Jay Fosgitt Interview

First off, let's beat a dead horse, or in this case, a dead duck. For all those out there who know nothing of Dead Duck, give us a rundown on what the story of Dead Duck is and a rundown of the major characters.

--Death, aka J.P. Yorick, lives in Rigormortitropolis (the city of the dead) and runs R.I.P. Inc., a company that collects and delivers the souls of the deceased from all planes of reality. J.P. employs minions to do the actual legwork, and they bring the souls back to him to process and send to their respective destinations. J.P. is a gruff and grizzled employer, as well as a twisted father figure-type for Dead Duck.

Dead Duck is J.P.'s original minion, as well as his best. He's basically a high-strung nerd who loves his job, despite all the trouble it gets him into.

Zombie Chick is Dead Duck's faithful girl Friday, serving as bodyguard, personal assistant and best friend. She's a stitched up little bundle of loyalty and confusion.


Is Dead Duck going to be a continuing series or a one volume graphic novel?

--It's going to be a 146 page graphic novel. There's been talk about what we'll do next with Dead Duck after the book's been released, and I think we're leaning towards a follow-up graphic novel. I would prefer that, since graphic novels tend to be more sought after than single comic issues these days.

What were your major influences on Dead Duck in terms of artists, movies, video games, books etc.?

--The original Howard the Duck comic book, written by Steve Gerber and drawn by Gene Colan, was my biggest influence when I created Dead Duck back in 1989 at age 14. The Howard the Duck movie was just as big an influence. I actually bought the Howard the Duck DVD a few weeks ago, coincidentally the same day I sent Dead Duck in its completion to my publisher, so I took that as a great sign that this was meant to happen!

The late underground cartoonist Vaughn Bode was a huge influence. His lumpy and lewd cartooning style seriously informed my own, especially on Dead Duck. His depiction of busty "broads" was a natural influence on Zombie Chick. Similarly, animator Ralph Bakshi was a major influence on the visual look, sex and violence of Dead Duck. I know it's kinda blasphemous to mention him in the same breath as Bode since they allegedly didn't get along, but they both influenced Dead Duck in very similar ways.

Director Tim Burton was probably my second earliest influence on Dead Duck, just after Gerber/Colan. His depiction of dark and creepy worlds on film and paper had a beating heart at the center of it, and that is entirely what Dead Duck is about. His visual aesthetic is strongly felt in every Dead Duck story I've created, and especially in my depiction of Rigormortitropolis. I couldn't avoid thinking of Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas when I drew the jagged sidewalks and steaming pipes and ducts of the city of the dead.

Hellboy creator Mike Mignola was also a huge influence, particularly in his use of subject matter. His stories were always dark, creepy and fun as all get out, which I hope Dead Duck accomplishes as well. And his use of classic mythology totally inspired me to tap similar sources of inspiration.

I have to mention animator Chris Sanders. After seeing Lilo and Stitch (which he wrote, designed, co-directed and voiced Stitch), I was totally blown away by his design sense. When I created Zombie Chick, her primary inspiration was Goldie Hawn from her go-go dancing days on Laugh-In. But the way I drew her was purely a Chris Sanders influence. I was fortunate enough to get him to draw a pin-up of Zombie Chick for the book, and when I showed my family, they all thought I drew it! He said he was thrilled to hear that people mistook his art for mine, since that meant he drew my character accurately. I told him that my design of her was totally inspired by his style, so it was all him in the end!

And last but far from least, the late great Jim Henson. Like I say on my thank you page in Dead Duck, his inspiration is found in every line I'll ever draw.


I know also you are a huge fan of Jim Henson (as am I) and had at a time exchanged letters? Care to tell this story?

--I really was a Muppet fan from infancy. I was the second generation of Sesame Street fans, and the first generation of Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, and everything else Henson-imagined in the years that followed. I'd been drawing since I was two, and Muppet drawings constantly filled my paper. By the time I was five I declared I'd be a cartoonist, and a few years later, that evolved into wanting to work for Jim Henson as a designer and puppeteer. When I was ten I began writing the Henson company, trying to reach Jim and tell him how much I loved his work and wanted to work for him. My first response was from his personal secretary, who said Jim was away working on a new movie (which turned out to be "Labyrinth"), but she was very nice, answered some questions for me, and encouraged my ambitions. Not long thereafter, I got it in my head that I had to act fast, worrying that by the time I was old enough to work for the Muppets, Jim might retire or close up shop. So I wrote Jim a plea-filled letter to wait for me, and stuffed it with artwork. I couldn't say how much time passed, but eventually, I got a response from the Henson Company, this time from Jim himself! He put my mind at ease, saying the company wasn't going anywhere and he had no intention to retire. He enjoyed my artwork, and invited me to come and talk to him after I graduated high school and see about working for him. I found out years later that that style of invitation, as informal as it sounds, was a serious offer of employment, since that's how he hired Carroll Spinney (performer of Big Bird) and Steve Whitmire (performer of Rizzo the rat and current performer of Kermit). About five years later, when I was a freshman in high school, I heard the news that Jim had died. I was just kind of numb about it, not sure what to think or how to feel. But I wrote a letter to Brian Henson, Jim's son who took over the company, and mentioned our correspondence, hoping the offer still stood. Regretfully, I never got a reply. So, I left it at that and allowed my cartooning career to evolve in other directions. But Jim never stopped being my mentor and hero.





Give us a rundown of the daily work life of Jay Fosgitt, how do you approach meeting deadlines and starting the creative process for storylines on Dead Duck?

--I've been fortunate in that, by the time a deadline was set for Dead Duck, it was at least a year away, and I'd already had almost half the book completed when the contract was signed. But December 2008 through March 2009 got pretty hairy. I would wake myself up anywhere from six am to 7:30 and either hit the drawing board or keyboard, depending on what needed doing on Dead Duck. There was a lot of technical stuff to be done online or in Photoshop that I was previously unfamiliar with and had to learn on the spot. I had to create last minute artwork for various pages, as well as begin the online Dead Duck comic which, though it would feature some material that would be found in the book, I had to resize and reformat the material onto new templates. It was craziness. But what really got me down to the wire was the book's foreword. I'd e-mailed barely a handful of famous people who'd influenced my work, asking them to contribute a foreword. But no one wrote me back. Then, at the zero hour, the great Doug Jones (performer of Abe Sapien in Hellboy and loads of other great movie characters) wrote me back, ready and willing to help me out. Despite being away in France filming a movie, he wrote me the most elegant foreword I could ever hope for. So I had just enough time to design that page and get it sent out to my publisher with the rest of the Dead Duck package. But man, it was so worth it! Doug Jones is the nicest person I've ever met, and I have an original piece of artwork that I created for him as a thank you, which I'll be giving to him in May at the Motor City Comic Con. Can't wait!

Part of my creative process for storylines is asking myself, what would be fun to draw? I'm an artist first, always. So I get an image in my head, and tend to write around that. Sometimes, a storyline comes to me because I'm influenced by an existing property. For example, my wife rented the entire run of "Twin Peaks" episodes, and I was hooked. So I decided to write a story that was very much in that creepy, back woods vein, but not a literal parody. I try to avoid literal parody at all cost, since I question the originality in that. Sometimes I write a story around something I want to learn more about. I love Canada, and wanted to know more about it. So, I wrote a cool story involving the Canadian mafia (or The Nova Scotia Cosa Nostra--which I made up, of course) and learned loads about Canada's history and legends as I went along. I've never enjoyed doing research as much as I have working on Dead Duck!


How does the process of character design work for you?

--I'm always drawing, and have tons of sketchbooks lying around from the past twenty odd years. I also have twenty years worth of doodles on the backs of placemats, old receipts and odd scraps of paper. Often, these old drawings inspire characters that I create today. Other times, I'll notice people, friends, family and take inspiration from them. Or sometimes I'll take note of the way another artist draws something, and employ it for my own purposes. For example, Chris Sanders tends to draw very thick, feminine legs on his women. I loved that look, and carried it over to my design of Zombie Chick. So character design inspiration is pretty much wherever I find it, and just as often comes from me just moving a pencil around on paper until I see something I like.




What were some of the major hurdles for you as an artist and how did you overcome them, if at all?

--Making a living as a cartoonist has been the biggest hurdle, and one that I'm still jumping. Dead Duck won't hit shelves until November '09, and I won't see any profit until it's been on shelves for many months, so I have to make ends meet until then. So every day is a struggle to pull in freelance work, be it caricaturing, commercial illustration or comic book work. As long as it's cartooning I'm happy. I worked for thirteen years in a day job that had little to do with art, just to support myself as I tried to become a professional cartoonist. Now I'm finally able to make a living just cartooning, albeit just barely for now, and keeping the momentum doing is a real challenge.

What really changed my life and career for the better was meeting folks in the industry, and moving to a more artistic environment than where I came from. Forcing myself to attend the Wizard World Comic Con in Chicago three years ago was what made my connection with my publisher, Ape Entertainment. If it hadn't been for that, they never would have met me or seen Dead Duck. If my wife hadn't decided to go get her masters at Eastern Michigan, we never would have moved to Ann Arbor, and I never would have met cartoonist Dave Coverly and made friends with him and so many other great artists. So taking risks and getting my name and face out there is how I made things happen for me.

I love the design of Zombie Chick, she is amazing. The creator of Lilo & Stitch drew a pinup of her for the graphic novel. How did that come about?

--I got on Myspace about a year or two before everyone else jumped ship for Facebook. I decked my Myspace page out with Dead Duck art, called myself Dead Duck, made the whole dang thing Dead Duck-centric. And poking around one day, I stumbled across Chris Sanders' Myspace page. Being a fan, I introduced myself. I then made the snap decision to ask him if he'd like to draw a pin-up for the book. I knew it was a long shot, and doubted he'd actually write me back. Well, he did! He said he'd seen my work and said he was a fan of my work as well. He was interested, and wanted to make sure he had the time and resources to contribute. At that point, we had a little less than a year before my deadline, so he had plenty of leeway. He began work on two animated films at once at this time, so there was a long period of waiting, then sending reference material to him, and him sending rough sketches to me, and finally, many months later, he sent me the finished piece, which, like the sketches, was so good it brought tears to me eyes. The only problem was, he forgot to sign it! So there was another month or so of trying to reach him to get his signature! Man, though, it was totally worth it in the end!

How did you come across the publishing of Dead Duck? Was it a difficult task, or relatively easy?

--I'd been contemplating self-publishing, just so I could do exactly what I wanted to do with Dead Duck without any editorial interference. It was a last minute choice to grab my wife and take the train into Chicago to show my portfolio to anyone at Wizard World Chicago who'd bother to look. And I really did show anyone, many of whom had no more power to publish my work than I did at that moment. But then I saw this booth with a cool green banner and a black gorilla hunched over on it. I gave it a shot. Brent Erwin, co-publisher of Ape Entertainment, was the first guy I met there. He loved Dead Duck, and rather than giving me the "Don't call us, we'll call you" schpiel, he gave me the personal e-mail of their editor in chief and said to send him my Dead Duck samples immediately. So once I got home, I threw together anything with Dead Duck on it that I had, put it all in a zip file and e-mailed it off to Kevin Freeman, Ape's Ed in Chief. He loved it, and we spent the next couple months discussing how we'd approach the book, what format to use, marketing, all that. Soon I met David Hedgecock, Ape's other co-publisher, and not long there after, the contract was signed. I've been very fortunate that Ape has been so hands-off, creatively speaking, letting me do what I want with Dead Duck. But they've also been very helpful when I've needed their advice on technical matters, like the online comic website. So though it may seem like it was easy for me to get published, there was still a lot of work that went into it. Not to mention the twenty years previous of sending out my work to companies and coming up with zilch. Plus, it really was a matter of being in the right place at the right time, which is either fate or a fluke, depending on your beliefs. I believe in fate, but I believe you have to make the effort to get fate moving.

How has the fanbase of the internet, and sites like Deviant Art helped in your artwork?

--I can't imagine having a fan base without it. In school and college I was able to attract the attention of anyone in the same class or on the same campus as me. And my art has always had good word of mouth in mid Michigan, which always kept me in cartooning work. But Deviantart, Myspace, Facebook and especially my personal website, jayfosgitt.com, have gained me an audience from all over the world! Now, that doesn't make me world famous, mind you. But it does mean my art has reached distances that I never dreamed, and that's pretty cool. It really has expanded my career from being a moderately successful local cartoonist in Saginaw, Michigan to a nationally published cartoonist who has fans all over the globe. That's a dream come true, for certain.

What sort of tools do you use in creating your art? How has technology helped refine your artwork, if at all?

--I am primarily a hands-on cartoonist, a pen and pencil man. Except for the first three-page story, which I drew on Strathmore drawing paper, all the rest of the Dead Duck pages have been drawn on 11x17 cardstock printing paper. I can buy a pack of 300 sheets of that for less that what two pads of bristol board (the standard cartoonist drawing surface) would cost. And it works just as well. I draw with soft lead mechanical pencils, then ink with Faber Castell Pitt artist pens, Micron markers and Sharpies (which I use primarily for inking panels). I hand letter everything, because I spent years developing my own style of penmanship. I don't care how many other cartoonists are using computer fonts. I'll always hand letter my dialogue. I then scan my art into the computer and use Photoshop for clean-up and coloring. The technology has made correcting mistakes much easier. Old fashioned white out was as much a curse as a blessing, whereas Photoshop can make like the mistake never happened. And I love how coloring my work in Photoshop gives my work a Magazine quality. But I could never see myself forsaking the pen for the Wacom tablet. I'm just not that much of a technology guy. I only learn and use as much of the technology as absolutely necessary. Maybe that makes me close-minded, but this is the style that works for me.

Finally, what do you have to say to all the aspiring artists out there who are eager to enter the comic and animation field?

--Put together a professional portfolio of your best work, and attend conventions and meet people. That connection is invaluable. Don't be shy--shove your work under the nose of any editor you come upon. Accept that you DO have to take no for an answer sometimes, but make sure you keep moving 'til you find someone who says yes. Make your presence known online, either on your own website or blog or on a community site like Deviantart, where you can get immediate feedback for your work and learn from others. Learn the latest advances in your field, be it using new kinds of pens or learning Photoshop. Come up with your own concept, and if possible, be your own writer. Nobody knows your characters as well as you. Know your audience, but also know that YOU are your best audience, and you should seek to entertain yourself first. If you can do that, others will follow. Make friends with industry professionals. Learn from them, network with them. Make friends with other aspiring cartoonists. But share your knowledge, experience and contacts, don't horde them. The guy you help out may well help you later on. And above all, love what you do. There's no room in this industry for those who just are in it for the money (which isn't always there) or who only have a passing interest in cartooning. It takes dedicated cartooning professionals to keep this industry running in these hard economic times, and be sure you're one of them if you want to contribute and grow.

Now.....for the weird questions

To back track on the Jim Henson question, who's your favorite Muppet!? (Sorry I have to ask this, I have a massive love for Rolf!)

--Ooh, hard one. Well, I relate to Cookie Monster more than any other Muppet, since I too can be gluttonous and childish (and proud of it!). But I tend to favor a lot of the more obscure Muppet characters, too. If you look at my Deviantart page, you'll see I drew five or so comic strips starring the old Gorch Muppets (which I called "Gorch But Not Forgotten") from the first season of Saturday Night live. Nobody remembers them, but they appealed to me. So I made these little stories where they interacted with other less familiar Muppets. I think I secretly hoped that Brian Henson would have a garage sale and I could buy the rights to these discarded, wonderful characters.

If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?

--The tree of the dead from Sleepy Hollow. That tree was soooo bad ass. It housed all the heads the Headless Horseman chopped off, and bled when you cut into it! If only I could have created that and used it for Dead Duck. Sigh….

Coke or Pepsi?

--Cherry Coke, regular Pepsi.

Boxers or Briefs?

--Briefs. To quote Kramer from Seinfeld, "My boys need a house."

To be, or not to be?

--To be, for sure. Imagine all the great stuff in my life that I'd have missed out on if I'd not been? Actually, I came pretty close to not being. I was born of an underage mother who fortunately put me up for adoption. However, I'm a firm supporter of a woman's right to choose. So I guess the question should be, "To choose to be or to choose not to be." Now that's a question!

If a moose poops in the woods and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?

--Not if it's a runny poop that lands on the soft, muffled fur of an unsuspecting bunny. Unless the bunny is really pissed, and gives the moose a piece of his mind. But then it's still not the poop making the sound, it's the pissed off bunny. So no.

What is one of your favorite cartoons ever, if there is even one?

--Popeye. He's the best designed, funniest and most interested cartoon character of all time. The old Fleischer Bros. Popeye cartoons are the greatest, and all others that came after them through other studios just suck. And the original comic strip created by E.C. Segar (first Thimble Theater, then Popeye) which inspired the Fleischer cartoons were just pure brilliance. Popeye will always be my favorite.

What is the most impacting and profound moment of your life?

--Obviously corresponding with Jim Henson and meeting so many of my heroes over the years has been a big deal. But honestly, my parents' divorce was probably the most profound moment. It forced me to be more responsible, more self reliant, and to take control of my life and where it was going. That's done me well in the years since, to say the least.

I want to say once again, thank you Jay Fosgitt for your support and letting us assail you with a barrage of questions.

Once again, check out JayFosgitt.com and let him know you are watching!