Jeremiah Alcorn- Pro Mentor, Educator, ACME Grad- Shares Insights
Professional artist Jeremiah “Miah” Alcorn, formerly of Nickelodeon Animation Studios, and a “pro” mentor to students on ACME, actually started out as a student on ACME while at Jefferson State. Now he is a freelance animator whose most recent title is, “Buck Denver Asks… Why Do We Call It Christmas?” His specialties include: Character design, illustration, digital painting, background & character layout, background painting, prop design, storyboard artist, & animation. He runs Alcorn Studios and just started teaching at George Washington Carver High School, where the animation classes use ACME! Talk about the circle of life. Miah was kind enough to share some of his professional influences and thoughts with us.
What motivates you to mentor on ACME?
The powerful thing about ACME’s mentoring is being part of its collaborative learning environment. Everyone benefits from the constructive comments and critiques posted on the site…. professionals and students alike. Even as a professional artist, there’s always more to learn; I’m appreciative to both ACME and its students for allowing me to be part of such a wonderful opportunity.
What’s the one drawing thing you use?
A Wacom Cintiq. That’s not to say that I don’t draw using traditional media, but for a fast turnaround I find that working digitally allows me to make corrections easily both during the work process and during post production as well. These days, digital artwork is in a class all its own…. it’s almost a medium unto itself. Developing a work process that is geared towards making yourself a successful part of a production team is definitely something worth investing time and effort in. The program that I draw in is Photoshop, primarily because of the power of the program. It is vast and offers the user many tools that are specific to the project in question. From an animation standpoint I still largely work in Flash…. ToonBoom is something I’m extremely interested in, but just haven’t had the time or funding to begin working with just yet.
With regards to the process of drawing itself, I find that gesture tends to be a large part of what I focus on. Shape in design and shape relationship throughout a design is also a primary aim. The big, medium, and small triad is a large focus throughout the design process and tends to lend itself well to making a drawing much stronger when applied appropriately.
When drawing with traditional media I enjoy drawing with Bic #2 mechanical pencils…. any paper will do 
What do you listen to when you are working?
That’s a good question. It tends to fluctuate depending on the project at hand. I try to listen to something that helps inspire work on the project. A while back, I was asked to develop the look of a surf kid’s project, so I listened to pretty much every Jack Johnson album I could find. If I’m drawing just for fun, or for a project that doesn’t require as much creative concentration, I like to listen to audio books. My two favorite series are The Chronicles of Narnia and of course Harry Potter–read by Jim Dale and Stephen Fry. The portrayal of the characters in those audio books can be extremely inspiring, at least for me.
What’s your favorite thing to animate?
Hmmm. . . I love character, and particularly expression….. I think the relationship between the two, when handled appropriately and in the proper context, can really help bring home a believable and convincing performance in any given scene. So I suppose if I had to choose something it would be character…. not a character, but the character’s character. When you animate or draw a guy, it’s important to remember that he’s an individual with a particular way of doing things. When you can get that across in a drawing or a scene it makes the character’s character believable. It makes him more than just a guy, it makes him THAT GUY…. as opposed to the one standing next to him. It makes him specific, iconic, and memorable.
Where did you go to school?
I went to school at two different places pretty much simultaneously. I went to The University of Montevallo to get my art education and I went to Jeff State Community College and enrolled in ACME to receive my animation training and education. For me, both experiences were extremely beneficial, but in very different ways.
At UM, the art program was geared 100% to artistic technique . . . learning how to draw with all different media, learning to paint, to cast metal, to sculpt, and to express yourself visually through different artistic tools and approaches. We learned a lot about art history, different high points in historical artistic periods and ultimately how those individuals influenced artists today. Towards the end of that nearly five-year experience, we chose an area to concentrate in. Knowing that I wanted to go into animation, I chose drawing as my concentration with figure being the primary focus. It was great, because I had a professor who worked specifically with me to help me learn how to draw better, how to construct form and really get gesture into my poses. His name is Ken Proctor and I will always be indebted to him for the time and effort that he invested in me during that time.
At Jeff State the experience was much more collaborative. The small band of students that we had were encouraged to give honest and earnest feedback, to pull from each other and share ideas to help make the best work that we possibly could. I’ll never forget the first year that I was there . . . we had to come up with storyboards for a 30 second film. I got up in front of the class and pitched what I thought was a funny idea, expecting to hear praise for how wonderful it was, but at pitch’s end what I got was dead silence. I mean you could’ve heard a pin drop in there. I was devastated, didn’t know what to do. Some of my feedback was blunt: “Well, that’s not funny”. And then the ACME pro said, “you know what you should do…. you should have the guy do this here instead.” And then someone else chimed in with another idea that plus-ed what I had and made it better. That experience set the precedent for the rest of my time in ACME’s program and we all grew together because of it.
Two different experiences, both extremely beneficial.
Who was or is your mentor?
I’ve had some really great ones over the years…. my biggest mentor is an artist named Steve Lambe. He and I worked closely during my time at Nickelodeon and he was my supervisor there. He taught me a lot about how to break apart the style of a production, color theory, character posing and expression, among a lot of other things. To this day he is still one of my nearest and dearest friends… and he is a constantly improving artist and professional. Seeing his work get better and better on each project inspires me to desire the same result in my projects, so in that way I suppose he’s still mentoring me even now. There have been many others, but Steve is the main one…. thanks buddy!
What is your favorite animated feature?
Now that’s a tough question. For art direction it’s a tie between 101 Dalmatians and Sleeping Beauty. Both classics and visually wonderful films full of great performances. For its oddness and the craft of production I’m also a really big fan of Coraline. But for story…. it’s hard to beat pretty much anything Pixar. I have a particular fondness for Finding Nemo, Monster’s Inc., and the Toy Story Movies. I also love both The Iron Giant, and The Incredibles.
That’s not answering the question though, is it? Okay. If I have to pick one I guess I’ll go with. . . (Insert drum roll here) . . . The Sword in the Stone.
What animators or cartoons influenced you as a kid?
Any and everything Looney Tunes… I practically spent every Saturday morning watching Bugs Bunny and the gang. And the classic Disney features too. A lot of those were being re-released to theaters when I was younger. I specifically remember seeing both Bambi and Lady and the Tramp with my Grandma, then spending hours at her desk when we got back home trying to draw the characters. Those were wonderful and influential times. When I saw Aladdin, I decided, “That’s what I want to do”. Who wasn’t captivated by the many wonderful performances in the film, particularly Eric Goldberg’s Genie and Glen Keane’s Aladdin? With artists of that caliber creating performances of that magnitude, it’s hard not to be inspired to do that too.
(Pictured: Miah’s “Punky Dunk Books” characters)
