Meet Warren Fok

Today we’d like to introduce you to Warren Fok.

Warren, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I am originally from San Francisco, born to two immigrant parents with an older brother and an older sister. From as far back in my life as I can remember, I have always had drawing as a thing I just always did. It started off with the basics for any child; markers, crayons and color pencils that I used to draw on blank sheets of paper that I would steal from my dad’s fax machine. I drew all the time. I drew my favorite characters from cartoon shows and videogames, from Power Rangers to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Dragonball Z. I remember I used to draw Dragonball Z characters with nearly seven biceps on each arm; they ended up looking like something gross your dog would leave out in the yard but, “the more muscles the better,” I thought. I don’t even think I knew what a bicep was at the time.

From there, my drawing passions continued on to elementary school where I became friends with a classmate named Garrett, who I would always draw with. And man, I thought I knew drawing until I met this kid. I would watch him draw all the time and I would wonder how he got so good. He would then introduce me to what inspired him; the Sonic the Hedgehog comic book series by Archie Comics, which I instantly became obsessed with. Around that same time, my older brother would have his own Marvel and DC comic books that he would show me, which altogether piqued my interest in comic books to an all time high. I was so inspired by the drawings in these comics, but I remember feeling so frustrated that I couldn’t get my drawings to look like the ones in the comics. That was the very first time in my life where I knew I wanted to get better at something.

During my time in middle school, my parents noticed that my love for drawing had somehow lasted into my teen years, so they decided to ask a church friend of theirs, who taught art lessons, to give my sister and I private art lessons on Saturday mornings. I absolutely hated it at the time. For the first time in my life, I had to miss out on my beloved Saturday morning cartoons every week, a tradition I had never broken for years. But looking back in hindsight, it was a pivotal part of my growth as an artist. In those art lessons, I would learn the necessary fundamentals, drawing and painting still lifes of fruit, bowls, pots and vases. I learned how to measure proportions, how to truly draw with form, how to draw with perspective; all the first steps of learning draftsmanship in drawing. For the first time in my life, I had finally gained some technique for my drawing skill.

I ended up going to the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts for high school, a weird public art high school that required an audition and portfolio review to get in. This was where my drawing skill reached another level, as everyday for four years, I spent 4 hours a day drawing nude life models and even more still lifes, as well as learning more painting mediums ranging from acrylic to oil painting; once again honing my draftsmanship to a place it’s never been. It was an interesting time in my life; being surrounded by so many artists and participating in little art galleries at school, and although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, it truly gave me an invaluable experience that really shaped my drawing forever.

After high school things got pretty tricky for me. The recession had just hit, my dad had been diagnosed with brain cancer, and my family had fallen into a ton of financial issues, so a college education became a really far fetched idea. I had been previously urged by my friends to go to an art college to further pursue art as a career, but I was so worried about the whole “starving artist” thing that I chose to attend a local community college for the time being to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. And with everything that was going on with my family, that uncertainty was only exacerbated. Well, that uncertainty lasted for about six long years; in a time which I deem a pretty dark period in my life, where I basically had no friends as they had all gone away to college and I was stuck in a limbo of not knowing where my life was heading. For 4 of those years at community college, I only took general education classes and had not drawn a single thing as I had completely lost interest in art, which was the longest time I’ve ever been away from drawing in my life. But things slowly started to get better. My dad began to recover and fortunately, with the help of my extended family, my family and I slowly got back on our feet. For the remaining two years at community college, I started taking up figure drawing classes again just for fun; and through a lot of reflection, I realized that drawing was the only thing I ever had and was ever good at and that I would only regret not taking that leap of pursuing a potentially successful art career. But I still didn’t even know what that career might look like.

In a moment of sheer frustration and desperation because of where my life was at, I looked up on Wikipedia the creators of some of my favorite cartoon shows, them being Samurai Jack, Powerpuff Girls, and Adventure Time, and I realized that all the creators had gone to a school called CalArts. I had never heard of this school before nor was I aware of its giant reputation, but I knew that if I wanted to go for this thing, I had to go big, no matter the cost. So for the last year of those six years, I prepared a portfolio, applied, and was accepted. In 2014 I moved out and began my time at CalArts, learning this entirely new craft of animation and filmmaking that completely rocked my world and opened up a brand new chapter in my life. After three years at CalArts, I dropped out to work at JibJab Studios as a 2D animator, and after that I worked on Steven Universe Future at Cartoon Network as a storyboard artist, then on The Casagrandes at Nickelodeon as a storyboard revisionist, and most recently I was a storyboard artist on Netflix’s upcoming show, Inside Job.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Oh yeah, of course there have been struggles. Other than what I’ve already mentioned, there are struggles that relate to just the craft of animation itself, you know? As an artist learning a brand new skill in a whole new landscape, you struggle to just find your voice, to find your own personal style in your art so that it might stand out amongst a sea of other super talented and capable artists. You can easily begin comparing yourself to others without realizing that whatever talent you’ve obtained to this point is what makes your stuff uniquely yours, and only yours; and that there is absolutely always room to improve.

As for working in the animation industry right out of school, there have been struggles there as well. After dropping out and even after my first job, it was still a real struggle to get myself noticed to land a job in the industry, no matter how capable I felt like I was. There was a gap of about five months after my first job where I struggled to land a storyboard artist position while struggling to pay off my student debt and my rent at the same time. I had to take many storyboard tests; many of them I would never hear anything back, which was always discouraging. But to make progress in anything you have to stay persistent and consistent while consciously improving yourself and your work to a point where it can ultimately be noticed. And thankfully, it worked.

Nowadays, my struggles have been to simply keep improving, because I do have dreams of things I want to do in this industry and maybe even outside of it, but we’re working on that.

Please tell us more about your art.
I am mainly a full-time storyboard artist in the industry these days, but I have been missing animating so I plan to do that more on my own time. For my personal work, or doodles rather, I love to play with shapes and linework, while occasionally having fun with bright vibrant colors. I like to say that my favorite things to draw are things that evoke a bit of nostalgia while also feeling brand new and fresh. As for storyboarding or filmmaking, I love stories of character; of a character’s growth and evolution through hardship while simultaneously affecting the characters around them in a profound way. I love stories of good vs. evil, of epic quests to achieve great feats. I don’t mind boarding or animating the occasional fight scene as well, as that’s just the kind of cartoons I loved to watch growing up. I am currently aiming to storyboard more in a cinematic style while paying a lot of attention to cool camera angles and compositions, as I think I am more drawn to those dramatic types of shows or movies.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Hmm, it’s got to be any one of those trips to Toys “R” Us where my aunt allowed me to choose one gift for myself during the holiday season. That or watching The New Batman/Superman Adventures at my grandma’s house after school while eating a bowl of ramen that she made me. Yeah, those were good times.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://warrenfok.portfoliobox.net/
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bokchoy.badboy

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