'Jimmy and His Wife in Baby Comes First' (Spumco Comic Book).
Vincent Waller is an American caricaturist, animator/director and comic artist. Throughout his career, he has worked on various animated TV series, including John Kricfalusi's 'Ren & Stimpy', Everett Peck's 'Duckman' and Stephen Hillenburg's 'SpongeBob Squarepants'. Since 2006, he is notable as animation director and co-executive director of the 'SpongeBob' series. As a comic artist, Waller is notable for his work on sword & sorcery titles for Marvel in the 1980s and a story in John Kricfalusi's fourth 'Spümco Comic Book' in 1997.
Early life and career
Vincent Paul Waller was born in 1960 in Arlington, Texas. At age 15, he became a caricaturist in the theme park Six Flags in Texas. The park owners had developed a drawing formula that supposedly made it easy to capture someone's likeness, but in reality it wasn't genuine caricaturing. It took Waller years to get this "wrong" method out of his fingers. He worked for Six Flags for two seasons, until he realized that he could make more money if he started on his own.
Vincent Waller.
Waller moved to New Orleans, where he caricatured passersby in front of the bar The Paddock Lounge in 309 Bourbon Street. Since a local police chief was friends with Mrs. Valenti, owner of the bar, Waller was allowed to sit there and draw people. In a personal blog post (dated 28 May 2011), he reflected on his years in New Orleans and revealed that his house happened to be the former home of Lee Harvey Oswald, who in 1963 was accused of having assassinated John F. Kennedy before he got shot himself. In a strange coincidence, Oswald also had a room in a boarding house in Oak Cliff, Dallas, not far from Waller's childhood home and shot an officer on East 10th street, again Waller's childhood street. As a caricaturist in New Orleans, Waller actually met a few famous people, including animator Lynne Naylor, whose encounter they would only realize years later, when he and she collaborated together as animators. Another day, Waller met somebody whom he felt looked like Bob Dylan, but who introduced himself as "Robert Zimmerman". This was the musician's real name, but Waller didn't know this at the time. When the police chief who knew Mrs. Valenti retired, Waller was no longer allowed to caricature in front of The Paddock Lounge and had to look for a different occupation.
Story art for 'Savage Sword of Conan' #140 (September 1987).
Early comics and animation career
As a caricaturist at Six Flags, Waller had met Bob Camp, who drew parody comics for Marvel's Crazy magazine. He introduced Waller to his editor Larry Hama, who told Waller to send him his artwork so he could give him graphic and narrative advice. Through his mentorship, Waller was able to hone his craft. In 1982, Hama gave Waller a job drawing stories for Marvel's sword & sorcery series 'Savage Tales' (1985-1987), 'Conan the Barbarian' and 'Mark Hazzard: Merc'. In 1986, Waller went into animation and became a storyboard artist for DIC Entertainment (1987-1990). The most memorable show he worked on during this period was 'The Real Ghostbusters'.
Storyboard art for 'Boo Boo Runs Wild'.
Ren & Stimpy/John Kricfalusi
Waller's big break occurred in 1990, when his friend Bob Camp brought him to the animation studio Spümcø, led by John Kricfalusi. Waller was hired as a storyboard artist, writer, character designer, lay-out supervisor and director for Kricfalusi's 'The Ren & Stimpy Show', a series Bob Camp also worked on. Waller directed the pilot 'Big House Blues' (1992) and three more episodes in the 1992-1993 period: 'Rubber Nipple Salesman', 'Big Baby Scam' and 'The Great Outdoors' (1993). He also provided narration for some of the episodes. At Spümcø , Waller also contributed storyboards and lay-outs to Kricfalusi's later projects, like the 'Yogi Bear' parodies 'Boo Boo Runs Wild' (1999) and 'A Day in the Life of Ranger Smith' (1999).
In 1995, Kricfalusi released the Spümcø Comic Book, of which one issue was published by Marvel and then three more at Dark Horse Comics. Several of his animators drew some of the comic stories. Waller designed the cover of the third Dark Horse issue and drew the story 'Jimmy and His Wife in Baby Comes First', co-written by Waller and Kricfalusi. The plot revolves around Kricfalusi's mentally-challenged character Jimmy the Idiot Boy having to babysit his newborn son and obviously not knowing how to do this. His story was inked by Shane Glines. The pencil artists of the other stories were Jim Smith and Mike Fontanelli. In 2013, the full run of the series was reprinted in one single volume in IDW's Yoe Books line, completed with a previously unpublished story.
SpongeBob art, colors by Teal Wang.
Other animated series
In the early 1990s, Waller provided storyboards for 'The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog' (1993), '2 Stupid Dogs' (1993), Everett Peck's satirical series 'Duckman' (1994-1997) and the Nickelodeon shows 'I Am Weasel', 'Cow and Chicken' and 'Oh Yeah! Cartoons'. Between 2000 and 2001, he was director for Film Roman/Starz Animation. Between 2001 and 2002, he also made storyboards and directed episodes for 'The Oblongs' and 'Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law', and in 2004, 'The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy'. In 1998, he also made an animated short adaptation of Harvey Kurtzman's comic feature 'Hey Look!' for the Nickelodeon anthology series 'Oh Yeah! Cartoons'.
Comic strip posted on 18 July 2011.
SpongeBob
Since 1999, Waller is best-known for his work on Stephen Hillenburg's 'SpongeBob Squarepants'. He started out as a storyboard artist during the show's early years. In 2006, he returned to the show as writer, animation and technical director, and was creative supervisor on the animated feature 'The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water' (2015). In 2016, Waller also became co-executive producer of 'SpongeBob', alongside Marc Ceccarelli. He additionally created the spin-offs 'Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years' and 'The Patrick Star Show'.
Recent years
Since October 2006, Waller has regularly posted drawings, one-panel cartoons and sometimes comics on his personal blog, and later on his social media accounts.
Cartoon posted on 30 July 2011.