A Minute with Andreas Deja
AD: It helps to be crazy about that medium. Some artists say, oh, this is a cool thing to get into, drawings and animation, but I think that passion would be good. I remember when I was in art school in Germany and I told my art teacher that I wanted to become an animator. He just looked at me and said, "Really. Well, you'll only succeed if animation is the most important thing in your life." And I got really scared. Big words. And I didn't realize that, of course, it was the most important thing, and still is! But when you hear somebody say that, it scares you, because you haven't thought about it that way. And it is an all-involving life style. You study things, basically you even plan your hobbies around animation, whether it's going to the zoo, or going to the museum, or watching a movie with an animator's point of view, watching the acting. There's an animation lifestyle. My friend told me, you're interested in animation, like that's all there is. And I was thinking about it - you have to be interested in so many things - music and dance, and performance, acting, drawing and painting - so how can you say you're only into one thing as an animator? You need to be interested in so many things.
Art Babbitt said in one of the Richard Williams lectures that he gave in the 70's that an animator's interest should cover all kinds of graphic styles. He should know about Picasso, and about fine art, and be interested in theater, and dancing and classical ballet, and acting, and all of those things. And it's true. My take on it was always, "Ok, what I've got to do now is draw animals, not because I necessarily have an animal assignment right now, but if I wait until I get a lion to animate and then do my studies, I won't have much time to learn." So I better learn all about animals now, as I have time on weekends. And who knows, if I have to draw a chipmunk or a pelican or a rhino, it doesn't matter. You can't wait for your assignment to do some studying. Do it now. You have already a reservoir of observation to draw from.
JF: Who are some artists that inspire you specifically?
AD:
Well, outside of Disney, Heinrich Kley - I discovered him sort of late when I was a student. He draws things that look crazy or implausible - like a centaur - in a way that would still exist in real life. If they were to move in real life, that's what it would look like. And then just classic artists from the Renaissance and past, the Baroque movement when the artists decided to twist the figure and give it movement. All the way up to Picasso. And I shared it with Milt Kahl - he was a huge Picasso fan, and even Milt would say, "I could never think his way." Some of his works were mind-boggling.
JF:
Do you have any general tips that you find yourself telling animators?
AD: When animating, of course we learn as much about the model as possible, but then you cannot be bogged down by it and just think about how to draw [the character] when you're animating, you have to think about what's going on in the scene, what's the character feeling. You have to think about the acting before the use of the drawing - and to draw loose, not to draw tight. If you draw too tight, you think about the drawing too much, and you can't really internalize.
JF:
If you were on a desert island with one film, what film would it be?
AD: If it were animated, it would probably be Jungle Book. That was the first one that I ever saw as a kid. There's something still really magical to me. It takes me back to my childhood and my dreams of being an animator, and all of it comes back when I watch that movie. And it's a great movie, anyway.