Meet Patrick Smith - The Animator Behind the Nirvana x Nixon Collaboration Video

If you're here for the Nirvana x Nixon collab, you've probably seen the accompanying animation:

Shop the Nixon x Nirvana Collaboration

We sat down with the animator behind the art in this Nirvana x Nixon special interview.

Interview with Nirvana x Nixon Animator: Patrick Smith

What is your name, where are you from, and where do you reside currently?

My Name is Patrick Smith, I was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1972. I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. And in my adult years, I lived in NYC for a decade before moving to Singapore for 5 years. Then for the last decade, I’ve been in Montauk, New York, with my small family and our dog Hutch.

Do you have a local art and/or record store you like to frequent?

I’m lucky to live here in Montauk where there’s a thriving art and surf culture. I literally skate by the “Memory Motel” made famous by the Stones. Tons of art everywhere, difficult to enter any place without some type of local art on display. Also insanely fortunate to have Innersleeve Records close by in the neighboring town of Amagansett. It’s gotta be one of the best vintage and new record stores on the east coast.

Back to your art... what was your first paid art job?

My first job was designing characters for Mirage Studios in western Massachusetts, who at the time was publishing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was quickly let go and I don’t think any of the characters I designed amounted to anything.

How would you describe your style of artwork?

Twisted animation inspired by the skate art of Jim Philips and and the comics of Jamie Hewlett, as well as the legendary animation of Bill Plympton. My style is frame by frame, hand-drawn, in the tradition of the Disney masters, but trippy. It’s a difficult and tedious way to make animation, but it’s the way I gotta do it.

You worked on the cartoon Beavis and Butthead. How did that job come about?

When I was 23 I randomly sent a VHS tape of my bizarre morphing animation to MTV. To my shock they called me up a few weeks later and asked me to produce a 10 second ID spot for a ton of money. I remember the phone call really well because it was the same day I got rejected from California Institute of the Arts. The ID spot went on to become the most aired ID ever, and won a bunch of cool awards. After that they offered me a job doing layout on Beavis and Butthead... which brought me to NYC and started my career in the animation industry. It was a really unique era in New York City, we had a tight community of animation artists, all working really hard to create cool stuff.

Was working on a show like that the ultimate goal for someone in animation?

Beavis and Butthead was a perfect intro to the industry. I wasn’t interested in making animation for kids, and I loved the shorts of Mike Judge that I knew from Spike and Mikes Animation Festival, like Frog Baseball and Office Space. Around that time I was also asked to help animate the hallucination sequence of the first Beavis and Butthead movie, a segment designed by Rob Zombie. That was fun because I got to work closer to my personal style. So, Beavis and Butthead wasn’t quite an ultimate goal, but it was great to be a part of that history, and served a lot of us well, especially those of us who were just starting out in animation.

Your YouTube channel is very impressive. When did you upload your first video and was it a hit quickly or a slow build?

My channel was idle for years. I used it as a place to park some of my animated shorts after their film festival runs. But in 2019 that all changed when I dropped “Pour 585”, a film that had a pretty good festival run, even qualifying for the Oscar for best animated short. When it hit YouTube, it just blew up (it’s currently at 256 million views). I realized that I actually had an audience, as well as a library of other short films that I had made over the years, so I monetized and started producing films on a more regular basis. We’re up to 2 million subs now, and not slowing down... it’s awesome. I still send my films to film festivals, but it’s no longer my preferred venue of distribution. I can’t be more grateful for the YouTube platform and the audience it has provided my animation.

If someone asked you how you get started making animations, what advice would you give them?

Assuming you have a mild grasp of how to draw and animate, I would try making something super short, under a minute, even less. Make it in a way that is totally different - either in story, design, or technique. Repeat. While you’re doing this, you will learn and get better at putting stuff together. You'll eventually find the right technique and app, and grow from there... it’s quite the ride. Universities have animation programs, which is awesome if you can do that, but it’s not absolutely necessary. I was self-taught, as were some of the best animators I know.

When we first discovered you, the first thing we noticed was that you were wearing a Thrasher Magazine hat. So we have to ask, what is your skateboarding background?

I’ve been a skater since the 90’s. I’m incredibly grateful for the culture, as well as the art that emanates from it. If you stick with skating, it becomes your identity, for better or worse, and will influence practically every aspect of your life, friends, and art. I’m 52 and I’ll keep skating until I can’t. So far so good.

The Nirvana Collection has now launched, and the commercial came out better than we could have ever imagined! Can you describe the process that went into that?

The commercial is purely hand drawn craziness. I just sat down and thought up different ways to draw these unique watch designs being revealed, using twisting and morphing, stretching faces and mouths, then animating these concepts with several hundred colored drawings. The entire time I tried to remain true to the style of my MTV days, which meant channeling a simplicity of design while maintaining an odd sense of visceral motion. The Nirvana X-eyed logo integrated itself perfectly into the piece, and gave it a unique 90’s feel.

Shop the Nixon x Nirvana Collaboration

What is your favorite part or detail from working with the Nirvana watches and what was the most challenging part of this particular animation project?

The challenge of turning a mechanical watch into a fleshy and stretchy mouth.. I was a bit like “how the hell am I going to do that”? But the crazy thing about animation is that the drawings kind of come to life as you go, they start making decisions for themselves and figuring out their own problems. Another element of production was the sound design, I mean, what does this sound like? We decided on a series of metal scraping and scratching noises, as well as creaking leather and balloon handling. Then, under all that, a subtle heart beat, a clock ticking, and finally, a drum sample.

Thank you so much Patrick. Are there any shoutouts, thank-you's, or final words you would like to leave us with?

Yes... A heart-felt shout out to my buddy Dan Keotke, who did the percussion sample, he was an insane drummer who is no longer with us. RIP my brotha.