Jack Sachs is an animation wunderkind, and it all started with an injury to his moneymaker—the loss of a hand—an artist’s worst nightmare. But he got it back! And in the meantime, he became a lefty and learned CGI skills. The results are golden accomplishments, including arguably the world’s best dancing sandwich GIF, and 3D animation for the dark comedy puppet video series Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared.
Read more in the October 2016 issue of Juxtapoz Magazine. Subscribe and get it for free!
Kristin Farr: Tell me about the terrible injury that put you on a path to 3D design.
Jack Sachs: In the summer before I started the final year of my illustration degree, I was at a party and some loser tripped me over onto a wine glass. A big shard of the glass embedded itself in the wrist of my right hand—my drawing hand. I instantly lost all of the movement in my hand and was rushed to the hospital. It turned out the glass missed my arteries and tendons by a fraction of an inch, but instead, severed the nerves. Doctors were telling me I might never regain the use of my hand properly. Up to that point, I’d been a dedicated pen and paper guy, so this was pretty upsetting. In a codeine-induced haze, I decided to start playing with 3D software as a way of making images to carry on with my degree, since deferring a year would be bleak as hell and would throw me off my game. After surgery and lots of physiotherapy, my hand is operating at about 95%. I got straight back into drawing and painting but carried on learning about 3D animation, and here I am!
So you’re completely self-taught in animation?
Yeah! Everything I’ve learned so far is from free YouTube tutorials and forums. There are so many resources for people starting out in CGI and I owe a lot to the people who make that content. From what I can gather, they do it for the joy of spreading knowledge, and that’s really cool. I always leave nice comments when someone’s helped me out. Coming from a design background and working in that area, I think it’s easier to teach yourself. Of course, there are certain jobs in CGI and animation, in general, where teaching yourself probably won’t cut it.
Tell me about your new gig at Blink Ink.
After leaving Camberwell College of Arts in London, I didn’t have much of an idea about the world of production, nor did I see the potential for my work within it, still considering myself an illustrator. When I was introduced to Blink, it was the first time I’d seen work I could relate to being used in a production context, and I kinda set my sights on working with them. I emailed them asking if I could come and make hot drinks for a day and didn’t hear anything back. One day out, of the blue, I get a phone call asking if I was available to come and work on Paul Layzell’s short for iD magazine, and since then I’ve been freelancing with them for the last two years. Recently, I was invited to join their gang of directors, which is a real honor! It’s cool to be backed by such a diverse and exciting company. I still freelance with them, but now it’s like we’re a couple who’ve made it official on Facebook <3.
Congrats! How has your work grown since you finished school?
I don’t think I really knew the kind of work I wanted to make until I left university. The great thing about the program I attended was that it was very open and taught like a fine art course. A lot of art courses, illustration in particular, have an “in-house style,” which can benefit the students in terms of fitting into the world of commercial illustration, but it’s often all the same. Nobody in our course really made work that was similar to anyone else’s and I still see that when I go back for their end-of-year shows. After I left university, I think all of the weird fun I’d had making disjointed things fell into place and made sense. I kinda streamlined all of that stuff into sketchbooks and eventually onto the computer. My main advice for people still studying is not to be hung up if you don’t know exactly what you want to make. I think it’s healthy not to have preformed ideas of exactly what you’ll do when you leave art school, but it’s still super daunting.
Music video for Red Axes’ "Sun Sweet Sun," directed by Greg Barth and featuring Jack Sachs characters.
Have there been major influences from childhood that you didn’t realize until later in life?
I think just being an early Y2K teen who spent most of his time on the internet has hugely influenced what I do. I was about seven when we first got a dial-up modem at home, and I feel like I’ve grown up alongside the world wide web. It’s kind of inevitable that I’d end up making art with computers, but I never found a way I enjoyed until I started working with CGI.
You have a Tumblr called Gwai Lo, which means white boy or ghost person, right? Tell me about your photo blog and how you ended up living in Hong Kong this year.
Ha, yeah. Gwai Lo is vaguely condescending Cantonese slang for white people, mainly tourists, etc. My mum lives in Hong Kong, and for the last couple of years, I’ve been lucky enough to spend quite a lot of time there. I’m actually in Hong Kong right now. My Gwai Lo blog is made up of stupid pictures I’ve taken on my phone of weird toys, cute animals and obscure corners of this insane city. When I first came to Hong Kong, I spent months just wondering around aimlessly exploring the place, and having that blog in mind gave me fun things to look for. It’s always fun firing it up again when I get back to Hong Kong and fully embrace my inner Gwai Lo.
Tell me about your Make Do animation—you said it was inspired by personal experience? Everyone should go watch it right now.
Make Do was a reflection on my final year at university. Strangely enough, our first project when we returned after the summer when I injured myself had an optional path about the nervous system. I decided that, to prove to myself and my peers that I had recovered from my injury, I would construct an elaborate mechanical cabinet with levers and pulley systems to illustrate a nerve relay system. Needless to say, this required engineering knowledge and skill way beyond that of an injured 20-year-old illustrator. I had loads of fun making it, but the outcome was an absolute disaster, none of it worked. I got a really bad grade and decided to stick to CGI and drawing, and that’s what that film is about.
What projects are you working on these days?
A bunch of things with non-disclosure agreements that prevent me from saying anything explicit, but some cool music videos, some emoji-type things, and I’m writing my own short film that’s going to be set and shot in Hong Kong! I’m making my first steps into interactive content and VR, which is really fun. I’m lucky that I get to work on the design side of these projects, along with the clever, talented people who can actually program these things.
What’s your most frequently used emoji?
The little chicken coming out of the egg. It speaks to me on an emotional level.
What’s the strangest thought you had today?
It’s quite early here, so I haven’t had much time for interesting thoughts, but yesterday I was wondering how many people have drunk the exact same water molecules that were in my cup. Whoa, man.
Describe your ideal sandwich.
My ideal sandwich is the kind of sandwich you make when you go back to your parents house and use all of their ingredients, which are always marginally higher quality than the ones I would buy for myself. It’s called a “home sandwich” and it’s a thing.
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Originally published in the October 2016 issue of Juxtapoz Magazine, available here.
