We recently connected with Tanja Majerus and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tanja, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I often asked myself the same question and for the longest time I wondered if I made the right choices  throughout my life or was it the fact that I unwillingly was pushed into a career direction that didn’t suit  me. 

Since I can remember my choice was very clear, I wanted to go to art school, but everyone around me  tried to convince me that I need a ’REAL’ career.  

‘You’ll never make enough money to sustain a comfortable life,’ I was told. ‘You will be poor, you should  go for a job that will pay you consistently. No one will take you seriously if you pursue a career in art,…  and so on.’  

I became doubtful, even afraid to go after my dream, so I believed what I was told. Reluctantly I pursued  a career in Biology. Being unhappy and after failing several school years, because this subject was so far  from my calling, my parents finally agreed to let me go to Art School.  

At the age of 19, after all of my friends and fellow students left to pursue their careers abroad in Colleges  or Universities, I started again from scratch.  

That was not an easy choice to make, but the years I thought I lost in high school, I actually regained  them later in life with my first job working for Steven Spielberg. 

I was able in 7 months to go from an ‘assistant’ to a ‘key assistant’ position and by the time I landed in  L.A., Dreamworks hired me as a Character Lead in Clean-Up. A career path that you normally do in 3-5  years and sometimes it takes even longer to reach that level of expertise. 

Today I realize that if I would have gone to Art School when ‘I’ wanted to go, I would have been on a very  different path than the one that I finally ended up on.  

For 2 of the 4 years of Art School, I specialized in Graphic Design. If I would have attended school a few  years earlier, I couldn’t have learned about what it takes to design Posters, develop Logos or coming up  with an original style of Typo, because those Graphic Design courses didn’t exist when I wanted to  attend. How lucky was that!  

Graphic Design was exactly what I needed to perfect certain skills I wanted to learn.  I also realized that as a Commercial Artist I would be able to earn much more than what I was told.  

But after those 4 years of learning the ins and outs of art and design, it didn’t satisfy my thirst. I believed  that there was more out there to study and that I just barely scratched the surface. My desire to draw  pushed me further, so I did 2 more years of intensive courses in Visual Communication in Brussels. Even  though I learned a lot about creative thinking, symbolism and digging deep into what Design means, I  didn’t feel a real connection to where these studies were leading me. Disheartened I came back to  Luxembourg not knowing what to do with my life and which creative path to follow.  But not even a week later, one of my favorite teachers informed me that my former Art School offered  brand new Animation Courses and he urged me to apply, because in his opinion this was exactly what I  was looking for. He firmly believed that this was my calling. I had my doubts, as I was already in my mid  20’s. But I took his advice and jumped right into a new career path without questioning it too much. It  was one of the best decisions of my life.  

Even though my family were not in favor to let me pursue my dreams in my early teens, but ultimately  they unconsciously did the right thing as they created this delay that ended up giving me a career that  only a few are able to achieve.  

Looking back, I always ended up exactly at the right place at the right time. Even though I didn’t realize it  at the time as I often felt so lost and things weren’t going like I envisioned them, I learned that setbacks  are always there to push you in some shape or form forward.  

Even though I was many years behind, but it all happened for the right reasons, as I never would have  landed my first job with Spielberg if it wasn’t for these delays.  

Today I’m glad, that I was able to be patient and move through adversity without loosing the vision of my  desire to draw. This dream to draw in whatever form or area that might have been, pushed me through  life and it became a reality in so many ways.  

If anyone would have told me when I was a child that I would one day work for DreamWorks or Disney, I  would never have believed it. How can a little shy girl from Luxembourg be able to go that far? It was the dream to draw that got me there, but it wasn’t a fixed dream on a specific company like  DreamWorks or Disney, it was simply the love of drawing and being open to what life offers you. That is  the trick! 

An advice I would have for Art students: ‘don’t lock yourself down in striving for a specific company that  you dream to work for, you might end up disappointed. Go for what you love to do or create and that  desire will push you forward in life in very unexpected ways. Never take ‘NO’ for an answer and never  settle for less. Go for what feels right in your heart, you never can go wrong with that.’ 

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

Born and raised in Luxembourg, I pursued a career in 1986 in Graphic Design. After 4 years of studying  Design in Luxembourg City and Brussels, I abandoned the graphic world to start a new creative path in  1990.  

For 2 years, at the ‘BTS d’Animation’ in Luxembourg, I learned how to storyboard, do character design,  layout, animation and clean-up. Chosen among the best, I continued with 2 additional years at the  world’s leading animation school ‘Les Gobelins’ in Paris, where I could perfect my animation skills.

In 1994 I was hired, right out of school, by Steven Spielberg’s Studio ‘Amblimation’ in London, as a  Clean-Up assistant to work on the Animation Feature ‘Balto’. 4 months later I got promoted to key  assistant.  

In 1996 Spielberg moved part of his London-based crew to L.A. where I was hired to work for  DreamWorks as a Character Lead in Clean-Up. Tzipporah was my very first character as a lead on  ‘Prince of Egypt’. Thereafter I worked on another 3 Animation features, amongst them were  ‘Eldorado’ (Chel), ‘Spirit’ (Colonel), and ‘Sinbad’ (Proteus).  

Clean-Up was not an easy task, it’s quite involved as it is the last final line shown on screen. The  graphite line has to be perfect, nothing can wobble or morph. 

A clean-up artist needs to make sure that the volumes and shapes of the character models are  respected. He needs to stay true to the performance and the movement that the animator intended to  achieve.  

Thanks to modelsheets the artist has to follow the strict guidelines given, so that the character looks the  same from start to finish in a specific scene. For example, when 10 animators work on one character,  you obviously have 10 different drawing and animation styles that need to be put back on model. If you  change and adjust one arm length for example the whole animation will change, so you have to have a  good animation background to be able to follow the animation through.  

On top of that the line quality needs to be at it’s best, because that’s what you see as a final result on  screen.  

As a character lead, depending on the film I was working on, I supervised and prepped work for 2 teams.  5 to 17 artists were in-house and an additional 8-10 artists were at an outsource studio in Canada. I instructed them methodically on how to draw a specific character and corrected their work. Prepping  scenes means, that I drew almost every key drawing in pink color pencil, depending on the complexity of  the drawing. This underdrawing helped the artist to be more consistent and accomplish the drawings  faster.

I made sure that the quotas were met and juggle scenes around if we ran into complications. It was a  challenging job and many hours of work went into it, but I really loved to manage a crew and teach my  team the ins and outs of Clean-Up and Animation.  

After 8 years, my final days as a Clean Up Lead at DreamWorks were approaching. Computer Animation  took over and made my job obsolete. As I still wanted to perfect my drawing skills I chose to stay true to  my dream and to my surprise the producers of DreamWorks offered me a position that they especifically  created for me. As a Turnaround Artist on the Animation TV series ‘Father of the Pride’, I worked closely  

with Character Designers to set up turnaround modelsheets for specific characters on the show. Sadly  the show didn’t last too long and I left DreamWorks at the end of 2003.  

I continued doing turnarounds for various companies throughout L.A. until I was hired in 2005 by  Universal Pictures to work on Curious George as Character Lead in Clean-Up.

The decision to walk away from Computer Animation to pursue my desire to draw was a tough call.  Traditional Animation was dying out and it got more and more difficult to find a job, but finally in 2007  luck struck again.  

I started a whole new career path with MGA Entertainment as a Character Artist on the famous doll lines  Bratz, Lalaloopsy, BFC, Baby Born, Mooshka and Little Tikes. Developing character art for Licensing or  Packaging was a new challenge, but right up my alley.  

As a Character Artist I drew specific characters in different art styles and poses that were then colored  and used on all kinds of merchandize or packaging. From developing figurines, playsets, designing  accessories or new doll lines, MGA allowed me to dig deeper into my drawing skill and I embraced  wholeheartedly the world of Fashion.

When I started working on the Bratz I had to unlearn my drawing skills, as the drawings that I was  suppose to create were far from the standard that I was used to at DreamWorks. I was really frustrated  for the first couple of months as I tried to mimic what has already been done on the Bratz. But slowly I  tried to push the limits by introducing a new way of drawing the doll line. With time the style changed,  the drawings became more complicated, more eccentric, more unique and in the end very top notch. I  learned a lot in those 8 years I was with MGA and my wish was to continue as a Product Designer, but in  2015 MGA dissolved the character art department and I was again faced with a huge choice, do I take  the easy route or do I pursue a dead end career as a draftsman? 

3 months later, being again at the right place at the right time, I was hired by Starz Entertainment as a  Layout Artist/Animator on the award winning show ‘The Simpsons’. 

I was reluctant to go back into the Animation Industry as I didn’t touch animation for such a long time,  but again it ended up being a great career move for me. Years later Starz was bought up by Fox TV and  since 2019 the Simpsons are owned by Disney. I still have to pinch myself as my whole career is just  surreal.

As a Layout Artist I look through the script and storyboard to familiarize myself with the episode before  the director walks me though his notes and how he envisions what should happen in the specific scenes  he assigned to me.  

The storyboard gives enough rough background information for me to draw the different characters in  their proper place and perspective. I draw any of the Simpsons characters, I’m not just working on one  specific character like I did at DreamWorks. We need to be able to draw all of the characters and each  character has its very own personality and mannerism. You can’t make Homer move like Mr Burns, those  are 2 different acting styles.  

Once I have all the characters drawn out and placed inside the background, I will start the animation  process. I draw rough key poses, one pose after the other to create the movement that the director  wants. By respecting the model and making sure that the character moves in the correct perspective, I  finalize the movement with adding some breakdowns here and there. 

When the animation is done I make a short movie of my scene that I will review with the director. If there  are revisions I will correct the areas that need to be changed and I will place the scene on the server  when it’s done so it can move forward to the next department. 

Working on the Simpsons is definitely a dream come true. Not just for the fact that it is very satisfying to  still be able to draw and animate on a Cintiq, but also because we are in a way a family. Decades have  passed and a lot of the people working on the Simpsons are still the same people who started the show  originally. I joined them late compared to others, but I can see how valuable it is to not constantly  change staff. The Simpsons don’t need to be revamped by newcomers and I think that’s why it is still the  longest running show on TV. I’m proud to count myself among them! 

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

When I left Brussels, I had the opportunity to meet privately with the director of one of the prestigious  Graphic Design Institutes in Germany. I was thrilled that he was so kind to take a look at my portfolio and  all of my art that I accomplished during the 6 years in Art School. While browsing through my work he  asked me a few questions on some of my awarded posters I did in Luxembourg. The answers I gave him  left him a bit speechless.  

At my former school we didn’t really learn critical or creative thinking in the way it should have been  taught. Therefore every single first idea I presented to my graphic design teacher was accepted exactly  the way I presented it, without digging deeper into why I choose a specific color or why I applied a  design the way I did. Even tough I received many awards with those 1st ideas, it always left me  dumbfounded as it was almost too easy for me to create.  

The director loved my work, but he said that I would need to unlearn everything that I learned till that  moment to be able to go to his Graphic Design Institute. I was really sad when he said that, but also  understood why he said it.  

The hunger I felt to learn more, to draw more, came from that exact fact that I wasn’t challenged enough.  That’s one of the reasons I decided to start over and choose a new career path in Animation.  

Is there a mission driving your creative journey?

Innovation, curiosity and uniqueness drives me.  

From a very young age I challenged habits, tastes or preconceived notions people had. As a kid I asked  my mom ‘why do people wear their watches on the left side and not on the right’? It made no sense to  me that everyone did exactly the same as the next person. So I challenged this behavior and I started  wearing my watch on the left. The same way I created, at a very young age, my own clothes and jewelry,  because everything out there looked boring to me. No one seemed to want to push the envelope, think  bigger, or create something out of the norm. Thinking out of the box made me in a way a silent rebel, as I  liked to call myself, because I never challenge someone personally, I challenge certain behaviors and  limiting beliefs by showing a different way to be.  

That’s probably why I often bring changes inside a company or even for an individual, as I’m never  satisfied with just one answer, one behavior or one design.  

Seeing bigger and being different is difficult for most people and I get it, because we are not trained this  way. It takes some courage to be original. We are trained to compete to be best, but not to shine from  within. Competition never made sense to me. If you are talented you don’t need to compete, you just  need to bring forth what comes naturally to you, and by just doing that you are actually in the winning  race.  

For the longest time I held myself back in almost every area of my life and my own art suffered because  of it. It’s still sometimes difficult to really be ME and show the world who I am, I’m still partly afraid of  exposure, hence the silent rebel. My art helps me enormously to bridge this fear, but I won’t let it keep  me back any longer.  

I have the feeling that I only scrape the surface of what I can do, that’s why I decided to go after a new  creative endeavor that I will launch in the next couple of months. I never wanted to do art commissions,  but that will be exactly my focal point in the future.  

I joined forces with an art coach to strategize how I can make the most impact on someones life with my  art. Not an easy task to bring value in someones life with an illustration.

The goal is to bring all of my talents into one piece of art. It took a while for me to get my head around  that idea and how I can accomplish this task. It means mixing my sense of design I acquired in Graphic  School with Photorealism, because that style of drawing comes pretty natural to me. Adding different  illustration medium to it and we are in business.  

As I have such a broad spectrum of talents, my art lends itself perfectly to venture into different creative  avenues to accommodate every clients wish. I won’t reveal the whole process yet as it’s still being  refined and revised, so stay tuned. 

Let the adventure begin, I’m ready!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tanjamajerus.carbonmade.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wytekrow/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmajerus
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyQIsW8ZiHM
• Other: https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Tanja_Majerus