Blog Assignment #5: A Statement, of Sorts.

When I was a child, I watched far, far too many Saturday morning cartoons for my own good. My impressionable mind’s eye was warped beyond the point of repair, where even today I recall memories not as they were, but in a stylized, “cartoony” sort of way: people look more like Disney characters than real human beings, animals suddenly take on exaggerated humanoid qualities, and colors appear more vividly than those in a child’s fingerpainting. In the present, if I let my eyes relax just a little than I can easily see an animated world filled with individuals brimming with untold stories. My works aren’t just funny stories set in an imaginary place; rather, they are how I see and process the world I live in.

As an urban city-dweller of New York and Los Angeles, my personal world is filled with people both known to me and those who I have never seen before. Instead of strangers to be avoided, those people sitting around me in the library—or the bus stop, or the restaurant—are characters in an animated film come to life. In both of my animated shorts, the settings are public spaces: a subway station and a coffee shop. In these spaces are individuals distinguishable enough to step forward and take over the spotlight from the main characters…but most of them are content to stay in the background and live their own lives outside the confines of my animated short.

Yet just because they can live out of frame doesn’t mean they don’t want to show up at least once in my animations. To let them is a long, masochistic process that at alternate times leaves me lovingly sketching simple motion and banging my head against the keyboard. First, they appear all over my sketchbook, waiting for their flight to arrive or reading a book on the subway, quickly etched with a .5 mechanical pencil. Then they are broken down into shapes and their greatest visible attributes are exaggerated. Several hours and 3 bottles of Coca-Cola later, they have walked three steps across the screen. It’s painful, but when the animation is finished, it’s amazing: I’ve created entire lives exactly how I see them in my head. The people on the screen are now different from the ones I’ve observed in reality, and I can control what happens to them and how they behave. And when they do interact with the funny characters and situations I did, in fact, make up, the entire creation becomes something both real and imaginary like the images inside my head; images that I can now share with others, who can enjoy them just as much as I have.

Blog Assignment #3: PostSecret @ USC

Everybody has a secret of some kind. It could be a silenced confession to a loved one, a quiet affirmation about life, a hidden range of fears or just an admittance that yes, you do still sleep with your teddy bear at night—we keep secrets in order to protect ourselves. We as humans purposefully withhold information from others so we can just keep to the status quo or guard against ridicule and condemnation from others. Sometimes, we even keep those secrets from ourselves, afraid of what might come to the surface if we really face what we keep deep inside of us.



When Frank Warren started the PostSecret art project in 2004, he decided to explore the relationships between ordinary people and the secrets each of them carried. Two weeks ago, when I went to the PostSecret@USC event hosted at Bovard, he explained how he started off the project by just walking around his town handing out postcards to total strangers. One side was completely blank while on the other, Warren laid out the instructions for the project. They were simple: the blank side of the postcard was a canvas for the participant to divulge a secret of theirs in some kind of creative manner. After they were finished, they could send the card back to Warren and share their secret. There were no restrictions on what the secret could be, as long as it was true and the artist had never told anyone else about it. When Warren received the postcards, he would put them up on the PostSecret blog. Then the project started to grow, and several years later, thousands of secrets have been sent to the mailbox in Germantown, Maryland. The project has grown beyond the Internet; four books of secrets have been published, and the band The All-American Rejects used postcards sent in to PostSecret as the backdrop in their music video for the single “Dirty Little Secret.” In addition, the site has raised money for Hopeline: the National Suicide Prevention Hotline and links to other wellness groups.



When I went to the event at Bovard, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had been checking the PostSecret blog every week for about a year or two, and though I liked the site, I knew it had its problems. For one thing, after a while, the secrets start to become repetitive. Every so often, there is one really inspiring or funny card that I really like or identify with, but the majority of them run together in my mind with nothing really standing out. Another problem I found with the site can best be described by a conversation I once had with a friend. Talking with him one day in class while simultaneously surfing the Internet on my laptop, I revealed that I was a PostSecret fan. My friend recoiled in disgust, stating that he hated the site because it was only a bunch of whiny emo kids seeking attention to validate their existence. He then pointed me in the direction of lolsecretz, a parody site that emphasizes this particular theory through the use of cats and poor grammar. While I personally don’t feel this way, as evidenced by the fact that I still frequent the blog every so often, sometimes the cards do have a certain quality that makes me want to say, “Jesus, get over yourself,” especially if I’m in a bad mood. However, then I remember it’s less about the people who see the cards and more about the individuals sending them in, the cathartic effect of letting go of these secrets to someone, even if it is an anonymous blog.




Warren talked about this at PostSecret@USC, how releasing the things we keep inside to the world at large eventually sets us free. The event was actually a very pleasant and personable one, simply a sit-down talk with Frank Warren about the origins of the project, some cards that for one reason or another couldn’t go in the books, and, the highlight of the evening, a town-hall type discussion and confession of secrets. This was the only part of the night in my opinion that reminded me of the above problems I have with the site, mostly because it felt like an AA meeting (“Hi, my name is Bob, and I’m an alcoholic.” “Thank you for sharing that with us, Bob.”), but that was to be expected. However, I do have to give credit to the people who went up to the microphone credit for telling their secrets in front of hundreds of people, from the girl who admitted she has only had one boyfriend because he abused her to the guy who gets annoyed at his iTunes for recording the number of times a song has played as being indicative of the songs he likes most (even if it’s just on shuffle). And even though I have my issues with the PostSecret project, I know I’m still going to check in every week for new secrets. Maybe I’ll even send in a couple of my own.

Blog Assignment #1: Andreas Deja

Animation itself is, by definition, a collaborative effort. On a full-length feature, the number of people working on the film can number in the hundreds in various capacities such as lead animators, storyboard artists, inbetweeners, and background artists. However, even in such a situation where absolutely everyone has a role to play, some artists stand out. Even though they may not be famous outside of the animation industry, within it, they are giants.

One such artist is Andreas Deja, a character animator at the Walt Disney Animation Studios. Since 1980, he has worked on many different animated films at the studio in different capacities.

However, what Deja is most famous for is as supervising animator for some of Disney’s best villains, namely Gaston from 1991’s Beauty and the Beast, Jafar from 1992’s Aladdin, and Scar from 1994’s The Lion King. These three films, along with 1989’s The Little Mermaid, are considered by many to be the “neo-classics” of the Disney canon. There are many factors that led to this label, but one of them has to be Deja’s portrayals of that most important of characters, the villain. For who is it but the villain that helps create the central conflict of the film?

What makes Deja’s villains stand out from other famous animated evil-doers is his energetic, realistic depictions of the character. While the story department creates the character itself, it is up to the lead animator to interpret and “act” out it’s movements and expressions. Deja’s portrayals are so good because he delves inside the character’s mind, and brings what reads flat on a script to life. On paper, Gaston is an obnoxious, boorish, arrogant hunter who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Through Deja’s pencil, the audience sees the strut he uses to walk through town, the constant preening to reassure himself of his handsomeness, and the malicious grin as he prepares to club the Beast over the head. Jafar is another character that simply seems like a power-hungry wizard on paper, but it’s only with Deja’s characterization that the audience realizes that Jafar is, in fact, crazy.

As for Scar… there is literally an entire generation traumatized by the death of Mufasa at the paws of his ruthless brother. Although the character was originally supposed to be more of a brawny tough guy, Deja slimmed the character down and made him more of a fawning, oily character who was patiently waiting for his chance, similar to the character of Iago from Shakespeare’s Othello. One of the more interesting facets that Deja put into the character was his portrayal of Scar’s face, which was modeled after the lion’s voice actor, Jeremy Irons. By using the expressions that Irons himself used while acting, Deja linked the dialogue and the art together in order to form a realistic character. Well, as realistic as a talking lion could be.

One great regret in regards to Deja is that very little of the world will ever see what was supposed to be another great villain. Disney’s Kingdom of the Sun was supposed to be a dark, epic piece set in an ancient Incan empire, similar in scope and scale to The Lion King. Deja was the lead animator for Yzma, the evil sorceress who planned to plunge the world into darkness in order to hide her disappearing beauty. However, the production was very troubled, leading to essentially two directors working on two very different films—one comedic, one dark. Eventually, the studio approved the comedic version, which became The Emperor’s New Groove.
Deja, disgusted with the direction of the film, where his vain, villainous sorceress became a humorous, crazed mad scientist, left the production. (Image: one of very few sketches of the original Yzma.)

Villains, though Deja’s specialty, has not been the only thing he’s done at Disney. Other characters he has worked on as the supervising animator include Roger Rabbit (1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit?), Adult Hercules (1997’s Hercules), and Lilo (2002’s Lilo and Stitch). He has even worked on the big cheese himself, Mickey Mouse, in segments for Fantasia 2000 and 1995’s short Runaway Brain.



In addition to being an amazing character animator, Deja is also an authority on Disney history, having visited and talked with Disney’s Nine Old Men on numerous occasions over the past thirty years. In an industry that is constantly focused on the next big thing, the next shiny new toy, it’s interesting to find someone so interested in the past and who has come before him. (That Dr. Frankenollie in the above video? Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston of course!)

There’s a saying in animation, that animators are actually just shy actors with pencils. What fascinates me the most about Andreas Deja is just the quality of his “acting,” how he manages to so effectively characterize and bring to life these totally imaginary yet realistic figures through animation. It's that creation that makes us believe in the films, and in the end, makes us care about what happens to these characters... even if they do suffer the standard "Disney villain falling death."