Cartoonist Chris Kelly has worked for Walt Disney Company, DC Comics and Cartoon Network. Kelly will be teaching a class at the Community Center on Thursday, October 2 and 9. Image Submitted.
Aspiring cartoonists who would like to stylize their art for gaming, animation, graphic novels, or comic strips have the opportunity to learn from a seasoned and impassioned instructor. Chris Kelly will teach Cartooning for Satire & Comics two Thursdays, Oct. 2 and 9, at the Sonoma Community Center in Sonoma. Kelly is able to help his students further their skills using the experience he gained while working for such media giants as the Walt Disney Company, Cartoon Network and DC Comics.
“Be it for personal enrichment or to embark on a career in the industry, every single artist can get better through re-examining their approach, and this should never end if you want to keep vitality in your work,” said Kelly. “As soon as you, as an artist, think you have something totally down, and you have no need for improving on any particular skill…you are done in the industry, or you will lose interest in continuing as a past-time.”
Kelly knows of what he speaks. He can’t even recall a time, while growing up in Mahopac, N.Y. when he wasn’t cartooning. At the School of Visual Arts in New York, he was taught storytelling and comedy by esteemed instructors like MAD Magazine founder Harvey Kurtzman. After graduation, he was persuaded by a college buddy to move to California. He quickly found work as a lead Flash animator at Disney and went on to help produce some 20 animated shorts for the company.
This Renaissance man balances professional work, teaching, family, volunteer work and even plays in a band. Kelly continues to work for Disney by designing conceptual work that is used in the production of TV commercials and theatrical entertainment. He teaches on a regular basis at the Art Institute of San Francisco and Ex’pression College for the Arts in Emeryville. Hobo Jungle started in the ‘80s to raise awareness about environmental issues and is still going strong.
Kelly and wife Alison have lived in Sonoma for nearly 10 years. Alison is a painter and herbalist. Her company Great Owl Herbs makes healing products and digestive spices that are available at farmer’s markets and in local stores. The couple has two sons, Jack, 6, and Eli, who will soon be 2. Jack is following in his dad’s footsteps and has already drawn a number of original characters and theme park rides.
“I hope I can pass along to my students all the combined artistic knowledge, strategies and skill-sets and see great improvements in short amounts of time,” said Kelly. “I would like to see a new ‘Distinguished Age of Art’ of animation and commercial art emerge and that can only happen if people can actually see that what they are being fed on the big and small screen is usually far below the value and distinction of art, (that existed) when the pioneers of imagination and authenticity were running the show back in the 1930s and 1940s.”
For more information about, or to register for, Cartooning for Satire & Comics, call the Sonoma Community Center at 707.938.4626, ext. 1 or go to www.sonomacommunitycenter.org.
