- Hey, I'm Kyra, lead animator on The Good Advice Cupcake.
- Hi, I'm Mike, character animator on The Simpsons.
- And today, we are gonna be drawing
- Simpsons characters
- From memory
- Argh! Argh!
- [Kevin] What is that?
- I'm just getting pumped.
- I feel like this isn't fair, you work on The Simpsons.
You're gonna make me look like a chump!
- I can draw it bad.
- (laughs) - (laughs)
(energetic orchestral music)
- Your character is...
Sexy Flanders.
- Ugh.
- So glad because I actually know who that is.
- [Mike] (laughs)
- Feels like I'm wearin' nothin' at all! (laughs)
- Principal Skinner
- Oh, okay.
He's like kind of one of the more normal looking dudes,
isn't he?
- Yeah, I feel like he has like a weird, like,
shark fin for a hairdo.
(laughs)
- You guys are drawing
Homer Simpson!
- That's the main guy!
- The main guy!
- That's the guy that they based The Simpsons off of.
- And we better watch ourselves because we have an animator
from The Simpsons here drawing with Kyra.
- (gasps) He's gonna look at our drawings?
- Yep.
- He's gonna cruelly and unjustly judge us.
- His Instagram handle is "I draw Homer."
- So, Mike, you've been working on The Simpsons since 2004.
How did you get that job?
- I was actually an intern after high school.
I just did, you know, a lot of that intern-style work,
but slowly and slowly, I moved my way up to, you know,
begging artists for tips and, like, maybe I can do a drawing
in one of their scenes here and there.
And just like practicing and practicing until one day,
I took the character animation test and I passed it.
- That's so cool.
- I didn't grow up watching The Simpsons.
- You didn't?
- No.
- I feel like everybody grew up watching The Simpsons.
- I kind of, I have vague memories of The Simpsons
just being on TV everywhere.
- Okay.
- So like I'm in the laundromat waiting
for stuff to be cleaned
and I remember watching some Simpsons,
but I never actually watched it myself.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- Let's see if I can just manage doing the Simpsons style.
That's another thing,
I don't draw like that most of the time,
I feel like most of my stuff has like a lot of volume
and construction to it
whereas they are sort of exist in very much of a 2D plane.
- You think you're more volumetric than The Simpsons?
- Well I guess their specific kind of volume, volumetrism.
- Ohh this is bleh, this is close enough but it's not great.
- You're scared of the I love drawing Homer.
- I am scared of Mike's critique, I'm not gonna lie.
- You're afraid of the animator's-
- Well I mean because he draws Homer for a living,
like that's what he does.
- But you know what we do for a living?
- What?
- We are wrong for a living, the internet.
- We draw incorrectly for a living on the internet.
- We draw other people's characters wrong
so that people can laugh at us, so honestly.
- So honestly, we're going our job right now.
- We're doing our job if it's wrong, you know?
- Yeah.
- But we're really sorry that we drew it-
- We're really sorry, I mean, we're trying our best.
- And the meme is hamburgers.
- Steamed hams.
- Oh they're just, they're hams, not hamburgers.
- It's hamburgers but he's like upselling it as steamed hams
because he has like his boss over for dinner.
- Oh, oh, okay.
- And so he like runs across the street to get hamburgers
and he's like "Oh enjoy these gourmet steamed hams."
- So as an animator on The Simpsons,
what's your day to day routine look like?
- So we have scenes that we get from the board artists
and you know they set up the shot,
they set up the composition.
Our job is to go in and add all the acting,
and we get the audio track from the voice actors
and then we kinda go from there.
I think we're like the last one
that actually does all that stuff,
everything else is like boards.
- Here's a fun fact about Homer's design that I do know.
There is a hidden signature in his head.
It is, his hair is an M
and his ear looks like a G for Matt Green.
- Really? That's really interesting.
I will make his ear a G now, G for gamer.
M for mega and G for gamer. Mega gamer.
- Nope. Not right at all.
- He's just wearing like a, he's wearing a suit right?
- Yes.
- Okay.
- Principal suit.
- Principal, a very principal.
- Hey, wait, am I dressed-
- Are you dressed like him?
Cody, stand up. Gimme some reference.
- Am I dressed like Principal Skinner?
- That's Principal Skinner.
- So Mike, have you ever met the voice actors
from The Simpsons?
- Yeah, actually, I went to a couple of table reads.
- That's awesome.
- Which is they do like a little rough run
through the script.
You know all the actors are there,
they do their lines and their voices,
it's really awesome to see.
- That's so cool.
- They're extremely talented.
I hear you're quite the voice actor yourself.
- Yes I am. (laughing)
- Kevin, what's your favorite episode of The Simpsons?
- So my favorite episode of The Simpsons
is called Lisa's Substitute.
It's an episode in the second season
where Lisa has a very inspiring teacher
who ends up going away cause he's a substitute teacher.
- Yeah.
- But he gives her the sweetest note in the world
and tells her "Only look at it
when you are starting to doubt yourself."
And as he goes away, she opens it up and it says
"You are Lisa Simpson."
- Aww. That makes me cry.I'm gonna cry.
I'm actually crying. That's so sweet.
- Jackie.
- That's so cute.
- Oh my god. Are you okay?
- That was so cute!
- And that was just the synopsis,
you should watch and actual episode. You should watch it.
- Oh my god you guys, look. I'm a mess.
- It's okay, it's all right, look at me.
Deep breaths, deep breaths.
- (sniffling) Didn't expect to cry in The Simpsons episode.
- (laughing)
- Cody, how'd you do?
- Dead accurate, I mean this is basically on model.
- Are you applying to Simpsons right now?
- I'm probably gonna submit this.
Brent, how did you do?
Do you also think you're gonna get the job?
- I think I'm a shoe-in at this point.
Yeah, they're bringing me on tomorrow.
- That's confident.
- How ya think ya did on this one?
- I tried drawing them a little more my style
but I think I did pretty good,
got it pretty close to sexy flanders.
How about you?
- Yeah I think I got the feel of him down.
- How do you think you did, Kevin?
- I think I did okay.
So I feel like everything's just a little bit off.
This Homer is part of the-
- The off brand character universe shown right here.
I think I did pretty good, despite ya know,
I didn't really grow up watching The Simpsons
but I think I understand the general look of Homer,
I think I caught his essence, I don't know if it's accurate.
- Mhm. All right.
- Cool!
- Let's take a look.
(intense cartoon music)
- Oh, wow.
- Yes!
- Now I feel like I should've added color.
- No yours is so beautiful, it's like a perfect sketch.
- Oh, this is appealing.
I like this, I would eat those hamburgers.
- Thank you. This is so, it's pretty impressionistic,
you didn't go for The Simpsons' style,
this is very much a Cody version of a Simpsons character.
- I just wanted it to feel more nervous,
like he was nervous about those steamed hams.
Because that's all I remember is his anxiety.
- Yes.
- You did a pink donut which is the iconic Simpsons donut.
- Yeah it's because I went to the Universal Studios
and they were selling giant pink donuts
and that's like all I could think about.
- I didn't put the pink frosting.
- I love his face. (laughing) It's so good.
- I like the shiny butt.
- Thank you.
- Definitely a nice touch.
- I couldn't remember the helmet but you gave him one.
- Yeah, I remember there was a helmet.
- Oh, man, okay.
- See, there's that perfect, like, rectangle body.
I did this at some point,
you probably see sketches over there somewhere
where I just was like use the line tool
to just draw like a straight line down.
- Yeah.
- Oh, yeah!
- I got the helmet wrong.
- No but you got so much right,
aw really hard but we got the feel, we got that pose.
- Look at this weird 3/4 (mumbles) ear.
- Yeah. I got that he was bald. The (mumbles) guy.
- Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, you started drawing (mumbles).
- I drew that in the last like 2 seconds.
- Well, thanks a lot for having me.
- Of course, it was so nice to meet you.
- I had an awesome time drawing, trying to draw.
- It was awesome.
- But I hear that Kevin and Jackie are drawing Homer,
all right, so I'm gonna go check them out,
I'll see you later.
- (laughing) Bye. Roast them!
- Are you ready, Kevin?
- I'm ready.
- Let's-
- Bring-
- In-
- Mike-
- Yeah, first try.
- Mike, how are ya?
- Good, how are you doing.
- Thanks for joining us.
- Hi, Mike!
- So this is Jackie's drawing of Homer.
You are somebody who draws Homer for a living.
How on or off model is Jackie's drawing?
- It's a beautiful drawing, off model.
But I mean, it's really appealing.
- So if you had to do 1 or 2 things
to make this a little more on model, what would you do?
- Well definitely-
- Picking up the pen, he's getting in,
he's grading me like a teacher.
- The mouth would be just a little longer.
- I can't see what's happening.
- Definitely have smaller eyes.
- He fixed your ear.
- Mine?
- I mean I like the G in there though.
- It's MG, MG for mega gamer.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, exactly.
- It's been confirmed, been confirmed on screen.
- Do you wanna take a look at mine?
- Sure.
- Okay.
- Mike, come on over on this side.
- I'm nervous, I'm very nervous.
- Don't be scared, Kevin,
all he'll do is say it's awful
and draw over it to make it perfect.
- This is like Homer Simpson meets George Jetson.
- (laughing) Okay.
- So this is, again, appealing-
- Well cause here's the thing about the muzzle.
How does it connect to his nose cause I feel like-
- So it goes from the bottom line of the nose.
- Okay.
- And you know the trick about the ear,
take the bottom line of the eyeball and it lands (mumbles).
The body structure is a little-
- Yeah, he's a little too tall.
- And no anatomy in the arm, just think of them as tubes.
- Yeah, they do have rubber hose arms,
but I did that at first and it felt weird.
- You know what Kevin,
this is why you needa believe in yourself.
- Jackie, I do believe in myself.
- You needa trust your gut.
Like Homer has a gut, am I right Mike?
(clapping)
That's right.
- Well, Mike, thank you for critiquing our Homers.
- Thank you, Mike. You are full of magic, Mike.
- This is why we can't have guests, Jackie.
- Is that horrible to say?
- Would you like to leave?
- We'll get out of here.
- I'll leave, I'm sorry Mike,
I apologize for all that I've done.
(upbeat strings)