Alex Mancheno hangs up animation cells of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and stills from the cartoon series “Darkwing Duck” in his Weehawken home. As he talks, his hands fidget ever so slightly, looking for somewhere to sketch. It is obvious that if he were not sitting here talking, he would be drawing.
“I wanted to draw for as long as I can remember,” said Mancheno, 26, last week. “There is never a time I can’t remember drawing cartoons, comics or animation.”
“I started seriously thinking about it as a career in high school,” Mancheno added. “I was reading the classics like ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ and ‘Bloom County’ and knew this is what I wanted to do.”
Inspiration
Mancheno has spent his entire life in New Jersey. He grew up in Glen Ridge, a small community that lies between Montclair and Bloomfield. A little over three years ago, he decided to moved to Weehawken so he could be closer to New York City.
“The first time that I can remember drawing was when me and my sisters started reading Garfield,” he said. “We would all sit down and just start doodling. And it just grew from there.”
He is no longer relegated to drawing at home with his sisters. Mancheno is now a student at the Manhattan School of Visuals Arts and some of his pieces have been published in “Murky at Best,” a book of area cartoonists that is published in Bound Brook, New Jersey.
He has had a wide array of influences but he says that the older he gets, the more he turned to darker and more satirical subject matter. But this dark satire differs greatly from his childhood roots in pop culture. “I grew up with comics such as Garfield but in high school I started to like darker pieces like Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’,” he said.
It is this strange juxtaposition between American pop culture and societal cynicism that Mancheno uses to create much of his comic effect. An example of this irony is in his “Ink Stigmata” series of comics, in which he depicts his character Merlin Monroe. It is the contrast of the Gothic medieval wizard crossed with a ’50s pop icon that creates an irony he calls “dark pop.”
“I have always liked the ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ and things like that,” Mancheno said. He likes popular music and culture to intertwine with the more sinister side of human nature. “That’s what makes it a cult classic,” he said. “It’s a little too far out there to be totally mainstream. That’s what I want, a cult following. I don’t need to be liked by everyone. I want to be my own ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’.”
New forms of animation
“I want to explore every form of animation,” Mancheno said. “I’m really interested in everything that is happening with computer animation. But you have to remember that the computer is like a pencil. It is only a tool. The person tells it what to do. The imagination is the key.”
He went on to say that so many people are too wrapped up in the technology of animation. If drawn properly it is possible to animate without fancy technology.
Mancheno pulled out a picture he drew of a man falling over a cliff in stages. “If it is drawn properly and with the proper flow, you can see the animation without any actual moving parts at all,” he said. “It’s an issue of imagination.”
Mancheno said that Richard Williams’ “The Thief and the Cobbler” is a perfect example of what can be done if the proper time and care is taken. The cartoon took Williams over 30 years to animate and looks exactly like the computer animation of today.
As for himself, Mancheno thinks about heading west or south.
“Eventually I would like to make it out to California or Florida,” he said. “That is really where the hotbed of animation in America is.”
But for now, Mancheno is happy with going to school and practicing his skill here in Weehawken.
“I like it here,” Mancheno said. “It is a good place to live and there is always plenty to do and see.”