Animator Andreas Deja on Snow White - Interview
Disney Artist Worked on Lilo and Stitch, Princess and the Frog
Oct 6, 2009
Andreas Deja is one of Disney's modern master animators. The Gdansk-born artist got an inauspicious start on 1985's The Black Cauldron, Disney's worst received animated film. But, by 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit, he was a supervising animator, responsible for designing the look of such modern-day characters as Jafar from Aladdin, Scar from The Lion King and Lilo from Lilo and Stitch.
A survivor of the infamous 'Tom Meeting' of 2002 – where the bulk of Disney animation department were pink-slipped – he continued to work on such fare as 2004's Home on the Range and 2007's Goofy Short 'How to Hook Up Your Home Theatre.' He's currently supervising the character of Mama Odie in the upcoming The Princess and the Frog.
In this interview, he talks about his relationship with Snow White, its artistic influences, and shares his favourite details from the film.
S101: As an animator, what does Snow White mean to you?
Deja: “This was the first, full-length animated feature film and it has that enthusiasm of being the first, in terms of the artists’ contributions all over it. I see it in just about every frame of the film. There’s the sense of having to prove yourself, doing something you’ve never done before, seeing it as a tremendous challenge and rising up to it. All that is in there, and I look at that film with so much respect.
“I think the challenge for any animator is not do what they did, but to engage yourself, to give that much as an artist.”
S101: You view an animated film very differently from your typical moviegoer. What in the film would you’d notice and want to point out to us regular folks?
“When I watch the film, I always like to get to where Snow White meets the dwarves. It’s beautifully animated: she’s sitting on the bed, frightened of them at first, and they introduce themselves. She’s guessing who they are because she knows their names already. It starts out with that beautiful scene where they’re all hiding, and their noses pop over the edge of the bed.
“That idea was from animator Ward Kimball. Walt Disney encouraged anybody in the studio to come up with gags to make the movie funnier, and he paid them money for these gags. They got $30 if the gag made it into the film. So it was Ward Kimball’s idea to have those noses pop in. There’s this beautiful music that goes with it, and it really sets up who they are, and how she feels about each of them. She even likes Grumpy, even though she’s mocking him a little bit.
“It is a character-rich sequence.”
S101: As a professional animator, what little bits of that scene stand out to you now?
“When you look at the lineup of the 7 dwarves, they look pretty similar to each other. There are some adjustments in the size of the cheeks, and one nose might be bigger than the other, Dopey’s the only one who doesn’t have a beard, there’s not that much difference from one to the other. But once they act, you know exactly who they are because they act according to who they are, and why they’re called that way. Dopey’s just a little funny; he doesn’t know how to talk, and Happy said, ‘He never tried.’
“After that sequence, the audience really knows who these guys are individually.”
S101: What about the backgrounds? They have a very painterly quality: what can you tell us about those?
“In those days, they were done with watercolour, which is the most difficult thing to paint because you can’t go in and change after it’s dried. Wash, tempura or even oil: days or weeks later, you can say, ‘No, I want that tree over here.’ You can’t do that with watercolour; it all has to be done while it’s wet. Of course they used watercolour in the Silly Symphonies, but Snow White was much more elaborate, it was supposed to look like children’s book illustrations come to life, with these beautiful layers of coloured water.
“It’s interesting to study the original watercolours because, when you look at the edge of the painting, that’s where it tells you how they worked, which layer came first. First the light colours, then the medium tones and the darker tones.
“One of the master background painters was Maurice Noble, who really headed up a lot of the background work on this film. Some of us actually talked with him years later, when we worked on Lilo and Stitch. We also wanted to do that film in watercolour, and it was a lost artform.
“So we found Maurice Noble and he gave us some tips about the type of paper to use and how you put on the layers. So a lot of that knowledge that went into Snow White also made its way into Lilo and Stitch years later.”
S101: In terms of style, what painters do you think had a real influence on the look of Snow White?
“He had some people in-house who had done book illustrations. Walt didn’t get (legendary children's book illustrator) Arthur Rackham, but he was an influence in terms of the palette and tone of the movie. I know they had all his books and prints at the studio.
"There was also an artist called Gustaf Tenggren who had done book illustrations before coming to work at Disney, and he did a lot of inspirational drawings that gave colour cues as well as character setups. He really set up the whole tone and the art direction of the movie: a really fine painter who did book illustrations and fine paintings before and after working at Disney. He was very important for the look of Snow White.”
(In Part #2 of this interview, Andreas Deja talks about animating humans, shares some details about The Princess and the Frog, and what makes a successful animated film.)
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