Swansea artist Glenn McCoy adds directing to his Minion drawing and gag writing credits
Glenn McCoy hangs out with a bunch of banana-yellow, goggle-wearing goofballs.
Legions of fans know them as Minions. They wreak havoc wherever their tiny feet take them — in an altogether innocent way, says the award-winning News-Democrat editorial cartoonist, artist and creator of “The Duplex” syndicated comic strip.
“Even though they work for villains, they’re childlike,” Glenn said from his Swansea home studio last week. “They screw up and it all works out in the end.”
He should know. If being involved in helping create “Minions,” the No. 1 movie currently in theaters, isn’t enough, Glenn, 50, has wrapped up his first short animated film that he wrote and directed for Universal Pictures/Illumination Entertainment. It’s all about Minions, too.
“There are so many of them now. They’re a big tribe,” he joked.
Glenn is mum on the short film’s particulars, but says it probably will be released next summer.
He’s also the understated sort: “That’s pretty cool.”
Glenn has had a hand in creating the silly world of Minions since 2008, when he did some storyboarding for the 2010 animated film “Despicable Me.” It’s where Minions were first introduced to our world as the giggling, clueless and incompetent helpers of bad guy (with a good heart) Gru.
A storyboard is a graphic representation of how a movie will unfold, shot by shot. It is made up of a number of squares with illustrations representing each shot, with notes about what’s going on in the scene and what's being said in the script during that shot.
Glenn gets to direct Minion rambunctiousness far from the Santa Monica and Paris studios of Illumination. While he travels to Los Angeles for meetings and to check in with other creative minds, Glenn does most of the work from his home in Swansea, where he lives with his wife, Laura, and their children, Molly, 14, and Jack, 11.
He also worked on “Despicable Me 2” (2013). “Minions,” which opened July 10, is a prequel that explains how the fireplug-sized yellow guys came to be, and the adventures of minions Stuart, Bob and Kevin in particular.
Glenn is working on “The Secret Lives of Pets,” to be released next summer, “Despicable Me 3” (2017) and a second short film of his own.
“I have other clients, but I’m writing other things for the studio — drawing minions for commercials, video games, product placement,” he said.
Glenn added gag writing to his job description while working on “Despicable Me 2.” It’s a big move, he said.
In both roles, the studio initially would send him parts of the script.
“When I was storyboarding, three pages equaled 300-plus drawings,” he explained. “You have to be fast, which I am. It was fun, but very laborious.” Occasionally, he’d throw in some of his own jokes. A few were used at first, more as time went along.
“It was in this last movie that I moved into the gag-writing role. It’s a different process,” he said. Now, when pages arrive, he looks for places to add humor, to “punch things up,” sketches those ideas out and sends them to the studio.
“It’s all slapstick,” said Glenn. Two of his favorite gags in “Minions” were chosen for the theatrical trailer. One shows minion Stuart exploring New York. Because there are only boy minions, his discovery on the city streets of a yellow fire hydrant that he thinks is a girl results in unabashed flirting. The other is at Villain-Con, a convention of bad guys, where cheering audience members are dressed up like villainess superstar Scarlett Overkill, including a guy wearing a moustache.
Glenn also does visual gags for other characters, such as Gru and Dr. Nefario.
“With gag ideas, I can be anywhere,” he said. “I mostly work in my sketchbook and then scan. I also draw on a computer, but I still like the feel of pen on paper.”
Living in the Midwest has kept it all in perspective. The studio, which has offices in Paris and Santa Monica, has asked him to move to the Los Angeles area a number of times, he said. With his children in school and family in the area, he’s not interested.
He doesn’t mind a good, back-handed compliment about his role with the studio, either.
In commentary added to the DVD release of “Despicable Me,” Glenn said director Chris Renaud talked about the studio’s talent, mentioning an artist in Paris they really relied on, another in Santa Monica and “this really interesting artist in Iowa.”
Glenn grinned. “That was me.”
This story was originally published July 23, 2015 at 8:02 AM with the headline "Swansea artist Glenn McCoy adds directing to his Minion drawing and gag writing credits."