Channel Frederator Blog

This interview was a treat for me to do because Alex Kirwan was one of my first champions and also the catalyst for me to get into Calarts’ animation program. His character design class was one of my fondest and funnest memories of Calarts. Alex was and still is one of the nicest, most genuine, brightest talents in the animation industry.

How long have you been animating/drawing/painting?
I’ve been an animation professional since I was eighteen, that’s about twelve years. My first animation experiments were with some Godzilla models, clay and a super-8 camera when I was about ten, but the concepts (and to some extent, the execution) started growing more elaborate pretty fast. Drawing goes back as far as I can remember, but don’t all kids draw?

Did you go to school for Animation and design or are you self taught? If so, Where? If Self Taught, how did you get your education?
I went to The Perpich center for Arts education, an art high school in Minneapolis for a couple of years. Most of the animation training there took place on an Amiga computer at that time, the digital animation equivalant of an Atari system, but I chose to create a short film on paper as a final project. That film later evolved into one of my Oh Yeah! shorts. Much of what I know about cartooning and animation I learned from my father, Dave Kirwan. He’s a lifetime cartooning, classic cartoon collector and animation history expert. He’d animate bank commercials during the day and then bring punched paper and the Preston Blair how-to books home to me.

Who are some of your influences?
Winsor McCay, Walt Kelly, Ub Iwerks, Jamie Hewlitt, Starbucks.

Houdini, Harry Potter, David Copperfield, David Blaine, Trixie. Who would win in a Magic Fight?
Houdini, he once escaped from the carcass of a squid. No really.
Not sure if he used magic though.

One of my favorite Oh Yea Cartoons Era shorts from Frederator was Magic Trixie. All kinds of awesome all around.
When and how did you come up with the idea?
I was listening to some European circus-like music by a group called Die Knodel and the characters started springing into action in my head.

How was it working on your own short?
Terrifying. It’s the only way to find out which things about film making you’re still ignorant about.

What were some of the hurdles and obstacles you had in your way, and how did you deal with them?
My first couple shorts for Oh Yeah! didn’t turn out how I thought they would. They were garish, talky and unfunny. With Trixie I evaluated what I loved most about my favorite cartoons growing up. I studied Tex Avery shorts, Fleischer Color Classics musicals and Gerald McBoingboing, as though I had never seen them before, trying to figure out why they were so entertaining. I tried to apply the sort of energy and pacing I found in those shorts to a loose structure I could hang visual gags on. Some of it worked, some of it didn’t, but to this date it’s the one thing I’ve worked on that feels the most personal.

I would see your name sprinkled here and there on other OY shorts.
What other ones did you work on? What did you do on them? What was it like working with other creators?
I worked on almost all the Mina and the Count shorts with Rob Renzetti, cleaning up his board thumbnails. I also worked in a similar capacity with Dave Wasson on Max and the Pigeon incident. I boarded on Larry Huber’s Man with No Nose, and Snap Out of Water, and I later worked my way into incidental character design on shorts like Zac Moncrief’s Baxter and Bananas and later lead designer on My Neighbor Was a Teenage Robot. I learned a tremendous lot from all those guys.

Have you shown your art in galleries? Where have you shown your art?
I will have a number of paintings in Gallery Nucleus’ A Band of Bugs show alongside some of my all-time favorite animation artists in February.

What are some of your hobbies outside the world of animation?
I paint, sculpt, collect squeaky toys. That sort of thing.

What projects are you working on currently?
I’ve been helping out on Nickelodeon’s Mighty B!, a beautiful, super-cartoony creation.

Do you have any advice for someone wanting to break in or just beginning in the Animation industry?
The quality of your ideas are as important as the quality of your drawings.

Thanks for the interview Alex! Keep on Rocking!
Check out some Alex Kirwan Frederator Memorbilia Here:
Alex’s Postcards
As well as other OY! coolness too:
OY! season 1
OY! season 2
OY! season 3

-Jeaux Janovsky