Once upon a time, there was a little kid who loved to watch cartoons….

Once upon a time, there was a little kid who loved to watch cartoons….

This story might sound familiar to you, or even like you are living it right now.  But this story started about 35 years ago.  I was in middle school and I liked to draw.  I was pretty good at it too, at least that’s what many people told me.  It was around the time in a kid’s life when people start to ask “what do you want to be when you grow up” and the kid must think about it a little more seriously.  You can’t just say ‘professional baseball player’ and leave it there.  You need a plan, something that seems legitimate like a college to go to and proof that people can do this and survive for real.  Around this time, my family embarked on a vacation/road trip that included such timeless sights as the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Hoover Dam and to cap it all off the piéce de résistance...Disneyland.  I was already enamored with cartoons in general, but somehow on this trip it made it seem all the more real.  This was California, where the cartoons I loved had been created, by real people!  My mother called up the Walt Disney Feature Animation Company and asked how her son could become an animator.  They told her for me to work on drawings of humans and animals in motion, and for me to learn more about California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), a college Walt Disney himself had helped create to promote all the arts, but one department specifically was created to train animators.  It was the only accredited college in the United States at the time that had an Animation Department.  Now I suddenly had the answer to that ever-present question.  “When I grow up, I’m going to be a Disney Animator.”  It wasn’t just a pipe dream, “Look!  This is where I’m going to go to college.”  I remember sitting with my high school guidance counselor the first time and telling him this very thing.  He looked up the college, realized I wasn’t kidding, and said “Well, it seems like you have a plan.”

I had loved watching cartoons and drawing them since I could remember, but I had no formal art training.  As I got toward the end of my high school career, I took an art class at my public high school, but it wasn’t enough.  The portfolio that I submitted to CalArts was rejected.  I had to get much more serious about my art.  Whatever natural talent I had wasn’t going to be enough, it was now time to work!  And not just work, but to embrace a humility that I wasn’t comfortable with.  If I was going to improve, it would be because I listened to the people and voices that gave me critique, not just encouragement.  In fact, I had been living on an ‘encouragement-only’ diet about my work.  It felt good to have people tell me they thought my art was great, but it didn’t help develop my skill.  And drawing only when I felt like it didn’t help either.  I needed to be disciplined in my approach.  I spent the next 2 years at the University of North Texas studying fine art.  I had one great professor who wouldn’t grade my work because he knew I hadn’t spent enough time on it and I could do better.  He was right.  I applied myself over the next two weeks and I surprised myself with the project I produced. 

I had applied to CalArts after my Freshman year at college and was rejected again, but not wanting to give up, I applied a third time after my Sophomore year and was finally accepted!  Packing everything I could fit into two suitcases I set off for California.  The work and the humility increased as now I was studying among the very best artists I had ever met.  But I realized that my determination to succeed was my greatest advantage.  Animation and drawing are skills that can be practiced and improved with time.  As long as the artist is determined. 

Very soon after I got my first job drawing backgrounds for the second season of The Simpsons and one job led to another until I was able to reach my childhood goal and became a Disney Animator in the late 1990’s.  It wasn’t easy and there were many bumps in the road, but it certainly was worth it.  I try to pass on the lessons I learned both to my own kids and to my students.  If it worked for me, it can work for you.  Hard work, practice, humility.  None of these are very exciting at the beginning of the journey and many times they are downright unpleasant.  But with consistency, over time, they transformed the little kid who liked to watch cartoons into the grown up ‘kid’ who got to make them.