Today we’d like to introduce you to Dennis Messner
Hi Dennis, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’ve been lucky enough that people have paid me actual real money to draw and write stories about cartoon humans and animals. Which is all I ever wanted to do.
I grew up in rural Missouri, where at 7, I drew stories about a cartoon cat and a cartoon rabbit, who I replaced the next year with a raccoon and a horse, who I replaced the next year with a woodchuck and a possum. If you were a kid unlucky enough to stay the night at my house, you would’ve been asked to perform a radio play that I wrote into a cassette recorder.
Later, I worked a lot of random jobs such as ice cream truck driver, vacuum cleaner salesman, and fishing lure catalog paste-up artist until I got one at an advertising agency by saying I had a degree in graphic design. (I didn’t.) While working there, I’d submit comic strip packages to newspaper syndicates until I finally sold one. But my sense of humor wasn’t particularly suited to the set-up/gag style of a daily strip, and I burned out. A few years later, I saw a magazine ad for a Nickelodeon talent search storyboard competition, so I sent one in about a pet therapist and his three hypercritical cats. Which I surprisingly won.
A producer flew me out to LA and I pitched her a bunch of weird TV show ideas. (I remember one was about a family of lemurs called Leave It To Lemur, if you can believe it.) She wisely passed, but when I showed her a half dog/half boy character I had doodled on hotel paper, she bought that. I moved to LA, and, since then, have sold a dozen other children’s animated TV projects, as well as storyboarded and/or written on existing TV shows for Disney, DreamWorks, and Cartoon Network. I’ve illustrated eight children’s books, and, last year, my first solo middle grades graphic novel “The Unpetables” was published by Top Shelf. That one’s about two petting zoo fugitives, a pig and a lizard, who now take gigs as freelance pets…semi-inspired by all those years of random jobs. Book two comes out this fall.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I think the toughest part for me has been uniting my art style with my sense of humor with my point of view. Growing up in Missouri, I had very little contact with other artists, let alone that kind called cartoonists. So I copied from the ones I admired like Charles Schulz, Floyd Gottfredson, and Carl Barks.
Back when I was drawing the syndicate comic, I read an interview with Schultz where he said you have to draw a thousand comic strips before you’ll get any good at it, and I thought: “I’ll get that down to a HUNDRED.” Then a few years, and a whole lot of bristol paper, later, I remember thinking: “Yeah, I guess it was about a thousand.”
What can I say? I’m a slow learner.
After all that, the next thing that took me a really long time to learn (and that I’m STILL learning) is to trust myself enough NOT to think so much about everything. What I mean by this is that most of my creative missteps have been when I’ve overthought or overanalyzed. Which is why I have a sticky note over my desk that says “HEART leads BRAIN” — to remind myself which internal organ gets to be boss.
But cool sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury says all this a whole lot better: “You must never think…you must FEEL…surprise yourself, find out who you really are — and try not to lie.”
Or, in the words of an art teacher I just watched on TikTok: “To be cringe is to be free.”
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’ve always LOVED character-driven cartoons and comics. When I was 8, I was invited to a sleepover and the only thing I remember about the kid who invited me was that he had a Fisher Price Movie Viewer with the 1937 Mickey Mouse cartoon “Lonesome Ghosts.” Once he fell asleep, I spent most of the night winding the little play wheel on that toy forwards and backwards, backwards and forwards…
Did I mention I have ADHD AND insomnia?
I guess what I’m saying is I see myself as specializing in character-driven comedy nonsense…with heart (hopefully). I always try to start with some personal connection to the character(s), then mine that through daydreams and bad doodles until I know their joys, flaws, and idiosyncrasies. If something a little bit true or human is able to come out of that, it’s been my experience that the characters will often write your stories FOR you.
I’m most proud when some weird narrative piece just falls into place, and I was smart enough to get out of the way. I don’t love planning. My story process is to wander aimlessly into the woods and get so turned around that squirrels have to lead me back home. I’m not saying it’s ideal. I’m just saying be nice to squirrels.
Which is why I’ve always admired the balance of eccentricity and humanity that artist/writers like Charles Shultz, E.C. Segar, Tove Jansson, Shigeru Mizuki — and, heck, let’s toss in Kurt Vonnegut since he drew pictures in “Breakfast of Champions” — were able to walk. I mean, I find it helpful to remember there was a time when Snoopy HADN’T climbed up his doghouse to fight the Red Barons of his mind…that must’ve seemed NUTS to readers in 1965.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Risk, to me, is when you have an idea you don’t see existing in the world. Some talented artists and writers may be able to give birth to that idea on the spot, but, at least for me, it takes a bit of wonder and play before that idea’s ready to stand on two feet. Which means TIME.
But say you do all that — now you want to take the idea you love out into the world. You can feel a little VULNERABLE and STUPID explaining that idea to others, almost as if you were describing an invisible friend no one can see. (The more vulnerable and stupid, the closer the invisible friend.) And one of the first things that usually happens is some very nice person who wants to pay you perfectly spendable money will say: “Why don’t you have your invisible friend put on this cool jacket that everyone loves so we can see him?” Then you have to go back to your friend and ask: “Will you wear this jacket…as a favor TO ME?” And if she won’t wear the jacket, nothing can be done about it, you have to move on. But then maybe another (more likeminded) person comes along and says: “Do you think your friend will wear these boots?” And maybe she WILL wear the boots, then fantastically talented creatives are hired who paint those boots bright and beautiful colors. Then, after a long time, someone says: “Hey, I think I see a portion of your friend’s face, and, possibly, an elbow” and you shout: “This is the BEST DAY! My friend IS ALIVE!” And at that moment, she’s no longer your invisible friend, and you have to find another.
Too many metaphors? I do love metaphors.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.dennismessner.com/
- Instagram: @dennismessner
- Facebook: Dennis Messner
- Twitter: @DennisMessner
- Other: Penguin Random House Books: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/746722/the-unpetables-book-2-unpetable-in-the-city-by-messner-dennis/9781603095457/
Top Shelf Productions: https://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/dennis-messner
