Disney's Andreas Deja on Animation - Interview
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Coming to Blu-Ray October 6th.
Oct 6, 2009
As one of the most respected animators working today, Andreas Deja's passion for animated film knows no bounds. Disney's first animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs –coming out on Blu-Ray October 6th (look for an upcoming review) – not only helped inspire him to make animation his life's work, but he has carried specific lessons from that film into his work on modern animation such as Lilo and Stitch, The Lion King and the upcoming The Princess and the Frog.
In Part #1 of this interview, Deja talked about his favourite sequence from the film, and who influenced the art of Snow White. In this installment, he discusses animating humans, working on The Princess and the Frog, and how Snow White holds up today.
S101: One of the things that really struck me was the difference in animation between the dwarves and animals against the human characters. They really reminded me of Max Fleischer’s work.
Deja: “That’s right. There's a real challenge in animating humans convincingly without making them look like rubber hose-type characters. Especially Snow White: you’re really supposed to feel for her, how do you make her look convincing and realistic?
“Walt Disney put together a short before Snow White in order to test his animators’ ability to draw human figures: (1934’s) ‘The Goddess of Spring.’ It had this female character who was interacting with nature and animals. She was animated out of the artist’s head without any reference, and it really failed.
“That’s when they had the idea of bringing in an actress or dancer to act some of these scenes out and use that as a reference. So they found a young dancer named Marge Champion and she not only did the dances, but also the acting scenes. She did them onto 16 mm film on a little soundstage behind the Hyperion Studio and they used that as reference. That’s how they got the believability and the performance of the live actor that you can translate into animation.
“Then the animator has to decide which movements matter to the sequence, and show the character’s personality. So they had reference actors for Snow White, the Prince, the Queen and even the Witch. They even had a male actor to play the evil Witch. This went on into Cinderella and into Pocahontas. We still even do this now: whenever the film calls for realistic humans, we need to have models to help us with it.”
S101: Are you using live-action models for The Princess and the Frog? I know you’re working on that film.
“We do. I think we handle our humans a little bit looser than on Snow White, which gives them a more cartoon-y feeling. But that’s just the style of the movie. I’m supervising this eccentric fairy godmother-type called Mama Odie: we have a big gospel-type number and we had a dancer come through and choreograph some of the steps and it was enormously helpful to me.
“I still animated – I didn’t copy what she did – but the way she stepped, and moved her neck and her head, it was fascinating to me. I wouldn’t have thought of those things because I am not a dancer.
“That’s what it means to have an actor come through and give you inspiration for your animation.”
S101: In Princess and the Frog, do you use the actual actor – like Anika Noni Rose – for the movements, or do you get somebody else?
“The voice is always recorded first. Then maybe another actor, actress or dancer would come in and listen to the voice. But maybe because this actor or actress is more physical, they would act out the scene according to the tone of the voice. So the animator gets a hold of both the voice and the live-action footage. Then it’s the animator’s turn to interpret all that graphically on the screen.”
S101: How do you feel Snow White holds up today? How do you feel the state-of-the-art has moved on?
“As far as Snow White is concerned, everything still works. There’s nothing that doesn’t work in that movie. The fact that technology has changed and, in many ways has made things easier and less expensive, it doesn’t take away from Snow White. (starts laughing) It refuses to age! It doesn’t look old-fashioned. There’s a genuine quality to her that transcends decades and fashions.
“It’s aged really, really well and that’s because the artists who worked on this movie poured so much dedication and love into what they were doing: that just shows in the movie, and that aspect makes it ageless. What makes a movie great is how much you put into it, how much you have to say. Not the latest technology.
“Those animators didn’t want to make a movie just to make a lot of money; they wanted to make a beautiful artistic statement in storytelling that they possibly could. And that’s what they did with all the techniques they had available at that time: inventing the multi-plane camera along the way, giving it depth, making the backgrounds more elaborate, working on the personalities in detail like they had never done before. And that's why it's ageless.”
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