Interview: Designer Jason Raish on his ‘WALL-E’ Criterion cover and the art of fashion illustration
In Maker’s Dozen, we ask folks in and around the film industry 12 questions and have them ask one of us.
Jason Raish is a freelance illustrator based in New York City and teaches illustration at The Fashion Institute of Technology. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and most recently the Criterion Collection, for which he designed the new cover of the 4K/Blu-ray edition of WALL-E.
In this interview, Jason talks about what it was like working with Criterion and Andrew Stanton on the new cover design, his go-to sources of inspiration, his artistic style as a film genre, and more!
1. What is the Jason Raish origin story?
I was born in Seoul, South Korea, and came to western New York state at the age of 3 where I grew up on 50 acres, a lot of it forested. My brother and I were the only non-white kids around the vast rural area so we didn’t exactly have the best time, but it wasn’t the worst either. I promptly got out of small town NY and studied fine arts at SUNY Albany for two years, then studied abroad at Yonsei University for a year in Seoul, then had to start over and do four years of illustration at The Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan (where I now teach one illustration class per semester). I always liked drawing as a kid, and up until senior year of high school I was going to study biology like my mom but found I had drawing talent so I went for the arts. I can’t imagine doing anything else now.
2. Do you recall the first time you saw WALL-E? What was your reaction?
WALL-E came out on June 27, 2008, and I moved to Beijing before the Olympics on June 1, so of course I saw WALL-E on a pirated DVD and was moved like everyone else. As an artist you marvel at the technical achievement, the character, and environment design. The storytelling too, and how it was a silent film for the first part was really nice.
3. WALL-E is the first Disney/Pixar release from the Criterion Collection. How did knowing that inform your artistic decisions?
I didn’t know this at the time and thought they must be working on other ones as well, but I read that Andrew Stanton specifically asked for a Criterion release. So really just the knowledge that this was a prestigious Criterion release and that Andrew Stanton was approving everything and even sketching over my sketches and making amazing improvements—that was enough for me to give it my all. The creative director Eric Skillman at Criterion is the best in the business because his ideas are so good, and his feedback is thoughtful and concise. And Andrew Stanton did several draw-overs on top of my sketches that made them so much better. He’s a really smart guy and there’s a reason he’s so successful. They were a dream team to work with.
4. What piece of advice would you give aspiring artists?
Do the work. Not in the sense of digging a hole and filling it back in but do deliberate, thought-out work. Keep experimenting and don’t get too comfortable. Also if you’re an illustrator, that illustration is a commercial art so you do have to come to terms with that and make targeted work with clients in mind while squeezing your artistic joy out of the project as well.
5. What are three films you would love to see get a Criterion release?
Mind Game (2004) by Masaaki Yuasa, Man Jeuk (aka The Sparrow) by Jonnie To, and any number of Pixar films. Onward and Inside Out especially choke me up.
6. Which sci-fi movie do more people need to see?
It’s lame at this point to say but Neon Genesis Evangelion, which was an anime TV show but now has a bunch of mind-blowing movies as well.
“Do the work. Keep experimenting and don’t get too comfortable.”
7. What (or who) are your go-to sources for inspiration?
Japanese woodblock shin hangs ukiyo-e artists like Kawase Hasui, fellow illustrators like Gian Galang, and random photographers I get served on social media and Pinterest. Really Pinterest and social media now serve me so many inspiring things that I’m drowning in inspirational art and photos and animation. Which is sad because, as with music, you just skip to the next song in a list of algorithm-generated playlists of various artists and never really sit with an album. It feels the same for art: you just keep scrolling and get fed a constant stream of disparate art and don’t get to sit with the art or get to be more familiar with the artist.
8. What’s something you own that might be considered trash but you still treasure?
All the souvenirs I collected from my 5+ years of living in Beijing, Tokyo, Barcelona, London, Seoul, and Paris. I have a lot of cloth tiger toys from Beijing and Daruma dolls from Japan collecting dust.
9. You’ve both studied and taught illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology. What makes fashion-specific illustration unique from other fields or industries?
There’s a history of fashion illustration and a look to it that I personally would love to be broken, and for fashion magazines and the industry to take a chance on stuff that isn’t pen and ink and watercolor fashion illustrations. But I think the purely “fashion” is dying and and merging with just “illustration”. I don’t know if the fashion industry will ever return to using illustration over photography for anything other than gimmicks or special projects, but I hope they do. There still are magazines and newspapers that hire me for fashion illustrations so it ain’t dead yet.
“Film is like the combination of all the arts. And when they’re all hitting on all cylinders you leave the theatre or your couch just punching the air with inexplicable joy and life-affirming energy.”
10. If your artistic style were a film genre, what would it be?
I don’t know, maybe neo-noir? I use a lot of shadows and mystery and faces turned from the viewer I suppose.
11. You’ve lived all over the world. Which city had the best food?
That’s too hard to really say but it’s hard to eat bad food in Tokyo. The bar for food in Japan is high, so you have very bad luck if you end up eating something bad in Japan. But really you can’t compare French cuisine to Japanese to a roast Beijing duck to the soul-nourishing stews of Korea and the Catalan toasts of Barcelona—they’re all amazing in their own ways.
12. If you had to change careers tomorrow, what would you do and why?
Designing book covers seems interesting to me, but I’d have to take a crash course in design and typography. I’ve always said if I could do it all over again I’d go to film school. Film is like the combination of all the arts: music, cinematography, fashion, set design, lighting, etc. And when they’re all hitting on all cylinders you leave the theatre or your couch just punching the air with inexplicable joy and life-affirming energy. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that beautiful thing?
+1. What’s your question for us?
How do you see the future of illustration being used in the film industry?
[Chad:] I’d love to see more illustrated movie posters. Like you, I’m not sure we’ll ever see that become the norm as it used to be, outside of the occasional poster like Confess, Fletch or Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood. There are tons of amazing fan-created illustrated posters online, but I wanna see them in movie theater hallways as well.