Captain Cosmos
Hey All,
Some of the newsletter issues I've been working on deal with experiences from my career in the animation industry. In the course of your life and career, you meet a lot of people who end up having an impact on you without you really thinking about it at the time. This story is about one such person:
Captain Cosmos
I once worked with a man early in my career named Nick (Nicola) Cuti. Nick was in his mid 50s when I first met him. I was still a kid, not yet 30 and recently promoted to Background Supervisor on the Dilbert animated TV series. I had never been a supervisor before and had no idea how to manage people or what to look for when hiring someone. Nick was a long time friend of Jim Janes, a mentor of mine and Nick had applied for one of the open slots we had for BG design on the show. Nick took a test for the job, which didn’t tell me much about his skill as an artist, but I decided to hire him anyway, since he was Jim’s friend and he seemed pretty competent and experienced when I talked to him. Anyway, Nick turned out to not be a good hire for Dilbert, but that’s not why I’m writing about him. The thing that made Nick an interesting guy was that he had a passion for science fiction. Nick had been in the comic book business primarily as a writer, but also did some illustrating. But what people at the studio knew him best for at the time was Captain Cosmos. Captain Cosmos was a character Nick created as a send up to old classic Sci Fi serials like Captain Video and Tom Corbett with a bit of Star Trek thrown in. The character was basically Nick and happened to look just like him. He had published a few comics independently and made a low budget movie starring himself as Captain Cosmos. The set was built and filmed in his dining room. As you might guess, the film is pretty amateurish looking. Here’s a trailer I found for Captain Cosmos:
I remember during a break at the studio a bunch of young guys who had seen the film were making fun of it. Someone overheard them and said, “How many of you guys have made your own movie?” As I recall, this shut them up pretty quick.
What the person said stuck with me. It’s easy to poke fun at someone’s work. A lot harder to be the one doing it.
I’ve thought about Nick over the years. He wasn’t a great background designer, but he was a passionate artist and I respected that about him. I recently found out that Nick died of cancer in 2020. Doing a bit of research for this article, I found an interview with him shortly before his death and it was very inspiring to me. So much I didn’t know about him. Nick Cuti had a pretty great career as a comic book writer and editor, it turns out. He got to work with some legendary artists like Bernie Wrightson, Wally Wood and others. Hundreds of his stories have been published and his independently made comics and movies are available at Amazon. You can listen to the interview HERE.
The point is, many people who decide that they aren’t talented, skilled or persistent enough to pursue a passion end up doing nothing at all. They worry about what others will think of their work and it cripples them.
If you want to create something, then do it now. Don’t worry about it not being a masterpiece. If you persist in doing what you care about, the journey itself will be worth the effort and you will have a body of work to show for it as well.
-Chris
P.S. If you liked this story, let me know! Still working out the kind of content I want to include in this newsletter, so your feedback is much appreciated.