In-depth Written Interview

Dan Santat, interviewed in his Pasadena, California home on August 6, 2013.

TEACHINGBOOKS: You are a bestselling author and illustrator of children's books, a commercial artist, and the creator of Disney's animated hit show, "The Replacements." How did your interest in creating art and books and stories evolve?

DAN SANTAT: I grew up in Southern California, just outside of Los Angeles. Most of my time was spent at home. My mom was sick with a disease called lupus, and she wasn't always feeling well enough to take me out to play dates or to play outside.

This isn't to say I was bored, but I didn't go out as much as the average kid. So I spent a lot of time playing imaginative games with toys, and coming up with stories and drawing pictures to fill the time. I watched a lot of TV and I read a lot of comic books.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What appealed to you about comic books growing up?

DAN SANTAT: I was a reluctant reader, but comic books were something that kept my attention. I read Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, Beetle Bailey, and Peanuts. I admired those comics so much that I spent a lot of time copying the pictures of their characters. I had dozens and dozens of pictures that I drew of Garfield, and I remember when I couldn't draw him correctly, I'd get really frustrated with myself. I'd think, How come I can't make this look perfect like Jim Davis does it? So I would just keep plugging away at it until I got Garfield to look just right.

I think that's where my focus developed. I'd be so busy and consumed with trying to get the drawing of a character right, that once it was done, I'd look up and an hour and a half had passed. But I was so filled with satisfaction from getting it right that I got a huge emotional return.

TEACHINGBOOKS: You spent a lot of time drawing on your own as a child. Were people aware of your talent?

DAN SANTAT: Absolutely—I was the one who kids approached when they thought I could help them with their homework! I'd ask them what the assignment was, and they'd say something like, "Oh, I have to draw Christopher Columbus riding on the Santa Maria."

I remember in high school one time, we were reading Julius Caesar, and I came in with this huge clay sculpture that I did of him, and everyone looked at me like, "Oh, gosh, here comes Dan to get an A."

Art was something I knew I excelled in, so I took it as a matter of pride. It was obvious to me that art was something I was able to do that a lot of other people couldn't do, but I also had this sense that art wouldn't be an option for me in the future. So I looked at art as a hobby that I wanted to excel in for my own benefit, if I couldn't be investing in it as a possible occupation in the future.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Were your parents supportive of your art?

DAN SANTAT: My parents never encouraged me to take art classes because my father wanted me to grow up and be a doctor like he was. Because of that, my parents emphasized studying and getting good grades. If I brought up the idea of being an artist my dad would just say, "Well, what are you going to do with that?"

I eventually ended up studying microbiology in college and thinking, "Okay, maybe now I'll grow up and be a dentist." But I remember taking notes and drawing cells and people saying, "Oh gosh, that's really detailed. What are you doing studying science? You should be doing something with this artistic talent you have."

TEACHINGBOOKS: How did you transition from studying microbiology to studying art?

DAN SANTAT: One day during my senior year of college, while rushing across campus I ran through a job fair that was going on, and at the fair there was a table for this art school. I stopped and flipped through the catalog, and I had this epiphany about how I could make a career in art. As I looked at the catalog I realized that someone has to design CD covers. Someone has to make movie posters. Someone has to make calendars. And, what struck me the most was, someone has to create video games. Suddenly it seemed possible for me to go to art school to get a basic art degree, and then get a job working in video games or animation. So I went to art school.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Please talk about how your art school experience influenced your career.

DAN SANTAT: When I started art school, one of the things I originally thought about getting into was animation. The Lion King was a big movie in the theaters, and computer animation was just starting to rev up. There were dozens of articles out there saying, "Get a career in 3D animation! Places like Disney are hiring 3D animators and they'll teach you on the job!"

And then I took my first 3D animation class. I made a one-minute movie and it took me twelve weeks, and it was the worst experience I ever had. Because when you get a 3D software package, it's complex—for me, the learning curve was really steep. All I really knew how to do was to make models, so I was just kind of wondering what the other 99% of the program did. So after those twelve weeks, with only one minute of film to show for it, I thought, There has to be a better way to tell a story.

At my school there was a children's book illustration class that nobody took. It was one of those courses where people thought, It's not really the hot thing, like being an editorial or gallery artist. But to my mind, it was the best way to tell stories. And the course instructor was already deeply invested in the industry, so she told us a lot about how the business worked. It just sounded extremely friendly, and I fell in love with the idea.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What was the process like for getting your first book published?

DAN SANTAT: My first task when I graduated from art school was to become a member of the Society of Children Book Writers and Illustrators. I went to an SCBWI conference where I showed my portfolio and my very first dummy book. My eventual editor was one of the judges at the competition, and when he saw my dummy at the conference he gave me a two-book deal right on the spot.

So I never had any sad stories of rejection. The first book I published with him was a picture book called The Guild of Geniuses, which came out in 2004. My second published book, a graphic novel called Sidekicks that I did in art school, was published in 2011.

TEACHINGBOOKS: You kept busy in the years between the publication of your first and second books—in fact, in that time you created an animated television program for Disney.

DAN SANTAT: Yes, after The Child of Geniuses came out in 2004, I was ready to start on Sidekicks. But right around then, Disney got word through my agent about The Replacements, a picture book idea I had, and they called me in for a meeting about turning it into a show. It was the very first TV show pitch I ever did, and they liked the idea, optioned it, and it was green-lit in a year. It premiered in 2006 and ran to 2009. And then it wasn't until then that I could actually work on Sidekicks, because I was so busy with The Replacements that the graphic novel just sat on the shelf.

TEACHINGBOOKS: How did your work on a Disney television show impact your work as a children's book illustrator?

DAN SANTAT: I learned a couple things from Disney. Experiencing the process of developing a show was good because it's a rare opportunity to see an animation company as large and legendary as Disney investing in one of your ideas. But I also learned that the process is heavily business-oriented, where there are a lot of focus groups and a lot of notes from executives, which aren't necessarily done in the best interests of the show, but rather, to attract the most viewers.

It's a compromise, and after a while, I felt like a lot of my ideas were being shot down, or changed just for the sake of changing them. That was a big blow to my confidence, suddenly feeling like I didn't know how to tell stories. So after the first season I left the show, and since then I've just focused on children's books. On the plus side, because Disney did the show for a few more seasons, they were contractually obligated to pay me for the episodes they made. So that created a nice little nest egg that I could sit on while I tried to get my picture book career fully established, and made plans to eventually leave the video game industry. All the time I was working on The Replacements, I was also working in video games, because I wasn't sure if the show would go past the first season.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Please talk a bit about Sidekicks.

DAN SANTAT: Sidekicks is a graphic novel about four pets that are owned by a superhero named Captain Amazing. They are all neglected, because their owner is so busy living his life as a superhero. One day Captain Amazing gets injured in a fight, and it is revealed that his weakness is a peanut allergy. After the injury, he decides he needs to audition a sidekick to help him fight crime.

His pets get to thinking, Well, if we all audition to be the sidekick, one of us will probably get the job, and will be the favorite pet of the house and get to spend more time with him. And it isn't until they go through the process of trying to become superheroes that they realize that they all have to work together to keep their owner safe.

TEACHINGBOOKS: How did you arrive at these four particular pet characters in Sidekicks?

DAN SANTAT: The idea for these characters originally came from a series of paintings I did in art school. I was taking a class where we had to experiment with different materials like gouache, acrylic, and oil. They wanted us to just get used to these materials. By the end of the course, we were to do ten or twelve paintings, and they had to be incorporated in a series somehow.

What I decided to do was a series of superhero animals, and from that, I got obsessed with the idea of superhero house pets. Originally there were six superheroes, and then four. Once that class was over, I incorporated the project into other classes, where I'd be assigned to make a movie poster or trailer. I tried to use the idea as the basis for everything I was assigned in different classes. And by the time I graduated, I had a bunch of work to show that sprung from a series of paintings. I thought, I don't know if I'll ever get an opportunity to publish or pitch this, but if I do, I'm ready to run with it.

TEACHINGBOOKS: You often create richly illustrated scenes that feature comic- or cartoon-like characters. Can you pinpoint any influences for your style of illustration?

DAN SANTAT: I think a big source of inspiration for my artwork comes from the ideas of the 1980s. I was a big pop culture junkie, and in the '80s, television programs were just so bizarre. There were all kinds of crazy shows like Knight Rider, which was about the adventures of a crime-fighting car that could talk, and Air Wolf, which was a crime-fighting helicopter. And then there was the A Team, things like that.

And of course I was really into comic books. I found out early on that I had limitations in my ability to draw, so I kind of resorted to copying and imitating these cartoony figures that I used for instruction in my personal art education, if you will.

I think that's how I came to draw in this particular fashion—it's infused with things like X-Men and Manga, cartoon animation and newspaper comics.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Do you use a particular medium in your illustrations?

DAN SANTAT: These days, the majority of my work is 100% digital. I use Adobe Photoshop. I'll start by sketching everything in Photoshop, and then I'll color it in Photoshop. But I treat the process like I do acrylic paints, which traditionally means you start by painting your darks first, and then you work your way up to your highlights.

I think my knowledge of painting in acrylics helps me make my digital work look more traditional. It wasn't a choice I made to go 100% digital, but over the years, as I started getting more and more work, I realized I had to work faster to keep up with the demand. And so the only book I've ever done traditionally with acrylic was my first book, The Guild of Geniuses. Back then a two-page spread would have taken me about three days to paint, and now, working in Photoshop, I can do one or two two-page spreads in a day.

TEACHINGBOOKS: You develop characters for your own books, and also for television. You've also created poster art for events like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Can you talk about your experiences with these very different kinds of projects?

DAN SANTAT: I have so much love for writing and illustrating books for a living that whenever I'm approached by someone who has a project that's non-book related, I take a moment to sit and think very seriously about whether I really want to take time out of books to work on it. I do occasionally get a call from a channel, like a Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel or PBS, to do character designs for a show they may be developing, and I do still find great joy in that, but I keep the television work to a minimum.

When I was asked to do art for the Macy's parade, it was one of those rare projects and I thought, This is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and experience. And it was great. The inspiration for the art came from my first book, The Guild of Geniuses. In one of the spreads, there's a picture of a robot that's marching down this city block in the middle of a parade. Macy's contacted me because of that illustration, and they asked me to do the parade poster. It was a great honor to create work for such an iconic event.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Please elaborate on your process for developing a character, whether it is for a book or for television.

DAN SANTAT: When I develop a character for a show, a lot of the time the director or executive producer will give me a statement about what the character's personality is like, and they'll want me to match the character's design to the personality they've laid out. So, for example, I was developing a show with PBS, and the main character was a cat, and the cat was very sassy and confident, but it was also very young.

So I keep these descriptions in mind, and try to apply it to a visual characterization. They take what I design into meetings, and it'll probably go through two or three passes to get everyone's approval. Most of the time, the approval of a character design for a show is based on what the network thinks will work, or what has worked for a focus group. By the end of the process, my character design has probably changed 20-30% from my original vision.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Are you conscious of cultural representation when you're developing characters?

DAN SANTAT: I'm not generally very conscious of cultural representation in my books. When I create characters, I actually think in terms of color palettes. So if someone is wearing a certain article of clothing, sometimes I can just see that a certain skin tone will work better to make the whole look feel more cohesive.

On some projects I've been asked to illustrate, characters are given a cultural or ethnic identification in the manuscript and I'll address that.

One funny thing is that I find Asian people the hardest to draw, even though I'm Asian. I'll look at myself in a mirror, and then I'll try to draw based on my own characteristics. One time I actually got a note from an art director, who had never met me, asking me if I could make a character look more Asian. And I thought, Well, this was based on a drawing of me. I don't know how to make myself more Asian!

TEACHINGBOOKS: Oh No!: Or How My Science Book Destroyed the World, like many of your books, is a story that is funny on more than one level. Do you try to be cognizant of incorporating humor into your illustrations?

DAN SANTAT: I try to take advantage of every opportunity I find to include in as many jokes as possible in the books I illustrate. The text may say one thing, but if you look carefully at all of the illustrations I do, chances are good that there will running joke in the art that isn't in the text. I'm one of those illustrators who likes to add a story within a story, and readers seem to appreciate that.

Also, for every project I do, I try to make fun endpapers, and I make a point to draw caricatures of the author and myself in the flaps when I can. If I'm given the freedom, I'll take the time to do extra artwork for the case cover.

I think it's important to pay attention to the whole book. If anybody were to buy one of my books, I'd encourage the reader to really study every part of the book—the interiors, of course, but also the spine, the case cover, the outside of the jacket, and even the inside, because if have the opportunity to put artwork or some kind of story on it, I will.

Oh No! will always be one of my favorite illustration projects. Mac Barnett wrote the story, which is about a girl who builds a giant robot for a science fair project. It goes on a rampage, so she then grows a giant frog in the garage to fight the robot and save the day. The whole book felt like a Japanese monster movie to me, so that's why I chose to give it a letterbox framing, just like a film. You can take off the dust jacket to reveal a movie poster with text on it that looks like Japanese subtitles. All the anime and manga that I enjoyed as a kid lent themselves perfectly to illustrating that story.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Kel Gilligan's Daredevil Stunt Show by Michael Buckley is another story you've illustrated with a very funny premise.

DAN SANTAT: Kel Gilligan is this kid who approaches some of the more mundane tasks in life as if they're the most amazing daredevil challenges in the world. In one instance he has to get dressed by himself. In another he has to try to let his mother finish a phone call without disturbing her. My favorite part of the book is when he attempts to use the potty of doom by himself.

I wanted to give Kel the aura of a stuntman, and Evel Knievil was the best reference for me. And whenever there were flashbacks in the book, I referred to this idea of parents using hand cams to record everything their kids do that they find so precious.

TEACHINGBOOKS: How did you decide to develop the distinct look of each of the heroes in The Three Ninja Pigs?

DAN SANTAT: On Sunday afternoons growing up, I'd always watch Black Belt Theater on TV. I loved movies like The Karate Kid. So when you look at The Three Ninja Pigs, you'll see all kinds of references that pay homage to these shows. I'm also a Black Belt in Shotokan, so in terms of stances and forms of the martial arts, I know the proper way to do them, so that knowledge made it easier to draw.

When you look at the three pigs, Pig #1 is in reference to Daniel LaRusso from The Karate Kid. Pig #2 is in reference to Steven Seagal, because he knew Aikido. Because Pig #3 is a girl pig who wears a yellow outfit with black stripes, people often think she's inspired by Kill Bill. But she's actually a reference to Bruce Lee back in the day.

TEACHINGBOOKS: You are the 2014 artist for the Collaborative Summer Library Program (CSLP). What has that experience been like?

DAN SANTAT: Working with the CSLP has been fantastic. They told me that the 2014 theme was "Fizz, Boom, Read," and they wanted it to embody the excitement of science. I thought it would be a lot of fun to draw upon my experience illustrating robots, and make as many robotic-themed images as I could for the whole project.

It also helped that I took so many science labs in college. To this day, my wife works at Cal Tech and actually went into the labs to take pictures of test tubes and so forth. It brought back a part of me that I hadn't touched in years, and I think it also allowed me to revisit Oh No! In fact, in some of the CSLP illustrations, the girl from Oh No! makes an appearance. I'd heard from a lot of people that they wanted to see more of her, and I thought this would be a great opportunity.

TEACHINGBOOKS: You've created art for both the Early Childhood programming and the Youth programming of the CSLP.

DAN SANTAT: Yes, I was asked to give the younger set the sense of a more touch-and-feel kind of experience with science, and then I had the freedom to run with the Youth art and take it wherever I wanted.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What do you do when you get stuck?

DAN SANTAT: When I get stuck illustrating, sometimes I'll just take a break, or I'll do this weird thing were I'll draw little ovals with a pen, and that gets my hand warmed up. A lot of times when I'm doing art, I find that maybe part of the reason why I'm stuck is because my drawing hand isn't warmed up.

If I have writer's block or I don't know what to draw, I might also just go do something that inspires me. Maybe I'll play a video game for a bit, or read a book or a comic, and that flexes the part of my brain that I need to be creative for writing and illustration. I take time to recharge the inspiration.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What's a typical day like for you?

DAN SANTAT: I definitely have a schedule. I wake up around 6:30, make my kids their lunches, and take them to school. Then I go for a run, and then I'll sit down and work until it's time to pick them up. I make dinner, and they go to bed. My wife goes to bed a little later, and then I'll work from around 10:00 p.m. to anywhere from midnight to 2:00 a.m.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What do you like to tell students when you visit schools?

DAN SANTAT: When I speak to kids at school, the thing I most like to tell them is to do what they love for a living. I think this comes from my experience of being told that I should be a doctor. But I find that regardless of how much money you make, happiness comes from doing what you love. Nothing else matters if you do the thing you love. Even in this profession of children's books—and no one's rich from this—the majority of people that I know who do this for a living are in it because they love it. Even if we're living in a tiny apartment or driving around in a beaten-up car, we're content because what we're doing all day doesn't feel like work. And we're surrounded by an extremely supportive community of peers.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What do you like to tell teachers?

DAN SANTAT: I like to encourage teachers to find out what kids love and help them embrace it—to chase what they're passionate about. The reading, writing, and arithmetic parts of school, of course, are great. I hope they are well instilled in my own kids.

But I also hope that teachers will work to preserve their students' curiosity and desire to explore. I hope teachers will encourage the early passion kids develop for things that make them happy, and that they'll try to give their students the resources they need to pursue their passions—as well as the ability to know how to seek out these resources themselves.

TEACHINGBOOKS: When you were fairly young, you defied what was expected of you and instead chose to chase your dream of becoming an artist. Is there anything else you'd like to say about your work, now that you are someone who has pursued—and caught—his passion?

DAN SANTAT: Just that every day is fun. And for all the years I've been doing this, it's never, ever felt like work.

This In-depth Written Interview is created by TeachingBooks.net for educational purposes and may be copied and distributed solely for these purposes for no charge as long as the copyright information remains on all copies.

This In-depth Written Interview was created by TeachingBooks.net for educational purposes and may be copied and distributed solely for these purposes for no charge as long as the copyright information remains on all copies.

Questions regarding this program should be directed to info@teachingbooks.net