We were lucky to catch up with Michael Hilliger recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael, thanks for joining us today. One of the toughest things about progressing in your creative career is that there are almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?

When I graduated high school, I was hell-bent on attending prestigious Hogwarts-y art colleges, which was deemed financially out of the question. It’s pretty daunting to have to make a decision where you’re going to spend the next four years of your life pursuing higher education. I attended the only animation school in our state, and found a quaint community of animators. And it was tight and tiny. Having recently moved to Los Angeles, I’ve been meeting animators and creatives left and right, and in the midwest you had a sense that all the people who were into the same stuff you were, were all in the same room. That said, at the end of the day, you only really need one or two good friends or professors. I forged lifelong friendships with whoever I could find, and sought out feedback, and they’ve given me great pointers and influenced my career trajectory. Had I just floated and waited for things happen to me, I’m sure I would have bombed my education. But I really did my damndest to squeeze all the juice out of it I could.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

When I was in Elementary School, I established a “series of cartoons” about my childhood dog, Dakota. These animated cartoons – actually, it’s pretty disingenuous to call them animated, they played like a PowerPoint presentation – were uploaded to YouTube and passed around. My peers were pretty engaged with them. Then my craft kept growing and growing, and it was pretty obvious I’d be going to college for animation.

I’ve always been a “big project” guy. My side-goal that tracked me all throughout college was to fully complete an animated pilot. It took years and multiple failed tries, but eventually my cartoon, “Marcus the Teenager’s Never-Ending Quest for Popularity”, proved I was funny, and could manage a hundred shots of animation and manage a team and get the project out the door. Showing that film around directly led to nearly every job on my resume, mostly animated roles for series, including “The Boys”, MAKE Originals, and the upcoming “Yo Gabba GabbaLand”.

I’m still very early on in my career, but I’ve been extremely lucky with some great successes, so I try to share what I’ve learned with those who seek it. I’m still learning about my personal brand, but lately I’ve been very focused on trying to help younger artists find their footing. The industry is brutal right now and there are plenty of reasons to be negative, and I’m trying to find reasons to keep persisting and focus on what is in our control. I don’t want to be the type of person who just says, “Don’t pursue a career in animation because it’s too hard”. I’m trying to provide people some inspiration amongst the nasty setbacks that plague our industry right now.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

“Marcus” was built on the shipwreck of two earlier animated projects. The first was a high school comedy, kind of like Marcus, but it lacked appeal. I held a screening at my university where the reaction was lukewarm, and frankly, that is a horrifying reaction. You want audiences to laugh out loud, not just smirk and then forget the jokes two seconds later. After that screening, I realized that film was fundamentally flawed on a structural writing level, and devoting months to finishing animation and putting it into color would not fix that. I made the tough decision to throw out a year’s worth of work, and start over, having learned the lesson of making the characters infinitely more engaging.

Then, my next film project, and animated adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” – kind of a weird shift tone, but I committed to it – actually saw its way to animated completion. I never ended up releasing the film, though. I was impressed with far I’d come, but I still didn’t feel an audience would engage with it. Frankly I never posted it online because I wasn’t sure how people would react to it, it was a very strange, forgettable film.

Around this time, we came up with the idea for “Marcus”, and we felt good enough that that concept was a winner. To be honest, I’m kind of surprised we got it right the third time. There’s no way it would have worked, had I not gathered data from my previous two failures, and thought long and hard in deep reflection how to fix those story issues.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Something I wish all animators would know, is all these creative people you look up to, are mere mortals with inboxes just like you, and if you write them a kind letter introducing yourself and offering to say Hello or get a coffee over Zoom, more people than you think will say yes. This is the most authentic and successful means to form connections. Some of the best mentors and coolest friends I love to run ideas by, are people I sent a cold email to, and we took it from there. I highly encourage people to reach out and say hello. Heck, you can publish my website’s contact form, I’d love to hear from your readers: https://michaelhilliger.com/contact/

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.michaelhilliger.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michael.hilliger/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-hilliger/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MichaelHilliger
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq_xRTdIeWuapGZ8zh6sbmA

Image Credits

Photos by Tom Ganser