When developing an animated series, you need to have story boarders, animators, character designers, writers, and editors to name a few. Some may claim that this is unnecessary and do it anyways, but rarely has someone able to fufill each role by themselves and excel at each. Forrest Norris is one of these animators who is able to excel at many of these jobs on his own show show, titled Fox and Cloud. Today on CackleCave: Artist Interviews, we’re talking to Forrest Norris himself and are exploring this series that’s been described as both charming and unsettling and how he’s made it so long!
Hello! Can you tell us about yourself?
“Hey! I’m Forrest Norris. I’ve been working in the animation industry for a little over a decade now, mostly in adult television animation.
I’ve always enjoyed drawing up characters and making stories about them. I grew up in the early days of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network and developed an art style over the years inspired by cartoons coming out of the mid-to-late 90s. With that, I also got into Captain Underpants when it first came out. Seeing the “hand-made” comics made by George and Harold within the story, really got me into making my own ‘notebook comics’. I even sent a few of my comics to Dav Pilkey, who was kind enough to send back a card with a marker drawing in it. That made me feel good that he actually received and possibly looked them over. I also liked performing, for myself mostly, pretending I was the head clown of a circus. While growing up I also like making people laugh and tell an odd story to get a reaction. All this helped out in the end on how I tackle character acting.
Though, I never really thought of art as a career and didn’t take many art classes throughout my schooling years. It wasn’t until towards the end of high school, while prepping for college and future careers, that I looked into art as something I’d be interested in pursuing. So I packed in a couple art classes, worked to get a scholarship of some sort, and during, made my first and only comic strip for the
school paper.
Finding a college, if I remember, was more or less easy. There were a few options in Michigan that came up, but only one that stood out and really grasped my intrigue. That was, College for Creative Studies, in Detroit. They’ve got an established animation department, and it was only a 20-minute drive from my house. I was able to put together a weird little portfolio and spent the next four years working on my skills and learning the ins and outs of animation. We were one of the last classes where the majority of us worked on paper. However, there were a number of digital classes, and one of them I clung on to was, Adobe Flash, now known as Adobe Animate. And so, because I picked up the program pretty quickly, I began just making my own little animations when not working on my students films.
Since I had gotten used to Flash, I got lucky and landed an animation gig for a studio in LA called, Animation Domination High-Def, for a show called, ‘Golan the Insatiable’. Working on that show was my first official job up to that point. Since then, I’ve been working as an animator, designer, and storyboard artist for TV, online, music video, and promo animation work at various studios. Still while working on my own things when I get the chance.”
What’s Fox and Cloud?
“‘Fox & Cloud’ is about two buds trying to live life fun and casual but have gotten themselves in to crazy stuff, which they don’t know how or why. It’s a weird world kind of like ours, but with animal-folk, human-folk, and strange beings that no one seems to be bothered by until they are in fact, bothered by them to the point of being disturbed to the brink of insanity. But it’s also quite charming. Even the scary things are oddly cute.
The series started out as a throw-away doodle from one of my many doodle files I did in Flash. I think the first drawings of them are of the boys in their basic 3 quarter poses that ended up in their character turn-arounds. That was in early 2018. It was a rough year for me, and so, making ‘Fox & Cloud’ was like a visual representation of how I was feeling..at first, but then it quickly became about two goofy, burnt-out dudes that I wanted to make stories about. The comic started out as a strictly 3-panel strip, all black and white, simple designs, and in the Instagram squared format. At first, all the characters had stick-limbs, and all the lines were drawn real janky-like. This was mostly to help with making these quickly. Looking back through them, it didn’t last long. I think the idea was to make one every day, but I only ended up making 5 strips between February 09 to February 16. I must’ve gotten a job at that point because I didn’t make any new ones until Covid happened.
Those ended up just being a reaction in real time to what was going on and everyone dealing with item shortages and the beginnings of lockdown. Ten comics were created between March 16, 2020 to April 11, 2020. These had the same simplistic styles, and stick-limbs, but the strict 3-panel set up went out the window, with gray-tones also being added to the color-palette. The last two stick limbed, colorless ‘Fox & Cloud’ pieces were released on December 18, 2021, in the form of a Christmas themed animated short, and the other being made for Titmouse Inc. 5-Second Day, also in 2021. Which were easy to set up, because the comics were set up in Flash ready to be animated at any time. The Christmas short was where I started to come up with their voices. Only Cloud’s voice has stayed the same.
August 2022 was the third animation. This was about the boy’s being on a game show and losing. It’s fully in color, but still with their stick-limbs, and created in a program called, Storyboard Pro. One shouldn’t do animations in it, but ever since this short, all digital comics and animations have been done with SBP. This short basically honed in the color-palette, voices, and animation style. 2023 had the last of the stick-limbed designs of a comic of the boys in an arcade. The two comics that followed were the start of the non-stick-limb character designs. It also established the boy’s place of work, Stinkie’s Pizza, and how spooky the comics would eventually become. Also, they were the last comics to be done in Flash.
September 2023 is when I launched the series’ own Instagram page. I kicked off the page with an animated intro by Fox and Cloud and had a slew of comics lined up to come out on a weekly basis. The start of this page really started establishing a lot about the series. I got to explore the characters and their world in real time while making each new comic and animation. I had no idea what would become of the page or whether or not people would like it or not, but it’s been about a year and a half now and things have been pretty good! It was maybe a half year in that I started putting them up on TikTok as well. The format changed as well to 16:9 because the thought was to make them as a full on animate series later on.
The series definitely developed a goofily charming yet scary vibe to it. The lore and storylines have been slowly forming as time goes on.”
These characters don’t specifically have a set media, I’ve noticed, and go from animated to illustrations to comics. How’s that process, like taking on these different forms with your characters?
“Comics are the series main format at this time. Mostly because I’m able to quickly bat those out as opposed to making animations. But I would love to do more animations when I got the time. Animations have usually been like book-ends. They end up being at the start of a new era of the series or a celebration for milestones for the page. A lot of the animations are to test things out. The comics themselves are basically fully rendered storyboards. Every comic is set up to be animated at any time.”
There’s a lot of illustrations for the series on index cards! What made you choose index cards?
“Tying in this question with the last, the illustrations are fun ones for me. For this series specifically, they were created as little bumpers for a micro sub-series I call, ‘It’s Wednesday… What Does It Mean?’ However, the first two were created digitally. These are kind of like Adult Swim bumpers. Kind of weird. Kind of vague.
They’re all only one card each. Telling a story all itself, as if you were walking past a conversation and heard something crazy, but will never hear the end of it. But the, ‘It’s Wednesday…What Does It Mean?’, still end up having to do something with the overall storyline. You just have to wait to find out how.
Also, I do them to sketch and use my Micron pens every once in a while. It’s a good break from using the computer.”
Your animations are very high quality and look like they’re snippets from a show! Do you make these yourself or do you have a team? What’s your process like when making these shorts?
“Thank you! Yes, I am the only person working on ‘Fox & Cloud’ comics and animations. All animations have taken between a week to a month to produce. The ideas come around by just living. I see things, I’ve been in crazy situations or been near them. Sometimes it’s people watching or noticing something incorrectly, and now it’s silly. I usually whip up something that I think is goofy and start going to town with making it into a comic or a short. Then I start writing down scenarios/ scripts into the Notes app. I rework things before roughing things out.
If there’s dialog, I like to get an audio track ready to drop in to Storyboard Pro. So I take my laptop, mic, some water, cough drops, and the script into the walk in closet to yell for a half hour to an hour until I got what I need. If anything, I can re record later on.
From there I do a quick story board pass for setup and timing. I then clean it up and add key poses to get just enough information to steer how animation will go. The animatic, from roughs to clean, usually take a few days to a week to get done.
At this point I’ve got a number of backdrops I can return to, but if it’s a new location I either go out into the world to snap a pic of what I’m going for or go online to look up how things look and then sketch out things from there for the backgrounds and layout. Most of the characters are all worked out with turn arounds and poses that I can take from and build upon or reworked based on the story’s situation.
Animation and any notes are done next. I like pose to pose animation. A lot of the time it’s smear frames to get through them, but sometimes slow and subtle is needed. I like the method at the end of hitting a pose to back track that pose with two to three more drawings to settle it. Animation is basically hand-drawn. I haven’t worked with rigs on a short since the Christmas one.
Depending on the shot, sometimes I don’t even need to make rough animation. If the cleaned up pose is worked up well enough and the next pose isn’t too wildly different, I’ll just go ahead and do clean in-betweens. Animating in Storyboard Pro is insane and you should never do so, as I’ve mentioned earlier. I’ve just gotten use to the program over the years that I know how to puzzle my shots together without going mad. If a shot has more than two characters in it then I usually key out the main moving character first and then everyone else follows based on how much movement they are doing. Because in SBP in order to make a new drawing you have to cut up the timeline. And if you mess up, you’ll have to tediously redo all the panels you have made up to that point. Flash/Animate or Toon Boom Harmony are specifically for animating and have a helpful function called, Symbols, which SBP does not have.
Anyways, I usually do harder shots or shots with a lot of moving parts first to get them out of the way. Other than that, if a series of shots follow each other as a sequence then I do those all together to make sure everything hooks up correctly. And then animated effects are done last so they can follow the finished animation.
After animation, I bring all the shots in to Premiere Pro. There is where I put other effects on and begin adding other audio tracks to finish it all up. Here is where any last minute notes are noticed and editing is tweaked. I end up watching a shot or a sequence maybe 50 times before passing it or reworking it.
This latest animation took me about a month from idea to finish. A lot of the time it’s me finishing up a shot and stepping away from the project for some time before hopping back on to continue. I think having space away from your projects to think about or not think about for a period of time is helpful. Because if I were to just, “go-go-go”, with it, I think parts would come off rushed and sloppy. Plus, you don’t want to burn yourself out either. You need a beat for a recharge. I was averaging one shot a day. Mostly due to how much was going on in each shot. Some animation days would be only a few hours and others would be slightly longer than a full work day.
But then when all is said and done, I export it out, rewatch it another handful of times and then see something else I need to fix. Eventually it gets done because there’s a point where you gotta stop and be satisfied with what’s there.”
Do you have any inspirations for the series?
“Back in 2018, when the comic strips were being made, I had Don Hertzfeldt’s, ‘REJECTED’, on my mind. That’s why they looked the way they did. But there aren’t solid inspirations. I do think about ‘Rocko’s Modern Life’ or ‘Angry Beavers’ sometimes. ‘Twin Peaks’ is another, and early internet creepypastas/urban legends. Life events and moments I witness are probably the bigger things I pull from when coming up with a character, a joke or a story plot. Sometimes I think words sound funny or a sort of misunderstanding ends up being hilarious. Music triggers visuals in my head that lead to situation or character creation. Mostly based on the sounds and never really the lyrics. Being in LA for a decade has also sparked my creative sense, since there’s a lot of wild things happening here all the time.”
Where do you hope to take the series in the future?
“It’d be really cool to have this turn into a TV show. Even if only for a season. I’d like to have it be on Adult Swim if possible. But even just making a 12-minute episode would be neat. If not, I’d be down to make zines or comic books down the line. But it’s all just a wait and see.”
Are there any themes you specifically like to explore?
“I like riffing on slice-of-life that turns out crazier than it should. Gotta keep the boys on their toes. ‘Fox & Cloud’ has a lot of mystery and drama. Something that could drive them to madness the longer it goes on, but it’s their strong friendship with each other that usually gets them to overcome things, even if it doesn’t really work out the way they planned.
There’s also some good vs evil going on. Strange things out there that seemingly want to do vile things to Fox and Cloud. But then there’s folk like, Coco, Pommi, Gribble-Bee, and The Subway Wizard that gives them hope and encouragement. You always need a strong support to get ya through. But still keeping things charming and heartfelt amongst the goofy chaos.”
Are Fox and Cloud themselves based on any personality? How did you come up with them?
“For the most part, Fox and Cloud are just me split up, but ramped up. Fox got the shyness, anxieties, and is reserved, while Cloud is overly expressive, spontaneous, and has odd creativity. Depending on who I’m around or how tired I am is who you end up getting. But sometimes they fuse together like in DBZ, and it’s a little whiplashy.
When I write out a scene, it’s just me thinking of how I would interact with such a situation and go from there. In the end it’s like talking with myself, but overtime the boys have developed into their own beings.”
Any advice for those looking to make their own animated series?
“That’s always a tricky one. For me, with ‘Fox & Cloud’ specifically, I had just drawn them up one day, and something about the look of the characters sparked something within me to want to create stories about them and a world for them to inhabit. At first they were just doodles, but then it’s up to you to come up with something. Something that can almost come easily to you because you know who they are because they are you or are something you’ve lived through. And then go from there. ‘Fox & Cloud’ has also been a slow burn and not something that happened immediately after seeing their drawings. It’s okay for things to take time.
For me, I like creating wacky character-driven things. Your tastes in storytelling will be different than mine, but that’s good because it will be something that YOU want to tell. You don’t even need to be able to draw either. Animation is vast in how you can go about the visualization of it. You can get an emotional reaction out of anything.
One thing, I think, that’s important, is that you should enjoy working on whatever it is that you’re coming up with. It shouldn’t feel like a chore or something you NEED to do. For me, when that happens, I end up not liking what I’ve made. It becomes just something to put out there. This goes for collaborating with people as well. You should enjoy working together and be able to just hang out even when you’re not talking about your series.
A lot of development goes into an animated series. Some people start with writing, world-building, and character creation. Some start with visuals. Regardless of how it starts, it always ends with your story and/or its characters being relatable. A story always comes from someone’s experiences. And then, how you go about showing/telling your story comes afterward.
An animated series can be made in various ways, like I mentioned. You don’t have to be an artist, but it does help. Style, design, sound, etc., that’s all up to its creator(s). Viewers vibe with just about anything. A series can also be as long as you want it… unless you’re going through a network/distributor, and then they usually end up determining its length. But as an independent it can be whatever. An example of an amazing short series is, ‘Over the Garden Wall’. A series also doesn’t necessarily need to have an ending, but an end goal can help with the overall how you’ll go about creating each story. Stories can have series-long arcs like, ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’, or episode-to-episode, like, ‘Hey Arnold’. It’s okay, as well, for your series to change overtime. If anything, that’s great because of growth of the story/characters. People change throughout their life and so should a series.
If anything, if you want to make an animated series, you should just start and see how it goes. I’d say start out with comics. They are a lower workload than animation, for sure! If anything, it’ll help with your “flavoring” of storytelling. You can workshop easier in comic-form than animation. Knowing how to or know someone who knows how to animated, I feel, is a decently important part to the animation aspect of it all haha.
I don’t know if any of this has been actual advice, but I will say, when creating storytelling art, try being yourself. Bring yourself to your creation. Don’t start your journey with, “I want to be/create the next ‘such-and-such’. Viewers will compare your work to other’s on their own. Make a series because you want to and that it brings you joy. Not to necessarily make you money. That’s just a fun little bonus if you’re lucky.”
Connect today!
Fox and Cloud is a series that gets better with each watch after you hear this story from Forrest, who has our utmost respect for making this series by himself! You can follow the series on it’s Instagram and YouTube page.