When some people quit their jobs, they plan on raiding the office supplies or at least slipping an extra pen or two in their pockets before punching the clock for the last time.
On his last day of work in the animation department at DreamWorks Studios back in June, Scott Wright jokingly threatened to walk off with cookies.
The St. Albert raised animator had been at the powerful production company (co-owned by Steven Spielberg) for 15 years, practically since its inception. Many in his industry consider that in itself to be a major symbol of success, the pinnacle of a career. For him, it was a place to learn as an apprentice before becoming his own master. In his tenure he has made his marks on a long list of popular and well regarded titles including Madagascar, Over the Hedge, Flushed Away, Monsters vs. Aliens, and the most recent, How to Train Your Dragon. One of his last projects at the company, MegaMind, is slated for release in November and it already looks like another winner.
Nowadays, he literally has a home office where he can doodle and be with his family, sometimes all in the same brushstroke. He has spent the last several years building up characters for a web-based comic. Lately it has been a major boon, seeing a growing popularity online and in print. Last week he returned from his five-day stint to promote it as an exhibitor at the San Diego Comic-Con, the world’s largest comic book and popular entertainment convention. The event is a virtual cornucopia of amusing delights with celebrity sightings, movie previews and other distractions to titillate the senses. Amid the noise and haste, he stood there greeting passersby and curious onlookers with his wares under the banner bearing his creation’s name, Team Spectacular, and its tagline: Saving the world, one diaper at a time.
“It’s a marathon,” he said enthusiastically about the experience. It was the second year in a row that he had a booth but the first in his new evolution.
When he was a young buck just graduated from Sheridan College, he was pretty content to do his doodles under some strenuous conditions, working long days at more than 50 hours a week to hone his craft and make each project both polished and unique. Nowadays, he says it’s more important for him to strike out on his own, although he has a teaching gig as a character animation professor at the California Institute of the Arts. Most of the time though, he’s with his wife and two young children, an activity that could easily qualify as half personal time and half research for his work. Team Spectacular, after all, is about a woman superhero named Captain Spectacular and her husband (a.k.a. Sidekick Boy or Mr. Messy Pants) and their adventures in raising two potentially villainous kids.
“The very original idea was just me and my wife for one of those one-off comics, just for fun. It really started to [come together] when my son was born as a micro preemie. It sort of became more therapy for me than anything else. I just felt like putting it online actually gave me help with my emotional support knowing that other people were listening to my drama.”
Having that widely public aspect to his personal life, even if it is fictionalized, has also proven to be one of the keys to his future. It gave him the opportunity to leave his DreamWorks desk but still maintain his integrity as an animator and the legion of people who admire and follow his images. That positive feedback is very encouraging, considering that a lot of these fans are otherwise faceless.
“More than I’ve ever expected. Even at Comic-Con, total strangers will come up and give me hugs and say that they’ve been watching the whole story or they just started reading it. I get constant emails saying that they support us or that they’ve gone through something similar. It’s this big preemie support network that I never knew existed.”
Readers who are interested in checking out Wright’s new line of work can go to www.team-spectacular.com or check it out on Facebook.
