Maker's Mark: James Braithwaite
Friend of The Juncture, James, talks animation, art-making, John Lennon, and robocorns
Welcome to Maker’s Mark, where The Juncture talks to local makers and artists about their work and their communities. Growing up in Scarborough, James Braithwaite was a ravine kid. He would disappear into the ravines and do whatever he wanted, where adults wouldn’t follow. James and his friends would build tree forts and swings. There was one tree they’d climb to throw apples at passing joggers. The joggers would yell and shake their fist and James would yell down “you can’t climb up here!” Besides, the kids had snacks and a radio. “We could have lasted up there for a while,” he recollects.
To anyone who meets James, it’s doubtful they’d be fully convinced that his tree fort and apple throwing days are behind him. He now lives in the Junction and illustrates under the pen name The Bathwater, working as an animator, children’s book writer, and teacher at Hot Pizza Studios. You’ll see his work throughout the Junction Neighborhood – be it the takeout boxes at Gram’s Pizza or the planful tote bag he designed for Type Books last year. And many, of course, know him for a film he worked on when he was still gaining his footing as an illustrator, the short film I Met The Walrus which was nominated for an Academy Award. His first picture book, Billie Builds A Robocorn, is due out on the 14th of April of this year.
In the Fall, James and I met up for a jog, and afterwards sat down outdoors to chat about art, children’s literature, cats, and things that make us laugh.
— Josh
James: I can see steam radiating off of your forehead
Josh: It just wafted into my eyes and I was thinking “What’s smoking out here?”
James: (to a cat) Hey, what’s up? My childhood cat looked much like that.
Josh: Have you had lots of animals in your life?
James: I’ve had lots of cats. I don’t currently. And I’d like one.
Josh: You had a childhood tabby?
James: Yeah, Ajax was his name. Because I found him when I was bicycling through the farms outside of Ajax. He ran out in front of my bicycle and I put him in my backpack and rode home with him.
Josh: How old were you?
James: I was thirteen. I was a serious cyclist back in those days. I called my parents from the GO Station and said, “You know how you mentioned you kinda want a cat? Well I got one. And I’m currently feeding him a Subway sandwich.”
Josh: Was he a good cat?
James: Oh yeah. Well, he would scratch.
Josh: You didn’t go to university for illustration; in undergrad you studied English Literature. So where did the drawing come in?
James: I’ve been drawing forever. Always. My third grade report card said, “James would be better in school if he didn’t draw all the time.” Then I was in university in English lit and I was thinking, “hmmm this doesn’t feel right.” But by then I’d been working on projects with my friend Josh Raskin. I would do the drawing and he’d do the direction, and we started working on this animated project for a John Lennon interview. It was an interview with John Lennon, we animated to it, and that was our first big project.
Josh: How did this project find you?
James: Jerry Levitan who was the kid who did the interview, he did the interview when he was a teenager.
Josh: And what year was this interview?
James: Sixty-nine. During the Bed in for Peace. His whole shtick was that he was a kid with lots of chutzpah who triangulated which hotel he thought John Lennon was staying in, and then found it and managed to get an interview with him. So we worked on animating the interview, and released it, and it went on to tour forever, and eventually got nominated for an Oscar, and won a daytime Emmy Award. The combination between slick animation and my naive-ass drawings is what makes for a nice mix.
Josh: And what’s their conversation about?
James: Their conversation is about how kids can participate in peace. How kids can make peace happen.
Josh: When I met you were animating something for the opening of Sphere in Las Vegas. How did that come about?
James: That was through my animation partner Fred. And the person who was running the tech for Sphere called us and said, “Oh my god, we need something for Phish for saturday!” We had five days but the first two were spent learning the parameters of building things for Sphere because technically it’s so confusing. We had to learn so much information so quickly that we were sleeping under our desks and working in staggered shifts so we could work 24hrs a day.
Josh: What do you love about children’s literature?
James: I love kids books that have a level for kids but also a level for adults, a second level that’s just not available to you as a kid. I want to go back and read a book with new eyes later in life, and find something else. I find some books allow that and some books do not allow that.
Josh: When working on a kids’ book, what are you trying to create?
James: I try to create kids books that are based on a core feeling from when you were a kid. For example I wrote a book about a cat, and the feeling is that I know this cat, but also it has a life outside of me. The same thing goes with your parents, you realize they have a life that’s outside of you. When you’re a little kid you think that when you close your eyes the world goes away. And then you realize “Oh okay, everyone’s the star of their own show, it’s not just me.”
Or when it’s your sibling’s birthday, and it’s not your birthday, how do you deal with those emotions? You see kids going through it, trying to metabolize their feelings, and then it starts coming out in strange ways. So how do you make a book that addresses that feeling – doesn’t make fun of it – but shows the kid it’s a natural feeling. Have it be seen. Name it. And how do you put a twist on that story.
Josh: Tell me about Billie Builds A Robocorn.
James: I came up with the concept with José Lourenço, who’s a TV writer and just generally a great writer, and we used to share a studio at Dundas & Ossington. We came up with the concept together, and then Jose wrote it and I illustrated it.
Josh: And what is a Robocorn?
James: It’s a Robot-Unicorn. The idea is that Billie has moved to a new town and she really misses her old friends. It’s summertime, there’s not a lot happening, and so she makes her own friend. She has an idea of what a robot-unicorn could be – she has beautiful ideas of what it could do, what they could do together – and the reality of it is that her Robocorn is a garbage can that she’s glued things to and it’s kind of broken and it’s not the friend she needs. But the whole crux of Billie as a character is that she’s never defeated. As soon as something has gone wrong she’s making a plan on how to get around it. Relentlessly resourceful, all of the time.
Josh: What was the nugget of childhood emotion you recognized in yourself that led to Billie Builds A Robocorn?
James: As a kid, I moved a lot. I was born in Edmonton. Grew up in Calgary. We moved a lot, often mid school year. And when you get to a new place, how do you work yourself into the ecosystem? You’re thinking “Who am I? What’s going on here? How do I fit into a world that didn’t already have me in it?”
James Braithwaite’s Billie Builds A Robocorn will be launched on Sunday, April 19th at Victory Social Club (1166a Dundas Street West) at 11:00AM. You can preorder the book here. And come by, in the countdown to its release, to see Billie in the front windows of Type Books Junction (2887 Dundas Street West).