Madeleine Patton: “Creative Writing Comes From the Soul”
Who: Madeleine Patton
What: Writer and Animator, currently working on the web series My Pride
Where: Toronto, ON
How: I found out about Maddi’s work through her father. After checking out the (amazing!) trailer for My Pride, I knew I had to talk to her personally to learn more about her motivations and creative process.
What’s your story?
I’ve been animating and writing original series since I was about 12 years old. I’m self-taught. I started messing around with animation when my best friend and I got into stop motion as kids with our toys. When she moved away, I started experimenting by myself and I realized I could do it on the computer with my drawings. From there it was just, trial and error, tutorials, and time. I loved having a creative outlet.
It’s interesting that you were into animation at such a young age.
My grandpa’s a filmmaker, so I’ve always been into movies and shows. I consider myself much more of a writer, and while I love writing prose, when it’s visual you can get things across in a way more vivid way. I’ve always really liked the team aspect too. Even though I was a painfully shy kid, on the Internet I could be a big personality. I got to work with actors and artists from around the world to make my shows. It was exciting to have all those people collaborating together.
I think I started doing animation because I didn’t really have friends that I could make a movie with. You need a crew to make a live-action movie, whereas I could animate by myself, in my room but still collaborate with others. Animation gave me an anti-social way to be social with other creatives.
How did you get your following on YouTube?
I was a pretty early YouTuber, I started in 2008. I think that’s part of how I got a following, there just wasn’t much competition then. I made animations based on a book series called Warrior Cats, and fans of that came to watch my work. As the quality improved, so did the number of viewers. The fans have always been amazing. When I was thirteen, I got my first copy of Photoshop from a generous fan in France who got her mother to physically mail me an installation disc of the program so that I could improve my art.
It’s also curious that your characters are all animals.
Yeah… I’ve always loved animals. I think it’s a common trait among anxious people. You’re more comfortable around animals, they don’t judge. I wrote My Pride about an insecure teenage lion because I was an insecure teenage girl and afraid of people. It’s very directly correlated to me when I was fourteen.
Let’s talk about My Pride — how did that come about?
My Pride is actually 200-page novel I wrote when I was fourteen, which picked up a following on DeviantArt because I posted a chapter every single day for a year. I ended up deleting it off the website, but a lot of people who have followed my work for a long time still remember it. I had a little over 100 loyal readers at the time of release.
What really grabbed me when I watched the trailer is that your main character is named Nothing. Although the story offers a somewhat logical explanation for it, I thought it was so deep from a creative standpoint.
Her name wasn’t Nothing in the original story, but for the animated series I thought I’d make it more “on the nose.” I think teenagers feel terrible all the time and naming a character Nothing really hits how a lot of kids feel. I’ve gotten so many responses to the trailer, like, “Nothing is just like me!”, and they all come from teenage girls. That’s how they really feel, and I know that’s how they really feel because that’s how I felt too. Naming her Nothing and allowing her to have adventures and accomplishments sends a really powerful message to girls who feel like she does, I think.
It says, you may feel like you’re nothing, but you’re not. You’re everything.
Feedback from the fans is a very special feature in web series.
Yeah, and I talk to all my fans, I’m very social with them. They influence plotlines and I like to stick them into cameos when I can. A part of my audience is autistic so I’ve had the chance to speak with a lot of autistic people through my work. Some have told me that with my other show, Cow of the Wild, they feel a really strong connection to the main character (a socially unaware cow named Milly). Milly’s become a “comfort character” to that group.
I think it’s really cool that I was able to create a relatable character for an unrepresented group like that, and that experience is part of the reason I’m so excited to have Nothing as my new lead.
Nothing is disabled, not a typical series lead, and I hope she becomes another “comfort character” for people with disabilities who don’t get to see themselves positively portrayed in fiction too often. Representation makes people feel less alone with their troubles.
It’s interesting you say that, because it’s not something that I picked up on when I watched the trailer. To me, her disability was more of a metaphor.
That’s absolutely one way to look at it! I’ve even had a few disabled people tell me they’re excited to see Nothing’s adventures because of her disability, and many more who, like you, see it as a metaphor and relate in other ways. Something I’ve noticed as a trend among disabled characters in fiction is that they “fix” their disability at the end, which is not what I want at all. I often think back to something my therapist told me once, which is that the point of therapy isn’t to “fix” anxiety or depression, it’s to learn how to live well alongside it. That’s more along the lines of what I want to say with this. “You’re OK. You’re enough. You don’t need to be fixed, you can find ways to live well alongside whatever your personal challenges may be. They’re here to stay and that’s OK, you can still be powerful and beautiful with them along for the ride.”
The soundtrack is also remarkably fitting. How did you pick the song for the trailer?
The first fifteen seconds is actually composed by an amazing young guy named Alex Martini. He’s a music student in the US who reached out offering to help with the project after I announced it online.
The song in the bulk of the trailer is called The Oil Slick by Frightened Rabbit. Scott Hutchison, the lead singer of Frightened Rabbit, actually committed suicide last May. It really affected me. Back then, I’d stopped doing anything related to animation; I’d stopped in University and never really picked it back up after I graduated. I still kept receiving fan letters about how I’d inspired young artists to learn to draw and go to art school, but at the time I just sort of ignored them, a bit embarrassed of my former weird animal animation hobby.
But when I found out about Scott’s death, I was distraught. The guy was my hero, someone I’d looked up to since I was like, twelve, and he was gone. It felt like the world had a hole in it, this brilliant source of inspiration was snuffed out. Around that time, I got another one of those fan letters I’d been ignoring and it made me break down and cry, it was like reading something I’d have written to Scott when I was thirteen.
So I responded to the letter, and the next day I started work on a new animation and posting as Tribbleofdoom for the first time in almost five years. I thought if my work could mean a fraction of what Scott’s meant to me to somebody out there, it was worth it. Art is special that way.
When it came to this trailer, I wanted to pay homage to him and it was a no-brainer to pick his song to capture the essence of my story.
I was going to ask you about your motivation. Animation is so time consuming, especially if you’re also the screenwriter. What happens if you get writer’s block?
There’s a quote about writer’s block I heard once that it’s a “bourgeois luxury.” If I get writer’s block, I keep writing, and it’s bad but I can edit it later. I tell myself writer’s block isn’t an option, and then it’s not. Although, to be honest, specifically for the stuff on the internet, the fans are incredibly motivating. I’m spoiled with so much fan art and so much love for my online projects. It’s the easiest thing in the world to write a story when you have a captivated audience. The tougher stuff is writing sample scripts no one will see but me and my agent, haha.
But all that aside, I think writing is something that’s just necessary for me. I get really depressed if I’m not writing or making something. People tease me sometimes for always being so busy, but I can’t help it, I’m like a shark. If I stop swimming, I drown. Even for a day. Like, when I finished the trailer, I promised myself I would take the next weekend off and do nothing. It was the worst weekend ever, I hate doing nothing, it bums me out.
