Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1343869
16 KEYFRAME As a successful animator for 35 years on feature films such as The Road to El Dorado, The Prince of Egypt, and more recently as a storyboard artist on Ralph Breaks the Internet, Scott enjoys the collaborative aspect of his job. But a craving for artistic freedom moved him to pursue a second lifelong passion a decade ago. "I fell in love with animation as soon as I could be propped up in front of the TV," he explains, "and comic strips hooked me once I learned to read." Originally titled Molly and the Bear, Bear with Me is about 800-pound Bear who flees the woods for the suburbs. There, he meets tween Molly, and she takes him home. Naturally, having a bear for a pet causes complications, and it doesn't help that Bear is the Felix Unger of wildlife— he's even allergic to his own fur. BEAR NECESSITY CAREER ANIMATOR BOB SCOTT PURSUES CREATIVE FREEDOM WITH HIS SYNDICATED ONLINE COMIC STRIP Whether it's a rooster ghost gag that ends in "poultrygeist" or a batter-butter joke with an "irritable vowel syndrome" punch line, Bob Scott loves a good pun. But that isn't all that drives him as the creator of the web comic strip Bear with Me. "He doesn't mean to be frustrating," Scott says. "It's just that he misunderstands almost everything … and he's a scaredy bear on top of that. As a kid I was worried and afraid of a lot. It's easy for me to tap into those fears and exaggerate them with Bear. People can relate to fear. We all have it." Scott began his education in the world of comic strips upon graduation from the California Institute of the Arts. Back in the 1980s, he and his friend Brett Koth, creator of Diamond Lil, were hired to pencil the U.S. Acres comic strip by Jim Davis of Garfield fame. "I learned an amazing amount from both of them," Scott says. "I had been submitting strips to syndicates pretty regularly, but working for Jim on a strip that had real deadlines was eye-opening. Intellectually I had known that 365 strips needed to be drawn a year, but when handed that responsibility—Wow! It gets real very quickly." Scott found his groove at Davis's studio. He also learned that he's devoted to the traditional structure. "I find a lot of freedom creatively when the limitations are so defined. For example, trying to simplify a joke into three or four panels is always a fun exercise for me. It's like a puzzle." He's also a fan of classic methods. "I draw F R A M E X F R A M E