I combined theatre and films with live TV, such as ‘The Royal Variety Show,’ performing sketches opposite Bob Hope and Maurice Chevalier.
I did a lot of acting, funnily enough, unprofessionally, as a kid. From when I was 10 years old until I was about 19, I was always doing little sketches with my friends, and doing different accents and voices.
I think I’m one of those guys who was sort of always in comedy. I thought of myself – and other people seemed to think of me – as funny from a very young age. I was a very young comedy nerd and I even did sketch comedy in high school and college. I wrote and shot sketches on video and acted in them.
In the old days, you had to wait for people to give you money to go and make something. Now, you can post your own sketches online to get them seen. It means more talented people are coming through.
Humanity at the centre of the primates, Homo sapiens, in humanity, is the end-product of a gradual work of creation, the successive sketches for which still surround us on every side.
I used to sketch – that’s the way I thought out loud. Then they made a book of my sketches, and I got self-conscious, so now I don’t do it much.
Scene by scene, you can’t help being impressed by ‘Mean Girls;’ it’s like a group of sketches linked by a theme, with some playing much better than others.
I love telling stories. I love the intimacy between the writer and reader. When you write sketches it’s over in two minutes. When you write a book the characters have to have a bit of emotional depth.
I think what is nice about ‘Elf,’ and why it doesn’t play as one long sketch, is that the character actually grows up during the course of the film. It’s not just a character that you can keep checking in on and keep doing sketches about. It’s a story. I’m pretty proud of how we told it.
I will never tire of recommending the custom, practiced by the best architects, of preparing not only drawings and sketches, but also models of wood or any other material. These… enable us to examine… the work as a whole… and, before continuing any further, to estimate the likely trouble and expense.
SM:TV’ is where we learned our trade. It was young, we could try out new sketches every week. When we got better ratings than our BBC rival, ‘Live And Kicking,’ it was amazing.
I had to embrace just basically writing and recording on my laptop. On long drives through the Rockies, I would take my laptop and mess around with ideas and make rough sketches of songs.
Like any other creative person, I would make home videos, and I would make sketches with my friends, and I would make my own movies, so I have some love for the creative process.
With the Larry Bertlemann portrait, I started with a photograph that I could use for it. I built the drawing’s identity to serve as a graphic identity. After a number of sketches, I went into my own abstract vernacular of drawn lines and shapes to create the composition for the poster design.
Those early sketches looked too cartoony; I really wanted to do detailed drawings – I was taking anatomy classes – but unfortunately I wasn’t able to do it because of the time element.
Daft Wee Stories’ is, as the title says, daft wee stories. I just sort of rattled them out, tried to make them quite funny, with punchlines – they’re kind of like sketches.
I don’t work from drawings. I don’t make sketches and drawings and color sketches into a final painting.
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