Daniel Sanchez is a successful graphics artist and owner of Moonlight
Studios. In this interview he talks about what it takes to own ones own
company. The animated series The Nine is his brainchild and he is the
director of the production.
Sheryl:
You own your own graphics arts/production company. How did
you decide to go solo?
Daniel Sanchez:
Well, I decided I COULD do it one day in a meeting when the owner
of the ad agency I worked for (as Senior Designer) completely mishandled a
client's concerns about a project. It was the first time I went from
thinking of myself as someone whose job it was to take direction to
someone whose job it could be to give it. That complete confidence in my
own abilities was Step 1. Step 2 was something unforeseen - I got laid off
twice in row from "steady" jobs. Agencies lose big clients and lay people
off - especially the most recent hires - it's the nature of the beast.
Then the dot-com that scooped me up with the great stock option deal
went belly-up after 6 months. So it became obvious to me that there was no
such thing as a job you could naively depend on and I was better off with my
destiny in my own hands, especially with a wife and 2 kids to think about.
So I made the decision, and Moonlight-Studios.com was born.
Sheryl:
What are the benefits to working for yourself?
Daniel Sanchez:
Creatively, they're huge. The ability to decide for myself what gets
the best results - no matter how much like goofing off it may seem to
someone watching me - is the best. I have a studio with a large tv, VCR,
DVD player, comic books, magazines, 2 keyboards, a Gibson electric
guitar with a custom amp that plugs into my headphones that Tom Scholtz from
Boston invented, 3 remote control Batmobiles, a set of freeweights, you
get the idea. It's not unusual to catch me lifting weights watching my
tapes of "Smallville" or "24", or reading the new Dark Knight series with
VH-1 on in the background, or just jamming on the guitar for a while. It's
all creative stimuli that gets the juices flowing and lets me work out the
various elements of message, communication, method, color, style, text
treatment, etc without it being a painful experience of staring at a white
sheet of paper for any length of time. I also might decide to run out in
the middle of the day and check out a bookstore. It works great for me.
And I definitely like not having to put up with office politics and all
the things that used to distract from the work.
Sheryl:
What skills does it take to run your own company, aside from
obvious art talent?
Daniel Sanchez:
Discipline, first and foremost. It has to be a serious business. I do
invoices and emails first thing in the morning. Most artists hate the
business end, but you have to get over it and get good at it. I enjoy
dealing with clients - they pay me and tell me I'm great :-) Secondly,
(and this may seem obvious, but it's not) being an honest, decent person
who people like to deal with. I know a lot of skilled people who I would
never work with because of how they act. Same thing, just in reverse.
Third, have a thick skin. This is a business where someone doesn't have
to have a good reason not to like your work and tell you to start over. It's
not a personal thing, it's just business. Don't sweat it. Some of my best
pieces have come from going back to the drawing board and rethinking
first assumptions. Plus, the clients ALWAYS appreciate that when my "A"
game didn't wow them, I went back and gave them my "A+" game.
Sheryl:
You apparently are successful at what you do. Why did you
decide to make an animated movie?
Daniel Sanchez:
It wasn't so much that I wanted to make a movie as much as it was I
wanted to tell this particular story. It could have been a novel, or a
comic, or some sort of on-line thing. Of all of them, I think animation is
the most exciting, and the easiest to digest as a viewer. Movies have
great dramatic value - the ability to use music and sound as an audio
paintbrush, the powerful emotional effect of a single tear slowly falling
on snow, the excitement of a rapid-fire, kick-butt fight scene, the
curiosity of watching two men sit in silence because they don't know
what to say to each other - those are best done with motion, or in the last
case, the lack of it, especially when you expect it to be there.
Sheryl:
How did you select Daniel Fu as the artist?
Daniel Sanchez:
He almost didn't let me. He was hiding :-) Truth is, I went to
AnimeFest last year in Dallas because I had not watched anime since I
was a teenager (when "Robotech" was on) and just wanted to scope out the
industry now. I had no intention of opening my mouth about this
premise I had conceived. Way at the end of one of the tables there was this quiet
guy who had his head down, drawing constantly. Everybody kept
walking past him. I didn't even go over myself until the second day, after I had seen
everything else twice. I opened his portfolio and saw one of the best
futuristic cities ever drawn, flying cars and all. The beauty and outright
coolness of the engineering and architecture was Hollywood-worthy. I
took his card as maybe a background artist to hire down the road, but then
saw his "Utter Confusion" and "Love Bites" comics, and realized "Wow. He's
a storyteller too - and a good one." Next thing I know, I'm spilling my guts
about my story and he's making suggestions that I love and two hours
later there's this long pause and he says, "So...who's going to do the art for
this?". He's a full partner in the production now. Owns just about as
much of it as I do. Can't even imagine the movie without him.
Sheryl:
Why did you decide to do The Nine as a movie?
Daniel Sanchez:
I saw the first trailer for "Samurai Jack" and realized that if you
downscale the technology required but upscale the style and
uniqueness of the art and timing, you can produce something great without having to
get studio backing and an army of animators. Half of what I saw I thought
could have been done in Flash. All of a sudden it seemed possible to do
the coolest method of storytelling, so that's what I set my heart on
doing.
Sheryl:
What is it about the story that makes it more suited to a movie
than say, a comic?
Daniel Sanchez:
The action, I think. This is an adventure story, as well as a
cerebral one. T9 has martial arts, swordfights, bullfights, daring
rescues in burning buildings, deathtraps, escapes, motorcycles and a
mysterious Aztec who can apparently change into a cat. All things I'd
much rather see in full animation than on static panels. Plus, we're going to
push the concept of framing within the tv screen a bit - that should be a
nice additional surprise for people when it comes out.
Sheryl:
Anime is extremely popular here. Are you hoping to tap into that
market with The Nine?
Daniel Sanchez:
That market and more. Another reason I like movies - people are less
embarrassed to watch a movie than read a comic. There's a wider potential
audience.
Sheryl:
Do you think that the US anime/comic market could benefit from
more home-grown product?
Daniel Sanchez:
Absolutely. I also think that no one should feel like they "can't do
anime" , so they're not going to do their story. I don't even consider T9
anime, and neither does Dan. It's more of a mix of his Asian background
and my Spanish one. It's "Spanime" :-)
Sheryl:
Anything else you would like to add?
Daniel Sanchez:
"The Nine" is basically about what it means to be human and alive. I
think so much of what we do is based on fear. Fear of death, pain,
rejection, failure, the unknown - you name it. What if you were able to
take those concerns away? What kind of a person would you be? What would
you do? I don't think people are so much good or evil as much as it is a
balance between being selfish or selfless. Infants are, of course, born
selfish - but over time, they learn to think of others more and more and
have roughly 70 years to learn and grow more (or not) before it's over.
But what if instead of living only 70+ years with the constant presence of
all our fears, you woke up today with the gift of an additional 100 years
- completely free from death or physical pain? What would you do with
that gift of life? That's the question I'm asking with this story. And if you
can answer what you would do with that life, then take that answer and
apply it to your life now. Maybe you can do it anyway.
Editors Note: Check out the trailer for The Nine on Daniels website:
