half of working there as an intern they offered me my first design job.

“… I went from making $6.25 and hour at a security job to making $20 an hour when I was 19 years old. And, that was more than both of my parents combined. Basically for the first two years of my career in animation I saved money and I got them their first house. And that was my big accomplishment.”

Wow.

–Fred