LCV Winter 2012 - (Page 13)

dickies work apparel. Joyce added a black fedora to his ensemble. on any ordinary day, however, he can typically be seen in white jeans and a tieless shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his beard and mustache neatly trimmed, and his graying hair cropped short. on occasion Joyce wears a scientist’s white lab coat with a small blue moonbot logo, which resembles one of his animated robot characters. he is neither short nor tall, neither attention catching nor invisible. where the ambience of moonbot studios is inventive, ingenious, and original, fairly shouting its creative qualities, Joyce himself gives few external clues as to what must be going on inside. CREATIVE PARTNERS those inner impulses to create art came naturally. Enter Brandon oldenburg, a texan who, after Joyce knew early on that he was meant to draw. as a graduating from the prestigious ringling College of art pre-schooler in the late 1950s Joyce was struck by the and design in sarasota, florida, co-founded reel fX illustrations he found in maurice sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, and in the fourth grade, at a.C. steere Elementary school in shreveport, he produced his first book. By the time he reached Byrd high school, he was drawing cartoons for High Life, the student newspaper. when his post-high school art instructors urged him to change his style, he decided to study film, graduating with a Bfa from southern methodist university in dallas, texas. that experience turned out to be good training for a visual storyteller. after college Joyce spent some time in new York, but when an art dealer viewing his portfolio remarked that Joyce could do what he did anywhere, he returned to shreveport, and stayed. he liked being around people he knew. although success was not immediate, his creative impulses just kept coming. “if you really love to write,” he says, “and you really love to draw, you just have to keep doing it no matter what anybody says.” he did “keep doing it,” and by the mid1980s the reading public began to take notice of the whimsical tales and lush illustrations found in books such as George Shrinks and Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures with the Family Lazardo. the 1990s saw even more productivity, including A Day with Wilbur Robinson, based, according to Joyce, on his Illustration from Man in the Moon (2011), one of “The Guardians of Childhood” series of books. own family; Santa Calls (set partly in abilene, texas, which prompted the city to establish its national Center for Children’s illustrated Literature); and Rolie Polie Olie (introducing a robotic Creative design studios in dallas. Just as william Joyce character destined in the next decade to star in Snowie grew up drawing, oldenburg grew up making movies. a Rolie, Sleepy Time Olie, and Big Time Olie). longtime fan, in 1998 oldenburg approached Joyce about a several of Joyce’s vibrant characters leapt from the possible collaboration. the partnership has never ended. as pages and into the realms of television and film. George oldenburg puts it, “we get each other on so many levels.” Shrinks aired daily as a PBs cartoon, Rolie Polie Olie a few years later Lampton Enochs left Katrina-ravaged turned into a television series distributed by disney, and new orleans with his business partner, alissa Kantrow, to co-found what became Louisiana Production Consultants, a A Day with Wilbur Robinson became the animated feature business designed to bring movie and television projects to film Meet the Robinsons, released by walt disney Pictures north Louisiana. after meeting Joyce and his wife in 2007. the beauty of the illustrations, done mostly in Elizabeth, the four became friends and had the idea of oil or acrylic, coupled with narratives tinged with mythic themes and characters and tempered by humor, establishing a studio in shreveport. with Enochs to cover Winter 2012-13 • Louisiana CuLturaL Vistas 13 NATURAL TALENT appealed not only to children, but to adults as well. Joyce’s proven work in animation prompted an invitation from John Lasseter to work on disney/Pixar’s Toy Story, the first feature film to be made entirely with computer generated imagery, released by walt disney Pictures in 1995. Joyce went on to create conceptual characters for A Bug’s Life (1998) and art design for many other films by dreamworks, twentieth Century fox, and disney, including Meet the Robinsons (2007) and Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium (2007), about a toy store owned by an eccentric 243-year-old. during these same busy years, Joyce was commissioned to decorate the Christmas windows of saks fifth avenue’s flagship store in new York, and he created covers for The New Yorker. MOONBOT STUDIOS 

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LCV Winter 2012

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