Kirk's road to animation was paved with 20 years as an editorial cartoonist.

 

ed·i·to·ri·al  car·toon·ist (noun): a storyteller with strong conceptual design and illustration skills, who distills complex ideas into entertaining pictures that are quickly communicated and easily understood.

 

an·i·ma·tor (noun): see editorial cartoonist (and add wiggling).

 

Kirk was an award-winning staff political cartoonist at the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, and drew a weekly quarter-page political comic for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. His cartoons have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek International, on the CBS Evening News, and in hundreds of other publications worldwide.