Late last month, digital artists gathered from around the globe for the third edition of Montreal's ADAPT (Advanced Digital Art Production Techniques) conference. The show moved its venue this year to the Pepsi Forum, former home of Canada's hockey greats, the Montreal Canadians, and held its seminars, master classes and workshops in the renovated site's multiple theaters.
Andreas Deja of Walt Disney Animation Studios delivered the keynote address, and recounted that he was just 11 years old and living in Germany when he saw his first animated film -- The Jungle Book. "Suddenly, my life had a mission," Deja said.
Deja was successful in his mission to animate for Disney. However, by 1980, the "Nine Old Men
" of Disney had retired and Deja arrived at Disney too late to work with them. Still, that did not stop Deja from contacting his idols. "I made a nuisance of myself. I made friends, and I picked people's brains," he stressed. "When the credits roll, you would see the same group of names over and over. I wanted to find out what made them tick."
Deja went on to demonstrate what made such animators as Frank Thomas, Fred Moore, Ollie Johnston, Marc Davis, Eric Larsen and Milt Kahl so exceptional. He cited some of their inspirational sayings, including:
Don't animate drawings, animate feelings!
-- Ollie Johnston
I don't actually draw that well. I have to work like hell to make a drawing look good.
-- Milt Kahl
I think Walt's greatest achievement was having us working together on good films without killing one another!
-- Marc Davis
Deja himself has worked on numerous hit Disney films, including Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, The Beauty and the Beast,
Aladdin, The Lion King, Hercules and Lilo & Stitch.
Deja recently animated Goofy for the short film, How to Hook Up Your Home Theater. He is currently working on the upcoming feature The Princess and the Frog, which marks Walt Disney Animation Studio's return to hand-drawn animation. Judging by the photo in the program, Deja is supervising Mama Odie, the voodoo fairy godmother.
In discussing his approach, Deja commented, "Things need to be thoroughly analyzed. Explore all the possibilities of what you are going to do."
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| Andreas Deja of Walt Disney Animation Studios. |
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Afterward, Deja spoke to VFXWorld: "We're all thrilled that Disney will now be involved in all kinds of animation, mostly CG but also hand-drawn and eventually stop motion [with Tim Burton's Frankenweenie], so we're doing it all," he said. "And this is great that Disney is getting back to hand-drawn animation."
Deja added, however, that they will not be going paperless on The Princess and the Frog, which was a partial experiment on the Goofy short. And although the studio is coming up with a new pipeline, Deja said his job remains the same. "I still work at my desk with pencil and paper and animate, and we have assistants who do the rough in-betweens and we scan our drawings but the end result is still the same."
Deja added that the former notion of competing with CG by making hand-drawn characters look a little more like CG has been abandoned. "I always thought that maybe we should distinguish ourselves to go back to what 2D is good at, which is focusing on what the line can do rather than volume, which is a CG kind of thing. So we are doing less extravagant Treasure Planet kind of treatments. You have to create a world but [we're doing it more simply]. What we're trying to do with Princess and the Frog is hook up with things that the old guys did earlier. It's not going to be graphic…"
As for John Lasseter's influence, Deja said he wanted to aim for the Disney sculptural and dimensional look of the '50s. "He quoted all those things that were non graphic, which means go easy on the straight lines and have one volume flow into the other -- an organic feel to the drawing. Of course, John is involved in story, but also performance and the look of the characters: obviously not on a daily basis, but there are pivotal moments when we meet with John and talk about that. What is really great is that we look at dailies as a group effort and everybody fires off ideas. This is what Pixar does and what Walt used to do. It has really been helpful."
Speaking of Disney classics, Deja has been serving as an advisor on the mastering of the catalog for Blu-ray, beginning with this week's release of Sleeping Beauty, to be followed by Pinocchio, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the spring and fall of 2009 and Fantasia in 2010. "My jaw dropped when I first looked at the [Sleeping Beauty] Blu-ray on my plasma," Deja enthused. "It's almost like removing a filter between you and the film is how I see it. It is a whole new experience… somehow the art is more exposed: the background art and then the character art, because of the clarity and the pristine quality."