How Animators Find Industry Mentors

One question I sometimes get asked by students at Escape Studios is "How Do I Find a Mentor?"  The answer (of course!) is to start with your tutors, and then broaden out from there.  Over the course of a long animation career our Escapees are likely to have many mentors, though very few of these (if any) will be formal mentorship roles; most will be informal, and you might not even realise these people were mentors until many years later.   In my case I have been lucky enough to be mentored by animators such as James Baxter (Road to El Dorado), Andreas Deja (Lion King), Duncan Marjoribanks (Pocahontas) and also Glen Keane, whose notes on planning animation I still refer to today.  But mentorship is, in each and every case, very much what you make of it.

Roger Rabbit Reunion at Disney

Doy, Alex, Nik Ranieri, Ross Anderson, Burny Mattinson, Max Howard, Charles Fleischer, Andreas Deja

Who Framed Roger Rabbit was released in the summer of 1988, making the movie 31 years old this year.  A couple of weeks ago at Disney in Los Angeles we had a brief informal reunion with some the people who worked at the film, hosted in the Rotunda Building by Disney marketing head Howard Green.  Lead animator Andreas Deja was there, as well as Burny Mattinson, officially the longest serving employee of The Walt Disney Company,  Producer Max Howard, Charles Fleischer, the voice of Roger Rabbit, Ross Anderson, who has written the history of the film, animator Nik Ranieri, and me.

Andreas Deja, Lion King and Animal Animation

Andreas Deja and Alex Williams outside the Disney Animation Building

Yesterday at Disney in Los Angeles I met up with Andreas Deja, Disney lead animator and the man responsible for bringing "Scar" to life.

I was lucky enough to work on Andreas' team on Lion King back in 1992, when he took me under his wing and helped train me as a Disney animator.

I got to animate a few memorable shots on Scar, but it was Andreas who designed the character and, working with actor Jeremy Irons, gave him life and personality, creating one Disney's most memorable villains.