EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 23 © 2018 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

65 Schoolism.com. PR: What were your early influences? BC: Mostly comicbooks as a child and then sketchbooks when I was in my early twenties. People like Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, Jim Lee, Jim Davis, Robert Bateman, Stephen Silver, Claire Wendling, Peter de Sevé and Sergio Aragonés were some of my favourites. Many still are. PR: Did drawing come easily to you? BC: Being able to copy things with above average precision came easily to me but the rest was hard. I have to break things down to their simplest forms and go through the process of putting it back together in my own way to truly understand it. I think that’s why I’ve been successful at teaching: I break things down in a way that almost anyone can understand it. PR: You started your commercial career remarkably early—can you tell our readers how that came about? BC: When I was 17 years old, I got a job in the warehouse of a toy company called Thinkway Toys. They made toys for Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, and other superhero licenses. I made boxes, fixed toys, and ran errands but on my lunch hour, I’d be in the art department learning this new software called Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop 3. One day, when I came into the art department, I saw that everyone looked stressed and in a rush so I asked them if I could help. The person that had been teaching me Illustrator and Photoshop said to the art director, “Let him try. I’ve been teaching him a few things.” So, they sat me down in front of a computer and gave me a chance and I guess I did an okay job because they let me stay in the art department and that became my first professional art job. The lesson I learned from that experience was that when you see a good opportunity, you have to speak up to get what you want. PR: Bearing in mind your early introduction to making art for a living, did you ever find time to go to college to study your craft?