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Neal Holman is an art director and producer for Floyd County Productions, the animation studio behind Archer, Unsupervised, Chosen and other works for the FX Networks and Fox. Before joining the production team on the pilot of Archer, Holman's credits include work on the animated series Frisky Dingo and Sealab 2021. The Art of Archer, an illustrated and highly visual guide to everything Archer, was just published by Dey Street Books.
On your nightstand now:
Cochrane: Britannia's Sea Wolf by Donald Thomas
Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross
Sheriff of Babylon by Tom King and Mitch Gerads
Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.
Your top five authors:
Ken Follett, John Banville, George R.R. Martin, Elmore Leonard and Bernard Cornwell.
Book you've faked reading:
Moby-Dick--I've tried. A LOT. It's just not happening. Pretty sure it's about whales though? Or possibly knots?
Book you're an evangelist for:
It changes from year to year, but the last book I really pushed on people was The Martian by Andy Weir. The movie pretty much does that job for me now, so I'm in search of another love.
Book you've bought for the cover:
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. It was well before the HBO series had begun--I think around 2005. I wanted some escapism, a fantasy book to read on a plane. For the first 60 pages or so, I thought I was reading a by-the-numbers sword and sorcery slog. Then, the book took this very young, precocious child and threw him out of a very high window.
My tropes critique fell away shortly thereafter.
Book you hid from your parents:
I don't think I ever actually had to hide a book from them. They are pretty great.
Book that changed your life:
As a kid, I must have read The Hobbit 20 times. The school library had a version with utterly gorgeous Alan Lee illustrations that I can still recall to this day. I was obsessed with it and, later, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Even later, I tried to be obsessed with The Silmarillion, but that was a bit much.
Will Eisner's Comics & Sequential Art changed the way I viewed comic books. Up to that point, they were just superheroes punching each other (and I loooooved them for it). This book was the first real art and writing lesson that stuck with me. I still have it.
Reading Joseph V. Mascelli's The Five C's of Cinematography was my film school. I majored in computer animation at the University of Georgia, but had neglected to take any actual film classes. I think I took volleyball instead, because who needs a film education when you have a killer jump serve, right?
Anyway, during preproduction for Frisky Dingo, I decided to spend every night studying film and animation until I could at least pretend to know what I was doing. Five C's was my foundation.
Favorite line from a book:
"Jackie Brown, at twenty-six, with no expression on his face, said that he could get some guns." --The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany. I first read it in Kay McSpadden's English class in 1997. (Hi, Mrs. McSpadden!) I loved the structure, THE VOICE, the humor mixed with heart-rending sadness. Possibly because of my impressionable age at the time, it was an entirely new experience and one I'm not sure I've had since.
Favorite screenplays:
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by William Goldman
Hard Times by Walter Hill
Raising Arizona by Joel and Ethan Coen
Favorite Archer script:
Episode 605, "Vision Quest." 605 is just perfect Adam Reed, with the cast stuck in an elevator for the entire episode. There are no big chase sequences or fight scenes, just the cast bickering and bickering for 22 minutes. I love it.