For celebrated comic book author—and now filmmaker—Dash Shaw, technical limitations aren’t a “concession,” but a defining trait of the films he aspires to make. “I always thought that that

limited mode was the coolest, like the anime version of independent cinema, where it’s poetic or personal or idiosyncratic,” Shaw says of the style he pursued with his feature debut, the

aptly titled _My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea._ Fusing the styles of two genres—the autobio comic and the boy’s adventure comic—Shaw brought to the screen a unique aesthetic

vision, made possible by scanning original acrylic paintings into a computer. With _My Entire High School_, part of the intent was to produce a “sensory experience,” bringing to bear liquid

FIRST FEATURE? I had done a comic with the same title many years ago, and the premise of that comic was that it combined the two opposing schools of comics when I was a teenager. There were

tons of autobio comics in the ‘90s—that was most of alternative comics, and they were kind of mundane stories. Then, boy’s adventure comics, superhero comics. It was just a very short comic

that smashed those things together. It was this one character who would have the same name as the creator, and it would be their warped perspective in an adventure setting. So, it’s kind of

a parody of autobio comics. When I was making animations, I had very limited means, so this story felt doable. It felt very clear; other story ideas I had felt too complicated. I didn’t

think I would get good actors or money or anything, so I thought that I could feasibly paint all of those backgrounds myself, because they are just school backgrounds or they’re abstract.

The joke of the movie is that as it’s a disaster movie, people stay talking about school things, or acne, or friends. That kind of dissonance and the voice performances would be possible if

it was just recorded by my friends, or non-actors. So, it was the combination of that story, but also trying to do something that could actually be done independently, and have the limited

means become a strength instead of a hindrance. HOW LIMITED WAS THE SET-UP ON THIS FILM? HOW MANY PEOPLE WORKED ON IT? Mostly it was myself and my wife in our kitchen, and other people came

on from alternative comics—friends would paint flashback sequences. But for the most part, it was Jane [Samborski] and I. WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THIS FILM THAT ALLOWED TWO PEOPLE TO BEAR THE

BRUNT OF THE EFFORT? It helps that all of the animation I really love is what I call ‘limited animation’—meaning, it limits the number of drawings. It’s low-budget animation, like the _Speed

Racer_ series, or the original _Astro Boy_ series. I never had aspirations to work in a different mode; I always thought that that limited mode was the coolest, like the anime version of

independent cinema, where it’s poetic or personal or idiosyncratic, based on harnessing limited means. It helps that that was always the goal—I wanted it to look like that. It wasn’t a

concession. But also, the technology makes it very possible. The reason there aren’t a lot of animations that look like this is because when computers arrived that did computer animation,

people thought that they should look like flash animation. But you can still make traditional animation: You just scan it. You make an actual acrylic painting, and you just scan it instead

of drawing it on the computer, or instead of having to photograph it like they used to. It’s traditional animation that’s just composited digitally. A lot of the work goes into making those

actual pieces—the drawings—and that took a long time, but then when you’re writing the script and you’re storyboarding it, you make decisions that make it easier to draw. Like, “Okay, [for]

all of this, the characters won’t change clothes,” so you don’t have to keep track of that. Simple decisions like that, that are similar to decisions that live-action independent filmmakers

have to make to get the project done. BEARING IN MIND THIS NOTION OF LIMITED ANIMATION, WHAT OTHER AESTHETIC CHOICES ARE MOST CENTRAL TO YOUR WORK? I guess I’d describe it as idiosyncratic

animation, or messed-up, damaged cartoons—like, the Ralph Bakshi _Spider-Man_ cartoons, or the _Pokemon_ cartoon that gave kids seizures. There’s a Japanese series called _Devilman_ that was

created by Go Nagai; it’s like a ‘70s TV series. You watch it and you can’t believe that it ever aired. I don’t know: You’d have to watch it. I don’t know what words would pop into your

head, but the words that pop into my head when I watch it are things like ‘brutal’ or ‘extreme.’ WHAT WENT INTO PRODUCING THE UNIQUE STROBOSCOPIC EFFECT THAT IS CENTRAL TO THE FILM’S OPENING

SEQUENCE? The idea was to use all traditional animation, meaning it could have been made before 1990. It’s all paintings, and liquid effects, or liquid light show effects that are famously

tied to the 1960s, and you would see in psychedelic movies. The idea was to use that material, but to not have it feel nostalgic—just to make it feel new or fresh or exciting. It’s all

reinforcing this character’s perspective. I wanted it to be like a sensory experience in the way video art is a sensory experience. It’s like an optical, disorienting effect that mirrors the

state of the character. THERE ARE MOMENTS IN THE FILM WHERE THE VISUALS FEEL TACTILE, ALMOST PHOTOREAL. That comes from seeing those effects in old cartoons, and feeling like they still had

some freshness in them. There’s still some juice there, with using that kind of collage-y placement for fire, water. Those liquid light show effects feel spiritually related to this kind of

animation. Like I was saying before, it’s like: How do you make a little thing powerful? Can just these dots for eyes be emotionally engaging? Can just looking at a scanned Q-Tip be kind of

striking or strange? Those liquid light show effects, a lot of them are just tiny drops of ink in small dishes that are filmed and blown up. When you see what made those huge, strange

effects, it’s this tiny little thing. It’s really beautiful and alchemical and touching. WHAT WAS THE GUIDING PRINCIPLE WHEN IT CAME TO YOUR COLOR PALETTE? I could talk about that for a

really long time, but I guess in this movie, the purpose is to reinforce the heightened state of this character, where things are kind of unmoored from reality. I had drawn a comic for

_Spider-Man_ for Marvel, and something that I love about those older comics is the colors won’t quite be correctly aligned. When you look at an old comic, because they’re printed very

cheaply and they’re often colored very quickly, Spider-Man will have a blue shape on his body to be a shadow, but it’ll be misaligned, so it’ll go outside of the lines of the figure. I

thought, “Well, I’ll just do that more—more extremely unaligned.” Then, it turned into this other element that’s kind of colliding into the line art. When I was a student of comics, in

college, the main comics were either in black and white, or they were very inspired by Chris Ware kind of coloring, where it was very naturalistic. Everyone’s skin was skin-toned, or the sky

was blue. So, it felt like color was this whole open area. It was exciting to feel like, “Oh, there’s this whole other thing that can add meaning to a comic if it was explored.” A lot of

the things in my movie are kind of interpreting or adopting things I was doing in comics into this other medium. ARE YOU A CINEPHILE AT HEART? IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOU’RE TAPPING INTO ALL

KINDS OF CINEMATIC STORYTELLING DEVICES WITH YOUR FIRST FEATURE. Yeah, but I will say that I was very interested in this zone of limited animation, and a lot of it grew out of comics. I feel

like when it’s working, you don’t know that it comes out of comics, just like how storytelling devices used in movies will originate from prose books, but you don’t have to know that when

it’s done well. It just feels exciting or unusual. Like the beginning _Astro Boy_ series—you can just watch them like you watch a Saul Bass title sequence. Saul Bass, before he was a title

designer, he was just a print designer, so he was taking a lot of those things in print graphics and adapting them into animation. [With] split screens, you could point to Brian De Palma.

His first use of it was filming a play, right? _Dionysus in ‘69_. So for him, he was just trying to interpret the experience of a play where everything is in focus, and you can see the

audience and the stage at the same time. He’s trying to think of, “Well, how do I adapt this kind of experience into a film?” So, he reached into using split screens, which then became this

whole thing that he did in these incredible ways throughout his career. I guess the answer is, I wanted it to be a rad movie, and not feel like a motion comic or something. But I didn’t go

to film school, and I can’t talk on the level of independent filmmakers that I’m friends with. _MY ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL_ FEATURES QUITE AN ENSEMBLE OF VOICE ACTORS. HOW DID THE LIKES OF JASON

SCHWARTZMAN AND LENA DUNHAM COME TO BE INVOLVED? Some of them were friends, but I feel like I’d be trying to seem cooler than I am if I said they were my friends. It sounds cliché or

disingenuous, but obviously they were really great, and they are kind of the soul of the cartoon. Everything is very abstract, and so we have this human voice that is coming out of these

drawings, and I was very lucky to get them. It was drawn before they came on, so they were kind of a late addition to this thing, and it was like, “Oh, wow.” For the movie I’m working on

now, I’m hoping to write it more, thinking about using actors’ talents. But I think everyone did a really great job. Everyone who sees the movie always comments on Susan Sarandon’s

performance. I was really nervous, of course, recording with them. IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN SHARE ABOUT YOUR NEXT FILM PROJECT AT THIS POINT? It’s a movie called _Cryptozoo. _It’s about a

zoo that rescues and houses mythological creatures, and it’s a painted movie. It has some live-action elements in it. DO YOU HAVE SOME EXPECTATION OF WHEN THAT WILL BE RELEASED? No, I’m

still working on it. I hope it won’t take me a million years, but I’m still working on it.