The world of animation shaped our imaginations when we were younger. We all have our favorite cartoon series that we watch on TV or read in comic books. Even years later, as adults, we still enjoy animation as a way to escape the harsh world around us. Pamela Hoogeboom has been lucky enough to take her passion for animation and turn it into a career. In this Bookstr One-on-One, we will sit down with Pamela to find out all the details on what inspired her career path and what is next in her future.
About Pamela Hoogeboom
Born in Japan, Pamela spent most of her younger years in the swamps of Florida. However, she moved to California to pursue an educational background in character animation at the California Institute of the Arts, focusing on visual development and design. After obtaining her degree, Pamela landed a job with Warner Brothers Pictures Animation and DC Comics as an illustrator and visual development artist. One of her featured works has been on the visual development team for the upcoming Cat in the Hat movie. She has even dabbled in the literary world with her published children’s book Tika Tak Tat, a tale of a curious young tiger cub who explores the jungle and meets new friends. Pamela resides in Los Angeles, accompanied by her husband, three cats, and an absolutely massive collection of art and animation history books that take up half of her home.
Thank you so much for joining us, Pamela! Let’s get to know more about you and your animated world!
What initially influenced you to become involved in animation?
I don’t think there’s ever been a time when I haven’t loved cartoons. I almost strictly rented Gay Purr-ee every week at Blockbuster when I was a kid, and I had a cousin who got me into anime at a young age; so, between those two influences, I think I understood early on just how broad animation could be. Growing up, I hunted down everything I could that was animated, anywhere I could find it. Even though I drew (all my cousins did, we had a weird generation of artists just pop up in our family all at once), I don’t think it registered to me that it was artists who were making these cartoons yet, I just loved them for existing and being weird.
It wasn’t until I saw Coraline, and saw the tangible effects, that it hit me, “Woah, somebody MADE that, somebody figured out how that looks and there it is”. Coraline wasn’t the first stop-motion animation I had seen and I have never been into doing stop-motion myself, so I don’t know why that particular film resonated with me so much, but I saw it and felt like a hidden door had been revealed (no pun intended). I think I decided the day I saw Coraline I wanted to do something in animation as a career.
It’s funny because a lot of my influences are the same things I loved as a kid. Gay Purr-ee and UPA (United Productions of America) are massive inspirations to me still to this day, and that opened a love of graphic styling such as the works of Mary Blair and contemporaries like Joey Chou. I think I’m still the same kid at heart who just gets excited about anything animated and distinct-looking.
As a part of Visual Development at Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, what does a normal workday look like for you?
Honestly, probably not that different from an average office job, except instead of Excel and spreadsheets, it’s drawing and trying to bargain with my tablet to not act up on me. I start my day by checking emails and looking over the notes from the previous day to make sure I’m caught up and prepared for whatever I need to complete for that day. I’ll usually make myself a checklist of things that need to get done on a Post-It note to keep me on track and on a set path for the assignment.
After that, it depends on what stage I’m on during the assignment. If it’s near the beginning I’ll collect an absolutely absurd amount of references and let my brain just “idea wander” for a bit, then do some rough sketches to get ideas down. Usually around 10 am, we’ll have a team meeting to talk about where things are on the film, or to share current progress, and then it’s back to drawing and painting for the rest of the day, fleshing out some of the better ideas of the bunch more.
I know the job sounds like a lot of drawing, but most of it is thinking and problem-solving. Everything is kind of like having a massive puzzle in front of you that you have only a vague idea of what the end product is going to be, and you’re making it work as you go, with only bits of pieces already laid out for you to work off of. It’s a lot of fun to take just small bits of information and world build around it, but can also be very demanding on the mind.
If you could pick any fandom, what would be your dream project to work on?
Batman. Easy answer. I was very lucky to do some cover work for DC in the past and would love to do design work for something theatrical and animated with the Bat crew. Aside from being a big animation nerd, I am also a big comic nerd (surprise, surprise), so combining those two loves into one project would be the dream. Outside of feature animation, I would love to do a show that was in Peni Parker’s SP//dr universe or a complete revamp of Street Sharks. I pretty much just want to make stuff that I as a kid would have loved, or did love, and just stylistically go ham on it.
Back in 2018, you released an illustrated children’s book entitled Tika Tak Tat. Would children’s literature be an avenue you would like to explore again one day?
I think so, Tika was very much an exercise in seeing if children’s illustration was something I would want to do while having my creative control over the project. I brought a lot of my love of Blair and more minimalist and graphic Little Golden Books into drawing that project, and I think just creatively playing in that area was a lot of fun. I can’t see myself not wanting to play in that style creatively again as I continue to grow as an artist personally and in my career. I think the big question regarding children’s lit is if I would want the creative freedom of publishing independently, or the structure and backing support of a publishing house but with potentially less stylistic freedom. I like picture books and I enjoyed making Tika, so there’s always a chance for continuing on that avenue down the line.
If you were not involved in animation, what would have been your second career choice?
I’ve thought about this a lot in the last few years, animation has been in a bit of a rough spot as of this interview and I’ve thought many times, “If I lost my job and couldn’t find work, what would I want to do?”
I keep going to something in National Parks, honestly, the idea of being a fire watch for a park sounds nice. I’m probably romanticizing it and I’m sure it’s much more demanding than I think it is, but the idea of just being alone in the woods, bringing a sketchbook or tablet, and just drawing in between whatever duties I have lined up that day doesn’t sound horrible. When I reach a state of feeling overwhelmed, whether it be work, life, or personal matters, I like to go to Yosemite for a few days. I like animals, I like the sounds and smell of the forest, and I get socially tired very easily, so something in nature that still allows me to draw just seems right if I ever had to look for work again outside of animation.
Do you have any book or music recommendations that help your creative flow?
Ok, I’m not thrilled to admit this. But during the work day, I’ll just slap on back-to-back streaming of horror games in the background and work to that. I LOVE horror, but because of how first-person-based and interactive games are, horror games always freak me out. So I’ll just draw to that literally all day. I can’t draw to music because I get too into certain songs and it distracts me. If I were to recommend one channel, I watch a lot of CJU on YouTube. He’s very polite and very British, so it feels weirdly cozy while watching him hack and slash through a host of horror games. I hope this turns out to be a common thing and everyone in animation is like, “Oh yeah, I can only get work done while binging horror games too!”
As for books, I recently read through all of the localized novels of Tomihiko Morimi, and I love those because they’re so strongly visual. When reading them it’s just like a flood of imagery, and they’re strangely both very naturalistic and very surreal at the same time. I know there have been animated adaptations of his work, and I watched The Night is Short, Walk on Girl, but I don’t have a huge interest in seeing the others because I’m so attached to how I’ve visualized the characters and events of the stories.
Looking back on your education and career so far, do you have any advice for those who are also pursuing animation?
If you’re planning on going to an art college, go to a community college first. Get your critical studies done on the cheap, then transfer and get to spend all your time in art school making art and not worrying about a math credit or whatever. I went back to college at 25 to go to art school, and a lot of the kids straight out of high school were going through hell trying to juggle their art classes with their critical studies classes. Students returning to college like me had an easier time because we could do just the art classes, and it honestly made all the difference in our experiences.
For career advice, put yourself in situations to meet people. Whether it’s a mentorship program, volunteering with an animation group for community work, joining a plein air group, or anything that gets you involved in meeting people in animation and making those connections. First off, those connections are what wind up getting you a job; second off, those connections and friendships are what keep you sane when the job gets crazy. I’m not a super social person in general, but some of the connections I’ve made working in animation are still the people I go straight to for advice, support, and insight because of the bonds we’ve built on one show or another.
What exciting projects are you currently immersed in that you’d like to share with our audience?
I’ve been working on a project for a few years now that’s a very personal story and hence has taken a long time to figure out the way I want to tell it. It’s a mix of comics, animation, and music, and one of these days that’s all going to get released independently to the world. I did a lot of development work for it in my last year of college, and have just been kind of picking at it over the years since, but I hope that it gets released in the next few years as the story and world are finalized.
It’s called Power Pop and it’s essentially a story based on me getting an internal defibrillator at 17 but through giant monsters, robots and cyborgs, motorcycle-riding girl gang villains, and all the fun stuff I loved in cartoons growing up. I need to have a personal project outside of work to feel creatively content, and this has been it for a while now. So I hope the fruit of it is something that lives up to all the work when it finally comes out.
Thank you again, Pamela, for taking the time to teach us more about the world of animation. Be sure to check out more of her work on her website, and to follow her updates on Instagram. And of course, keep an eye out for the upcoming Power Pop!
Check out our article: 5 Helpful Books About Animation For Animators.
If you are interested in discovering some graphic novel recommendations, check out our bookshelf: Illustrious Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels.
