Cartoons are basically short stories. I tried to find one that didn't have a whole lot of words. Not all of them have happy endings. So how did I get started cartooning? I doodled a lot as a kid, and if you spend enough time doodling, sooner or later, something happens: all your career options run out. So you have to make a living cartooning.
卡通实际上也就是短篇小说。 我有试着找一个文字不多的故事。 但不是所有故事都有快乐的结局。 我是怎么开始画漫画的呢? 我小时候常常乱涂乱画, 如果你花足够的时间乱画, 迟早,有些事会发生: 你可以选择的职业逐渐没有了。 最后你就只有以画漫画为生了。
Actually, I fell in love with the ocean when I was a little boy, when I was about eight or nine. And I was particularly fascinated with sharks. This is some of my early work. Eventually, my mom took the red crayon away, so it was [unclear]. But I'd like to relay to you a childhood experience of mine that really made me see the ocean differently, and it's become the foundation of my work because, I feel like, if in a day, I can see the ocean differently, then I can evoke that same kind of change in others, especially kids. Before that day, this is how I saw the ocean. It's just a big blue surface. And this is how we've seen the ocean since the beginning of time. It's a mystery. There's been a lot of folklore developed around the ocean, mostly negative. And that prompted people to make maps like this, with all kinds of wonderful detail on the land, but when you get to the waters edge, the ocean looks like one giant puddle of blue paint. And this is the way I saw the ocean at school -- as if to say, "All geography and science lessons stop at water's edge. This part's not going to be on the test."
其实,我还是小孩时就爱上了大海。 当我在八,九岁左右。 我对鲨鱼特别着迷。 这是我早期的一些作品。 终于,我妈妈拿走了红色的蜡笔, 那时很...[不清楚]。 不过我想给你们讲一个我童年的故事 真的让我重新认识了海洋, 而且成为了我工作的基础 因为, 我感觉, 如果有一天, 我能重新认识海洋, 我也可以唤起其他人一些同样的改变, 尤其是小孩子们。 在这之前,这是我眼里的大海。 只是一个蓝色的大表面。 这就是我们自古以来所看到的大海。 它是一个谜。 有过很多民间传说 都围绕着海洋。 大多是负面的。 而这使人们画出了像这样的地图, 让陆地上有各种精彩的细节, 但是当你到了的水域的边缘, 海洋看起来像很一大堆的蓝色油漆。 这就是我怎样在学校里看到海洋的-- 可以说:“所有的地理和科学课程 停在了水的边缘之外。 这部分不会出现在考试题上。”
But that day I flew low over the islands -- it was a family trip to the Caribbean, and I flew in a small plane low over the islands. This is what I saw. I saw hills and valleys. I saw forests and meadows. I saw grottoes and secret gardens and places I'd love to hide as a kid, if I could only breathe underwater. And best of all, I saw the animals. I saw a manta ray that looked as big as the plane I was flying in. And I flew over a lagoon with a shark in it, and that was the day that my comic strip about a shark was born.
但那天我乘飞机飞过一些岛 -- 那是和家人前往加勒比海度假, 我坐小型飞机从低空飞过这些岛。 这是我看到的。我看到了山丘和山谷。 我看到了森林和草场。 我看到石窟和隐蔽的花园。 和一些我作为小孩最爱玩捉迷藏的地方, 如果我能在水下呼吸的话。 最棒的是,我看到了动物。 我看到了一只看起来和我们飞机一样大的蝠鲼。 我飞过了一个有鲨鱼的泻湖。 然后这就是我的鲨鱼漫画诞生的日子。
So from that day on, I was an ordinary kid walking around on dry land, but my head was down there, underwater. Up until that day, these were the animals that were most common in my life. These were the ones I'd like to draw -- all variations of four legs and fur. But when you got to the ocean, my imagination was no competition for nature. Every time I'd come up with a crazy cartoon character on the drawing board, I'd find a critter in the ocean that was even crazier. And the differences in scale between this tiny sea dragon and this enormous humpback whale was like something out of a science-fiction movie.
因此从那天起,我还是一个普通的小孩 在陆地上行走, 但我脑子里在想别的地方,在水下 直到那天, 这些是在我生活中常见的动物。 这些是我喜欢画的 – 各种有四肢和毛皮的。 但是当你到了大海, 才知道我的想象力没法和大自然比。 每次我在画板上构思出一个疯狂的卡通人物。 我可以在海洋里找到一个更疯狂的小家伙。 拿这条小鲈鱼的体积差别来比 和这只巨大的座头鲸 就像是科幻电影里的故事。
Whenever I talk to kids, I always like to tell them, the biggest animal that ever lived is still alive. It's not a dinosaur; it's a whale, animals as big as office buildings still swimming around out there in our ocean. Speaking of dinosaurs, sharks are basically the same fish they were 300 million years ago. So if you ever fantasize about going back in time and seeing what a dinosaur looked like, that's what a dinosaur looks like. So you have living dinosaurs and space aliens, animals that evolved in zero gravity in harsh conditions. It's just incredible; no Hollywood designer could come up with something more interesting than that. Or this fangtooth. The particles in the water make it look like it's floating in outer space. Could you image if we looked through the Hubble Telescope and we saw that? It would start a whole new space race. But instead, we stick a camera in the deep ocean, and we see a fish, and it doesn't capture our imagination as a society. We say to ourselves, "Maybe we can make fish sticks with it or something."
每当我跟孩子们聊天,我总是喜欢告诉他们, 有史以来最大的动物仍然活着。 它不是恐龙,而是只鲸鱼。 和大楼一样大的动物 仍然在我们的大海里游来游去。 说到恐龙,鲨鱼基本上 还是和3亿年前同样的鱼。 所以,如果你曾经幻想回到过去 和看恐龙是什么样的, 这就是恐龙的模样。 所以你有活着的恐龙 和外星人, 动物在零引力和恶劣的条件中进化过来。 这简直令人难以置信, 没有哪个好莱坞设计师 能创造出比这更有趣的东西了。 或这个尖牙鱼。在水中的很多微粒 使它看起来像在太空中漂浮。 你能想象如果我们通过哈勃望远镜 看到了这些? 这将启动一个全新的太空竞赛。 但是相反,我们把相机放入深海里, 我们看到一条鱼,而它没能捕获到我们的想象力 作为一个社会。 我们对自己说, “也许我们能用它做些炸鱼片或什么的。”
So, what I'd like to do now is try a little drawing. So, I'm going to try to draw this fangtooth here. I love to draw the deep sea fish, because they are so ugly, but beautiful in their own way. Maybe we can give him a little bioluminescence here -- give him a headlight, maybe a brake light, turn signals. But it's easy to see why these animals make such great cartoon characters, their shapes and sizes. So some of them actually seem to have powers like superheroes in a comic book. For instance, take these sea turtles. They kind of have a sixth sense like Superman's x-ray vision. They can sense the magnetic fields of the earth. And they can use that sense to navigate hundreds of miles of open ocean. I kind of give my turtle hands just to make them an easier cartoon character to work with. Or take this sea cucumber. It's not an animal we draw cartoons of or draw at all. He's like an underwater Spiderman. He shoots out these sticky webs to entangle his enemy. Of course, sea cucumbers shoot them out their rears, which, in my opinion, makes them much more interesting a superhero. (Laughter) He can't spin a web anytime; he's got to pull his pants down first.
因此,我现在想做的 是试着画一下。 所以,我先试着在这里画这只尖牙鱼。 我爱画这些深海鱼, 因为他们是如此的丑, 但又有自己的一种美。 也许我们可以在这里给他一个的小生物发光源 -- 给他一个大灯, 也许一个刹车灯, 转向灯。 但很容易看到这些动物为什么 能作这么合适的卡通人物, 它们的形状和大小。 所以其中一些看起来真的有些能力 像漫画里的超级英雄。 举例来说, 就拿这些海龟。 他们似乎有第六感 像超人的x光视觉。 他们可以感觉到地球的磁场。 而且他们可以用这个感应 在数百英里的广阔海样里导航。 我给他个海龟手掌 只是为了这些卡通人物在漫画过程中更人性化。 或这个海参。 这不是我们在漫画里画的动物。 或拿来画的。 他就像一个水下蜘蛛侠。 他射出这些黏的网 来粘住他的敌人。 当然,海参从后面射出来, 这在我看来,使它们成为更有趣的超级英雄。 (笑声) 他不能随时撒网,他必须先把他的裤子脱下来。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Or the blowfish. The blowfish is like the Incredible Hulk. It can change its body into a big, intimidating fish in a matter of seconds. I'm going to draw this blowfish uninflated. And then I'm going to attempt onscreen animation here. Let's see. Try and inflate it. (Laughter) "You talkin' to me?" See, he can inflate himself when he wants to be intimidating. Or take this swordfish. Could you imagine being born with a tool for a nose? Do you think he wakes up in the morning, looks in the mirror and says, "Somebody's getting stabbed today." Or this lionfish for instance. Imagine trying to make friends covered with razor-sharp poisonous barbs. It's not something you want to put on your Facebook page, right?
还有这个河豚。 河豚就像是神奇绿巨人。 它可以改变自己的身体 成为一个很大,可怕的鱼 就在几秒钟内。 我先画这个还没充气的河豚。 然后我要尝试 在屏幕上做动画。 我们来看看。 尝试给它充气。 (笑声) “你在跟我讲话?” 看,他可以给自己充气 当他想变得可怕时。 或看来这只剑鱼。 你能想像自己的鼻子生下来就是个工具吗? 你认为他每天早上醒来,对着镜子说: “今天又有人要被刺伤。” 或例如这条狮子鱼。 试着想想怎么去交朋友 当自己身上全是锋利的毒刺。 这不是你想要的Facebook头像,对吧?
My characters are -- my lead character's a shark named Sherman. He's a great white shark. And I kind of broke the mold with Sherman. I didn't want to go with this ruthless predator image. He's kind of just out there making a living. He's sort of a Homer Simpson with fins. And then his sidekick is a sea turtle, as I mentioned before, named Filmore. He uses his wonderful skills at navigation to wander the oceans, looking for a mate. And he does manage to find them, but great navigation skills, lousy pick-up lines. He never seems to settle on any particular girl. I have a hermit crab named Hawthorne, who doesn't get a lot of respect as a hermit crab, so he kind of wishes he were a great white shark. And then I'll introduce you to one more character, this guy, Ernest, who is basically a juvenile delinquent in a fish body.
我的人物是 -- 我的主角是叫谢尔曼的鲨鱼。 他是一只大白鲨。 对于谢尔曼我打破了平常的模具。 我不想用这个无情的 捕食者形象。 他也只是在那儿谋生。 他像是带了鱼鳍的霍默辛普森。 然后他的助手 是只海龟,正如我前面提到的,名叫费尔莫尔。 他用他精彩的导航本领 在海洋中飘荡,寻找伴侣。 而且他有找到她们, 虽然有伟大的航海本领,搭话却很糟糕。 他似乎永远不会 停下来 在任何一个女孩身边。 我有一只叫霍桑的寄居蟹, 他作为寄居蟹不怎么受到尊重, 所以他有希望 他原本是一只大白鲨。 然后我再多给你们介绍一个人物, 这个家伙,欧内斯特, 基本上是个少年犯 在鱼的身体里。
So with characters, you can make stories. Sometimes making a story is as easy as putting two characters in a room and seeing what happens. So, imagine a great white shark and a giant squid in the same bathroom. (Laughter) Or, sometimes I take them to places that people have never heard of because they're underwater. For instance, I took them skiing in the Mid-Atlantic Range, which is this range of mountains in the middle of the Atlantic. I've taken them to the Sea of Japan, where they met giant jellyfish. I've taken them camping in the kelp forests of California.
所以用这些人物,可以编很多故事。 有时侯编故事简单到 把两个人物在一个房间里 看会发生什么事。 所以,想象一个白大鲨和大乌贼在同一间厕所里。 (笑声) 或者,有时我带他们去一些地方 人们从来没有听说过,因为是在水下。 比如,我带他们去大西洋中部山脉滑雪, 这是在大西洋中部的山脉群。 我有带他们到日本海, 他们在那里遇见了巨大的水母。 我带他们去了加州的海带森林露营。
This next one here, I did a story on the census of marine life. And that was a lot of fun because, as most of you know, it's a real project we've heard about. But it was a chance for me to introduce readers to a lot of crazy undersea characters. So we start off the story with Ernest, who volunteers as a census taker. He goes down and he meets this famous anglerfish. Then he meets the yeti crab, the famous vampire squid -- elusive, hard to find -- and the Dumbo octopus, which looks so much like a cartoon in real life that really didn't have to change a thing when I drew it.
下面这个, 我写了海洋生物人口普查的故事。 那非常有趣,因为你们大多数人都知道, 它是一个真正我们听说过的项目。 但对我来说是一个机会给读者介绍 很多疯狂的海底人物。 因此,故事从欧内斯特开始, 作为人口普查志愿者。 他去碰到这只出名的华脐鱼。 然后,他遇见了这个雪人蟹, 著名的吸血鬼乌贼-- 难以捉摸的,很难找到的-- 和这个婴儿椅章鱼,它看起来太像一个在现实生活中的漫画 我画的他的时候真的没有什么需要改的。
I did another story on marine debris. I was speaking to a lot of my friends in the conservation business, and they -- I asked them, "So what's one issue you would like everyone to know more about?" And they said -- this one friend of mine said, "I've got one word for you: plastic." And I told him, "Well, I need something a little sexier than that. Plastic just is not going to do it." We sort of worked things out. He wanted me to use words like polyvinyl chloride, which doesn't really work in voice balloons very well. I couldn't fit them in. So what I did was I made an adventure strip.
我写了另一个关于海洋废弃物的故事。 我和很多朋友聊过 做环境维护工作的, 然后他们 -- 我问他们, “那么,你们有没有一个想让大家了解更多的问题?” 他们说 -- 这是我的一个朋友说的, “我有一个词给你:塑料。” 然后我告诉他, “恩, 我需要比这个更性感些的话题。 仅仅塑料不够。” 我们大概解决了这个问题。 他想我用像聚氯乙烯的词语, 但在漫画的对话气球里会很不自然。 我没法把它们放进来。 所以我写了一个冒险故事。
Basically, this bottle travels a long way. What I'm trying to tell readers is that plastic doesn't really go away; it just continues to wash downstream. And a lot of it ends up washing into the ocean, which is a great story if you attach a couple characters to it, especially if they can't stand each other, like these two. So, I sent them to Boise, Idaho, where they dropped a plastic bottle into the Boise sewer system. And it ended up in the Boise River and then on to the Columbia River and then to the mouth of the Columbia and to the Pacific Ocean and then on to this place called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch -- which is this giant Pacific gyre in the North Pacific, where a lot of this plastic ends up floating around -- and then back onto the lagoon. So that was basically a buddy story with a plastic bottle following along. So a lot of people remember the plastic bottle anyway, but we really talked about marine debris and plastic in the course of that one.
基本上,这个瓶子经历了很长的旅行。 我想告诉读者们 就是塑料并没有真正的消失; 它只是继续流到下游。 而其中很多最终流入了海洋, 这是个很有趣的故事,如果你搭配一些人物在里面, 尤其是如果他们不能相互忍受对方, 像这两个。 所以,我带他们到博伊西,爱达荷州, 在那里他们扔了一个塑料瓶 到博伊西的下水道系统。 它后来到了博伊西河 然后到哥伦比亚河 然后到哥伦比亚海口 再到了太平洋 然后这个叫大太平洋垃圾带的地方 -- 就是这个在北太平洋巨大的太平洋环流带, 很多这种塑料最终漂浮在这里 -- 然后返回到泻湖。 所以这基本上是个好朋友的故事 多了一个塑料瓶跟着。 所以很多人还是记得这个塑料瓶, 但我们真谈论的是海洋废弃物和塑料 在那个故事里。
The third storyline I did about a year and a half ago was probably my most difficult. It was on shark finning, and I felt really strongly about this issue. And I felt like, since my main character was a shark, the comic strip was a perfect vehicle for telling the public about this. Now, finning is the act of taking a shark, cutting the valuable fins off and throwing the live animal back in the water. It's cruel, it's wasteful. There's nothing funny or entertaining about it, but I really wanted to take this issue on. I had to kill my main character, who is a shark.
第三个故事我大约在一年半前写的 可能是我最难的。 这是关于鱼翅的,我感受很强烈 对于这个问题。 而且我感觉,因为我的主要人物是只鲨鱼, 这个漫画是告诉公众完美的途径。 现在,取鱼鳍是种行为, 拿一只鲨鱼, 把值钱的鱼鳍割下来 然后把活着的动物扔回水里。 这是残酷的,很浪费的。 没有什么可笑或有趣的, 但我真的想挑战这个问题。 我只有杀死我的主角,就是只鲨鱼。
We start with Sherman in a Chinese restaurant, who gets a fortune that he's about to get caught by a trawler, which he does. And then he dies. He gets finned, and then he gets thrown overboard. Ostensibly, he's dead now. And so I killed a character that's been in the newspaper for 15 years. So I got a lot of reader feedback on that one. Meanwhile, the other characters are talking about shark fin soup. I do three or four strips after that where we explore the finning issue and the shark fin soup issue. Sherman's up in shark heaven. This is what I love about comic strips, you know. You really don't have to worry about the audience suspending its sense of disbelief because, if you start with a talking shark, readers pretty much check their disbelief at the door. You can kind of do anything. It becomes a near-death experience for Sherman. Meanwhile, Ernest finds his fins on the internet. There was a real website based in China that actually sold shark fins, so I kind of exposed that. And he clicks the "buy now" button. And voila, next-day air, they show up, and they surgically reattach them. I ended that series with a kind of a mail-in petition that encouraged our National Marine Fishery Service, to force other countries to have a stronger stance with shark management.
我们从谢尔曼在一家中餐馆开始, 他得到了一个预言说他将被拖网渔船捉住, 结果真的发生了。 然后他死了。 他的鳍被割掉,然后他被扔到海里。 表面上看,他现在死了。 我杀了一个在报纸上15年的动画人物。 所以我收到了很多读者的反馈。 与此同时,其他的人物在谈论鱼翅汤。 那之后我画了三四段漫画 其中我们探讨割鱼鳍 和鱼翅汤的问题。 谢尔曼在鲨鱼天堂。 这就是我喜欢漫画的原因,你知道。 你真的不用担心观众因为感觉怀疑而停下来 因为,如果你开始就有一只会说话的鲨鱼, 读者几乎在一开始就把他们的质疑抛到九霄云外了。 你几乎什么都可以做。 它成为了谢尔曼的濒死体验。 在此时,欧内斯特在互联网上找到了他的鳍。 有一个在中国的真实网站 那里实际在卖鱼翅, 所以我揭发了它。 他点击了“立即购买”的按钮。 瞧,次日空运,它们到了, 他们用手术重新接上了它们。 我最后用一封请愿书结束了这个漫画系列 鼓励我们的国家海洋渔业服务, 迫使其他国家 对鲨鱼的管理有更强硬的立场。
(Applause)
(鼓掌)
Thanks. I'd like to end with a little metaphor here. I've been trying to think of a metaphor to represent Mission Blue, and this is what I came up with. Imagine you're in an enormous room, and it's as dark as a cave. And you can have anything in that room, anything you want, but you can't see anything. You've been given one tool, a hammer. So you wander around in the darkness, and you bump into something, and it feels like it's made of stone. It's big, it's heavy. You can't carry it away, so you bang it with your hammer, and you break off a piece. And you take the piece out into the daylight. And you see you have a beautiful piece of white alabaster. So you say to yourself, "Well, that's worth something." So you go back into the room, and you break this thing to pieces, and you haul it away. And you find other things, and you break that up, and you haul those away. And you're getting all kinds of cool stuff. And you hear other people doing the same thing. So you get this sense of urgency, like you need to find as much stuff as possible as soon as possible. And then some yells, "Stop!" And they turn up the lights. And you realize where you are; you're in the Louvre. And you've taken all this complexity and beauty, and you've turned it into a cheap commodity.
谢谢。 我想在此用一个比喻来结尾。 我一直在想一个比喻来代表蓝色运动, 这是我想到的。 想象你在一个巨大的房间里, 它像洞穴一样的黑暗。 而且你可以拿那间房子里的任何东西,你想要什么都可以, 但你看不到任何东西。 给了你一个工具,铁锤。 然后你在黑暗中闲逛,你碰撞到了个东西, 而且感觉就像是石头做的。 它很大,很沉重。你搬不动它, 你就用你的铁锤敲它,你敲掉了一块。 然后你把这一块拿出来到光明的地方。 当你看到你有一个美丽的白色雪花石膏。 你对自己说:“好,这是值钱的东西。” 所以,你回去房子里, 你把这东西打成碎片,再把它拖走。 而你找到其它的东西,把它们打破,把那些也拖走。 你得到了各种有趣的东西。 而且你听到其他人也在做同样的事情。 所以,你有了这样的紧迫感, 就像你必须尽快找到尽可能多的东西。 然后有人大叫:“住手!” 然后他们打开了灯。 现在你知道你在哪里了,你在卢浮宫里。 你将这些复杂和美丽的一切, 变成了廉价的商品。
And that's what we're doing with the ocean. And part of what Mission Blue is about is yelling, "Stop!" so that each of us -- explorer, scientist, cartoonist, singer, chef -- can turn up the lights in their own way. And that's what I hope my comic strip does in a small way. That's why I like what I do.
而这正是我们对海洋做的。 而蓝色运动的一部分就是关于 大声呼喊“住手!” 所以我们每个人 -- 探险家,科学家,漫画家,歌手,厨师 - 可以用自己的方式在打开灯。 而这就是我希望我的漫画能以小小的方式做到的。 这就是为什么我喜欢我的工作。
Thanks for listening.
感谢各位。
(Applause)
(鼓掌)