Jonni Phillips is a 21 year-old student at CalArts, and has already made a 5-minute cartoon short with over 200,000 views. Jonni is the creator of “Rachel and Her Grandfather Control the Island,” a hilarious and bizarre short which premiered on Cartoon Hangover’s series “Go! Cartoons.” As one Youtube commenter succinctly described the viewing experience, “this is odd asf but I wanna watch more of it.”
We reached out to Jonni to ask some questions about the details of what went into producing the short, and the cartoon-making process in general. The result was some really interesting insights into how the process works, and thankfully, links to some more hilarious and bizarre material:
How did you get started in producing cartoons?
“Rachel…” was actually my first ever official cartoon! I pitched the original storyboard to Eric Homan and Kelsey Calaitges at Frederator right when I turned 18, which was right after I had been accepted into the Experimental Animation program at CalArts, 2 months before I graduated high school. Before that, I had made a few small films, a lot of comics, and a bunch of stop motion lego movies. “Rachel…” was an idea I had been working on since I was in middle school, and it had changed a lot since it’s inception… Here’s a zine I made in my junior year of high school about the characters, at the time named “Rachel and the Old Man”…
What’s your process when creating cartoons? Does the concept come first, or the drawings?
It depends! For my personal films like “Goodbye Forever Party”, or “The Earth is Flat”, the process…is very long and intensive and like putting a puzzle together. “Goodbye Forever Party” was sparked by this video where they interviewed the actors who play the Teletubbies, which made my brain start rambling this story about a children’s show performer in a dark point in her life, and then I wrote the film for about a year, finding scenes in my head and crafting a narrative around those scenes, putting all the pieces together. “The Earth is Flat” came about at first because I wanted to make a film about a 3d stop motion character in a 2 dimensional flat environment, where all the 2d characters were in the same physical space as the stop motion character, and the writing for the 3d character was to be fleshed out and “third dimensional,” while the 2d characters were to all be stereotypes spouting catchphrases.
For ‘Rachel…”, I approached it very improvisationally! I knew who the characters and settings were, after fleshing them out for a long time, and I basically just let them run around in my head and saw where they went. It was originally a lot longer, but we had to cut a lot to make it fit in 5 minutes! There was a whole extra 2 minute scene where Bartholomew (the grandfather) was secretly trying to set up the surveillance trashcans and then got chased by the police, and a whole other storyline where the scientist character made an army of Jill Shwassie robots (to which he referred to as his “army of girlfriends”)… Everything in the short was in my original pitch though! They wanted it to stay pretty close to what I pitched, but I was allowed to change some of how the flow went. Here’s an animatic I sent in to them after our first pitch meeting to show them it could all fit in 5 minutes (attached to a playlist of every animatic we made during production)! I did all the voices, haha.
For all of these, I write by storyboarding! I work better by creating the visuals and the dialog at the same time.
How would you describe your style as a cartoonist?
I try to approach drawing in a way where I’m discovering the drawing as I go. I have a general idea of what it will be, but I want to make myself laugh with the outcome, so I like to surprise myself. A lot of it is train-of-thought, and I try to rely on memory and childhood influences a lot instead of reference. So I guess I would describe it like… mishmashy and scrambled.
Do you consider yourself a comedian?
I’m not sure! Maybe a little bit? I think I’m funny but I would consider myself a filmmaker over anything, and humor tends to be a huge aspect of trying to get my audience to pay attention to my stories…
My approach to executing the humor with “Rachel…” was like, what if normal people were cartoon characters and they were really bad at it… Like they can do cartoon-y stuff and they have crazy expressions but they’re really emotionally stunted and weird people who shouldn’t be cartoon characters because they don’t have a lot of charisma. Like it’s their first time being cartoons and they’re not really sure how to do it… I’m not even sure if that came across!
What’s your favorite part of the process?
My favorite part of making “Rachel…” was putting it out there and seeing the weird reaction! I got a lot of support and praise for it, but a lot of comments that were super confused and upset… Which are fun to read!
Do you have any advice for people looking to get involved in the world of cartoon creation?
Put yourself out there!! Email studios and see if they’re looking for ideas. I found out that Frederator opened up pitches for Go! Cartoons and I just took a chance and tried it out and they decided to take a chance on me! It’s all about trying to get your name and ideas out there in any way you can, I think. Don’t be weird about it though!
Interviewed by Stephen Kipp
Head Writer