Dash Shaw is an American comic book writer/artist and animator. He is the author of the
graphic novel
A graphic novel is a long-form, fictional work of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comic scholars and industry ...
s ''Cosplayers'', ''Doctors'', ''New School'', and ''Bottomless Belly Button'', published by
Fantagraphics
Fantagraphics (previously Fantagraphics Books) is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, manga, magazines, graphic novels, and the erotic Eros Comix imprint.
History
Founding
Fantagraphics was found ...
. Additionally, Shaw has written ''Love Eats Brains'' published by Odd God Press, ''GardenHead'' published by Meathaus, ''The Mother's Mouth'' published by
Alternative Comics
Alternative comics cover a range of American comics that have appeared since the 1980s, following the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Alternative comics present an alternative to mainstream superhero comics which ...
, and ''BodyWorld'' published by
Pantheon Books
Pantheon Books is an American book publishing imprint with editorial independence. It is part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.Random House, Inc. Datamonitor Company Profiles Authority: Retrieved 6/20/2007, from EBSCO Host Business Source ...
.
Shaw's comic short stories have appeared in many different anthologies, newspapers and magazines. His square-sized short stories were collected in the 2005 book ''GoddessHead'' published by Hidden Agenda Press. His comics are known for their emphasis on emotional, lyrical logic and innovative design. He was named one of the top ten artists to check out at the 2002 "Small Press Expo" when he was 19 years old. He also writes lyrics and plays with James Blanca in the weirdo pop band ''Love Eats Brains!'' and has co-written and acted in various short film projects.
Shaw is the director of the animated features ''
Cryptozoo
''Cryptozoo'' is a 2021 American adult animated drama film written and directed by Dash Shaw. It features an ensemble cast as Lake Bell, Michael Cera, Angeliki Papoulia, Zoe Kazan, Peter Stormare, Grace Zabriskie, Louisa Krause and Thomas Jay Ry ...
'' and ''
My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea
''My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea'' is a 2016 American animated film, animated teen film, teen comedy drama film directed by Dash Shaw. Theatrically released on April 14, 2017, in the United States by GKIDS, it was selected to be scre ...
''
Early life
Shaw studied at the
School of Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.
History
This school was started by ...
in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
,
[Judith Salavetz and Spencer Drate. ''Creating Comics!'', 2010, Rockport Publishers, pages 128-130] graduating with a BFA in Illustration in 2005.
Career
Throughout college and since, Shaw has published
sequential art In comics studies, sequential art is a term proposed by comics artist Will EisnerWill Eisner, '' Comics and Sequential Art'', Poorhouse Press, 1990 (1st ed.: 1985), p. 5. to describe art forms that use images deployed in a specific order for the pur ...
short stories in a variety of publications in the United States and abroad, plus numerous magazine illustrations.
Shaw's ''Bottomless Belly Button'' was published by
Fantagraphics
Fantagraphics (previously Fantagraphics Books) is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, manga, magazines, graphic novels, and the erotic Eros Comix imprint.
History
Founding
Fantagraphics was found ...
in June 2008. His ''BodyWorld'' webcomic was bought by
Pantheon Books
Pantheon Books is an American book publishing imprint with editorial independence. It is part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.Random House, Inc. Datamonitor Company Profiles Authority: Retrieved 6/20/2007, from EBSCO Host Business Source ...
and published in a single printed volume in April 2010.
[Dash Shaw, Pantheon Ink Deal](_blank)
''Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...
'', August 19, 2008
''Bottomless'', an exhibition of Shaw's original drawings, storyboards, color background overlays and a new video animation, was on display at
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
's
John Hope Franklin Center from September 25 through October 31, 2008.
In the years following Bottomless Belly Button, Shaw published numerous short stories in comics form, and serialized the science-fiction story ''BodyWorld'' on dashshaw.com. It received an
Eisner Award
The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books, sometimes referred to as the comics industry's equivalent of the Academy Awards. They are named in ...
nomination for Best Digital Comic in 2009.
Late 2009 saw the release by Fantagraphics of ''The Unclothed Man In the 35th Century A.D.'', a collection of short stories that Shaw had previously published in MOME, along with several pages of storyboards and other ephemera from his animated shorts for IFC.
In 2010,
Pantheon Books
Pantheon Books is an American book publishing imprint with editorial independence. It is part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.Random House, Inc. Datamonitor Company Profiles Authority: Retrieved 6/20/2007, from EBSCO Host Business Source ...
released the collected chapters of ''BodyWorld'' in the form of a graphic novel,
In 2013, releases from Shaw included the zine-style mini-comic ''New Jobs'' (
Uncivilized Books
A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of State (polity), a state, social stratification, urban area, urbanization, and Symbol, symbolic systems of communication beyond natural language, natur ...
), the comic-book length shorts collection ''3 New Stories'' (
Fantagraphics
Fantagraphics (previously Fantagraphics Books) is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, manga, magazines, graphic novels, and the erotic Eros Comix imprint.
History
Founding
Fantagraphics was found ...
), and Shaw's next graphic novel, ''New School'' (
Fantagraphics
Fantagraphics (previously Fantagraphics Books) is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, manga, magazines, graphic novels, and the erotic Eros Comix imprint.
History
Founding
Fantagraphics was found ...
). ''New School'' takes place on an island preparing for an influx of English-speaking tourists upon the completion of a massive theme park depicting periods throughout history. It follows two brothers, one who has taken a job teaching English to island locals and another who has come to retrieve his sibling. In the course of the book, both of the brothers, but especially the youngest, experience alienation from their surroundings and conflicts with the locals. NPR called New School "striking and enigmatic," while Publishers Weekly described the book as "an unusual combination of bildungsroman, travelogue, and intellectual thriller."
Technique and materials
Shaw employs a combination of hand drawing, animation techniques and
Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster ...
to produce his artwork. Shaw started working on acetate sheets while studying at the
School of Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.
History
This school was started by ...
. Pointing to pre-
Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster ...
comics that were colored via clear
celluloid
Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporar ...
containing the black line art, under which would be placed a board with the painted colors, Shaw explains that he took this process and combined it with
animation
Animation is a method by which image, still figures are manipulated to appear as Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent cel, celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited ...
-style use of celluloid, where the backs of the acetate are painted with
gouache
Gouache (; ), body color, or opaque watercolor is a water-medium paint consisting of natural pigment, water, a binding agent (usually gum arabic or dextrin), and sometimes additional inert material. Gouache is designed to be opaque. Gouache h ...
and laid over a painted background, in addition to color separations where black line art is used to mark the different colors. In addition to using hand-drawing media such as
crow quill
A nib is the part of a quill, dip pen, fountain pen, ball point or stylus which comes into contact with the writing surface in order to deposit ink. Different types of nibs vary in their purpose, shape and size, as well as the material from whic ...
pens,
colored pencil
A colored pencil (American English), coloured pencil (Commonwealth English), pencil crayon, or coloured/colouring lead (Canadian English, Newfoundland English) is an art medium constructed of a narrow, pigmented core encased in a wooden cylindric ...
s, and markers, Shaw incorporates
collage
Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...
, Photoshop, and painting directly over
photocopies
A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers ...
, though he does not work with a separate line art layer, preferring to treat black as simply another color, and not a separate or more important element. On ''BodyWorld'', for example, Shaw did the color separations by hand, used the paint bucket tool in Photoshop to color the shapes, and then printed it out and painted over the photocopy, before scanning it again and making final adjustments in Photoshop to achieve the final art.
[
Shaw explains that his key motive is combining what he likes about hand drawing with the processes available in Photoshop. He has stated that he does not own a ]drawing tablet
A graphics tablet (also known as a digitizer, digital graphic tablet, pen tablet, drawing tablet, external drawing pad or digital art board) is a computer input device that enables a user to hand-draw images, animations and graphics, with a spec ...
, and that his actual knowledge of Photoshop is limited, compared to most mainstream colorists who rely on it exclusively, explaining, "that coloring leaves me cold."[
]
Animation
His animation influences include Winsor McCay
Zenas Winsor McCay ( – July 26, 1934) was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip ''Little Nemo'' (1905–14; 1924–26) and the animated film ''Gertie the Dinosaur'' (1914). For contractual reasons, he worke ...
, Osamu Tezuka
Osamu Tezuka (, born , ''Tezuka Osamu''; – 9 February 1989) was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist, and animator. Born in Osaka Prefecture, his prolific output, pioneering techniques, and innovative redefinitions of genres earned him such ...
(in particular his work on ''Astroboy
''Astro Boy'', known in Japan by its original name , is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka. It was serialized in Kobunsha's ''Shōnen'' from 1952 to 1968. The 112 chapters were collected into 23 ''tankōbon'' vo ...
''), and other 60s anime
is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...
shows like ''Speed Racer
''Speed Racer'', also known as , is a Japanese media franchise about Auto racing, automobile racing. ''Mach GoGoGo'' was originally serialized in print in Shueisha's 1966 ''Shōnen Book''. It was released in tankōbon book form by Sun W ...
'', the 1973 cult films
A cult film or cult movie, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase which forms an elaborate subculture, members of which engage i ...
''Belladonna of Sadness
is a 1973 Japanese adult animated art film produced by the animation studio Mushi Production and distributed by Nippon Herald Films. It is the third and final entry in Mushi Production's adult-oriented '' Animerama'' trilogy, following '' A Thou ...
'' and ''Fantastic Planet
''Fantastic Planet'' (french: La Planète sauvage; cs, Divoká planeta, lit. "The Wild Planet") is a 1973 experimental adult animated science fiction film, directed by René Laloux and written by Laloux and Roland Topor, the latter of whom a ...
'', limited animation
Limited animation is a process in the overall technique of traditional animation that reuses frames of character animation.
Early history
The use of budget-cutting and time-saving animation measures in animation dates back to the earliest commerci ...
(including '' A Charlie Brown Christmas''), Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi (born October 29, 1938) is an American animator and filmmaker. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatric ...
and Suzan Pitt.
Shaw's first animated feature film ''My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea
''My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea'' is a 2016 American animated film, animated teen film, teen comedy drama film directed by Dash Shaw. Theatrically released on April 14, 2017, in the United States by GKIDS, it was selected to be scre ...
'' had its world premiere at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September 2016 and was also shown at the New York Film Festival (NYFF). It features the voices of Jason Schwartzman, Lena Dunham, Reggie Watts, Maya Rudolph and Susan Sarandon.
He was also responsible for the "comic book" scenes in John Cameron Mitchell
John Cameron Mitchell (born April 21, 1963) is a two-time Tony Award winning American actor, playwright, screenwriter, singer, songwriter, producer and director. He is best known as the writer, director and star of the 2001 film '' Hedwig and th ...
's 2010 film '' Rabbit Hole'' and the animated dream sequence on an episode of the controversial Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...
series ''13 Reasons Why
''13 Reasons Why'' is an American teen drama television series developed for Netflix by Brian Yorkey and based on the 2007 novel ''Thirteen Reasons Why'' by author Jay Asher. The series revolves around high school student Clay Jensen (Dylan Mi ...
'' alongside Jane Samborski.
''Cryptozoo''
His next feature ''Cryptozoo
''Cryptozoo'' is a 2021 American adult animated drama film written and directed by Dash Shaw. It features an ensemble cast as Lake Bell, Michael Cera, Angeliki Papoulia, Zoe Kazan, Peter Stormare, Grace Zabriskie, Louisa Krause and Thomas Jay Ry ...
'', about 1960s
File:1960s montage.png, Clockwise from top left: U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War; the Beatles led the British Invasion of the U.S. music market; a half-a-million people participate in the 1969 Woodstock Festival; Neil Armstrong and Buzz ...
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
zookeepers trying to capture a mysterious creature, was released in early 2021 at the Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
where it won the NEXT Innovator Award. It was also nominated for the John Cassavetes Award The Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award is presented to the creative team of a film budgeted at less than $500,000 by the Film Independent, a non-profit organization dedicated to independent film and independent filmmakers. It is named after ac ...
at the 37th Independent Spirit Awards
The 37th Film Independent Spirit Awards, honoring the best independent films and television series of 2021, were presented by Film Independent on March 6, 2022. Traditionally held the Saturday before the Academy Awards, the 2022 date marks a shif ...
.
See also
*Arthouse animation
Arthouse animation is a combination of art film and animated film.
Examples of arthouse animated films 20th Century
*'' Fantasia'' (1940)
*'' Neighbours'' (1952)
* '' Journey to the Beginning of Time'' (1955)
* '' Invention for Destruction'' (19 ...
*Art horror
Art horror or arthouse horror (sometimes called elevated horror) is a sub-genre of both horror films and art-films. It explores and experiments with the artistic uses of horror.
Characteristics
Art-horror films tend to rely on atmosphere bui ...
*Alternative comics
Alternative comics cover a range of American comics that have appeared since the 1980s, following the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Alternative comics present an alternative to mainstream superhero comics which ...
*Independent animation The term independent animation refers to animated shorts and feature films produced outside a major national animation industry.
A good portion of the work is viewed in animation festivals and private screen rooms along with schools that produce ...
References
External links
*
Dash Shaw interview about his Sundance winner ''Cryptozoo''
Deadline article about Shaw signing with UTA
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shaw, Dash
People from Hollywood, Los Angeles
School of Visual Arts alumni
Alternative cartoonists
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Sundance Film Festival award winners
Collage artists
American animators
Collage filmmakers