Silas Hickey, Creative Director, Asia Pacific Animation Development, Turner Broadcasting System Asia Pacific, Inc. has served as the Executive Producer of Ben 10: Destroy All Aliens, and was responsible for the creative management of the full-length CG-animated movie.
In his role with Cartoon Network, Silas has executive produced many hits including the 60-minute animated musical featuring the iconic Johnny Bravo in Johnny Bravo Goes to Bollywood and Roll No. 21.AnimationXpress.com’s Farhatnaz Ansari interviewed Silas wherein he spoke about his work, challenges, future plans and more…
Excerpts
How and why did you enter the animation industry?
I have always loved animation, since making flip books in the corners of text book pages at school, much to the dismay of my teachers. I also did a fair amount of stop motion using Super8 camera my mum would bring home from the art school she was teaching at. Both my parents were teaching at art schools so I have always been exposed to art and design, my dad was a voracious comic book reader especially Asterix and Tin Tin… also some of the early Marvel Comics and Kitchen Sink stuff like Like Fat Freddies Cat and Mr Natural… After school I received a government grant to Study in the US so I went to Otis Parsons and studied graphics and animation, one thing kind of led to another after that and I ended up at Disney as a producer in Tokyo and then Turner (also in Tokyo) running their animated shorts program.
How long have you been with Turner and what has been your experience so far?
Turner has put up with me for the past 7 years now. It’s a great company and I will be happy for 7 more years if the projects remain as interesting as they have been to date.
What all projects have you handled? What are you currently working on?
I have worked on Ben 10, Johnny Bravo, and lots of other original stuff. I have about 15 different projects on my slate right now which is fun as it covers everything from Mytho to Comedy to slapstick to Action Adventure and beyond!
What has been your most memorable project and why?
Probably our Snaptoons shorts program, why…because the whole idea of Snaptoons revolves around meeting new studios, artists directors and musicians…Snaptoons is how I met all the Indian artists we regularly work with now, its refreshing and has hooked us up with talent in places you wouldn’t expect to find it.
What is the challenging part of being a Creative Director?
You need to be a bit of an octopus in order to keep all of the balls in the air or plates spinning depending on your preferred metaphor. An inherent part of the job is mufti tasking: so commenting on storyboards at the same time as a screenplay whilst managing standards and practices issues all the while keeping projects on schedule and budget. These type of thing makes the job challenging.
How do you handle the creative differences with the production team?
I am always open to suggestions, as a certain amount of content creation is fairly subjective, but sometimes you need to put your foot down, you cannot please everyone and incorporating everyone’s concerns and especially with regards to S and P issues projects can begin to look like a series of compromises if you try to take it all on board.
At the end of the day stronger work tends to come from a single creative vision, you need to listen but keep your creative thoughts and assertions strong, don’t give in unless there is s very good reason.
Which Asian studios are you working with?
Crest, Toonz, Studio 4?C, Top Draw, Inspidea and Bogan entertainment.
Since you work closely with the acquisition team what kind of content Turner looks out for?
Character driven, Kid relatable content. We are medium agnostic though bad 3D makes me feel ill.
What was the experience of being the Executive Producer on Ben 10: Destroy All Aliens?
That project was insane and International in every sense of the word – Pre-production in LA, production in Singapore all being managed through my HK office. I ended up with one of the biggest mobile phone bills in the company!
What is your future plans w.r.t to Turner?
Keep on rocking, with better bigger content development projects!
