Animating Icons: Carol Wyatt’s 35 Years in TV and Film

It was the 80s, and as a fresh graduate from art school in California, Carol Wyatt was anxious to get to work. She’d gotten a couple of minor design jobs as a senior, but now she knew that it was time to get into larger and more substantive projects. Unsure where to turn but assured in her talent as an artist, she started making calls. To art directors, advertisers, and producers, she made a point to repeat her name multiple times as she pitched her services.

“I was the squeaky wheel,” she told the crowd at Kentucky to the World’s exclusive live program at the Speed Art Museum. Her persistence and her drive would pay off.

Acting as illustrator, animator, painter, color stylist, and color supervisor for shows ranging from The Simpsons to Rick and Morty, Carol Wyatt has adapted her approach over 35 years to cement her status as an authority in visual media.

An Animated Upbringing

Born in Louisville, her earliest childhood memories centered on one activity: drawing. “I grew up always drawing,” she told her colleague Brooke Keesling at KTW’s program. “From the time I was a toddler, I was always drawing, making things, creating things.”

Her stepmother saved one of her earliest illustrations, which features a single monkey swinging between trees. Even though she completed the illustration when she was four, it’s clear to her now that she displayed an affinity for animation.

Courtesy of KET

One of her greatest influences when she was growing up was her Aunt Sally. “She was a professional artist, and she taught art,” Wyatt said. “She would have us over to her house, and she would sometimes put together projects for us – not normal projects. Projects like making stained glass. She would get out watercolors. And she would have it all ready when we’d show up.” 

These engaging activities would prove massively important for her development as a young artist. “She taught me perspective,” she said, “way before art school, way before high school, even.” As a graphic designer, she became a model for Wyatt: “I knew you could be a professional as an artist. I learned that very young.”

Her influences would extend far outside of her family, too. “I was a huge comedy fanatic,” she said. “I didn’t really tell people about this, but I watched every episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, over and over and over again.” Through her rewatches, she found herself gravitating toward the writer’s room, “where they would come up with their one liners for the fictitious show,” she remembered. This space ultimately set the stage for how she’d direct her life and her ambitions. “I love that room. I want to be in that room. I want to live in that room!” she said. 

As she started to wrap up high school, she had to consider where she’d want to study to advance her burgeoning career in art. She considered the Cincinnati Art Institute, and she visited both Chicago and New York. When she landed in Southern California, though, her choice was all but made for her. “It was an instinct,” she said. “I immediately fell in love with Los Angeles.”

She decided to attend the Otis College of Art and Design and managed to study directly under Everett Peck. She started getting hired for work in her senior year after cold calling art directors for different publications and ad agencies. 

Becoming a Leader in Animation

The media climate, particularly for animated media, was entirely different then. “Imagine a time where there were no animated TV series,” she said. “There were only Saturday morning cartoons – Scooby Doo – and after-school specials.” She started out working on the latter, contributing to The Ghostbusters animated series among others.

“I do remember going in, and someone asked me to paint cells,” she recalled. “I didn’t know what a cell was, but I said ‘Sure,’ and I learned then that you always say ‘Yes,’ and you go in and do the job.” The gravity of the moment wasn’t lost on her when she entered the studio building with her assignment. As she rode the elevator up, she reflected, “I’m going to work on a TV show. How amazing is this?” she recalled. “I remember getting chills.”

While the grind to feature her work in different spaces has always presented different kinds of challenges, she’s always been motivated to keep going. “For those who don’t work in film or TV, it’s hard to describe,” she stated. “It’s this passion that we have. Once I got into this business, I didn’t ever want to leave.”

“It’s okay to love TV and film and media, and it’s okay to go for it.”

After her work had been shared across the entertainment community, she began to get several one-off job opportunities. In these positions, she contributed to comedies, TV shows, music videos, and advertisements. Additionally, she engaged in different art forms like animation, assistant animation, design, and painting, all because she was so driven “to learn every job,” she said. 

During this time, she started working with an animation studio Klasky Csupo. It was in this capacity that she managed to work on a Beastie Boys music video and began animating on the first season of The Simpsons.

Courtesy of CarolWyatt.com

Her experience on the show, which was an instant national success, catapulted her into working on the pilots for Rugrats and Duckman and also leading as an art director for the pilot of Hey Arnold! She would continue to work on The Simpsons, eventually becoming a supervisor on the show. Brad Bird, her boss at the time, would become a major influence on her. “He was the first person to teach me that I could do anything with paint and color,” she recalled. “He taught me that I could do anything I wanted with artwork.”

After working on The Simpsons through its first four seasons, she maintained her dedication to animated media for more than 20 years by contributing to “countless TV shows, cartoons, features, music videos,” and so much more. In the early 2010s, she was asked to paint for an upcoming pilot for a show called Rick and Morty. 

As the show exploded in popularity, she began to take on different responsibilities, ultimately landing as a color supervisor. “So this is important: we don’t click and fill color. Never!” she said.

“I am in charge of all things painted. So before it comes to me, everything is in black and white. Designs, characters, props, effects. At the end, we’re putting in color, we’re filling in everything. But it’s so much more than that. We’re doing the lighting, the mood. Before you have color, you have no emotion. I think color and music are the emotional components of any film.”

“Rick and Morty is great because we spend so much time with scifi and doing lighting and really designing feelings along the way,” she said. “We have a lot of reveals, so we’ll have things that lead up to that. But it’s all done in color, and it’s subliminal. You don’t know you’re feeling what you’re feeling.”

Kentucky to the World’s “Carol Wyatt: 35 Years of TV Animation and Film” program, which features an in-depth on animation, storytelling, and how color can shape narrative direction, is now available to be streamed on KET.