Disney animated movies hold a special place in many of our hearts. They inspire hope, magic, and help us believe that our dreams are possible. But these movies would be nothing without the artists who had a hand in creating them. One such artist is renowned Disney animator Andreas Deja. You may not know his name, but you most certainly know his characters. Deja is responsible for breathing life into some of Disney’s most iconic classic villains. He has animated characters such as Scar, Gaston, Jafar, King Triton, Mama Odie, and Lilo from Lilo and Stitch. Having moved away from his days at Disney, Deja now celebrates his first independent short film, Mushka. Nerdist had the pleasure of speaking with Deja about the film, his career journey, and the beauty of 2D animation.
Deja animated for Disney for more than 30 years. He immigrated from Germany in 1980 after finishing school. He moved to California to join the Walt Disney Studios training program and follow his dreams of becoming a Disney animator. The animator stayed with the company until 2011 to pursue independent projects instead. Deja is looked up to for his work, having brought to life several iconic characters over the years. He is a Winsor McCay Award recipient, having been recognized for his accomplishments in animation in 2007.
Nerdist: You’ve had a hand in creating countless iconic characters and villains for Disney. Do you have any favorite characters or sequences that you’ve done?
Andreas Deja: I don’t, and I think most animators will give you that answer. They were all special, and they were all important for different reasons. There are highlights. I loved to work on Scar because I worked with Jeremy Irons, who gave this amazing voice performance. Another example would be Lilo from Lilo and Stitch. I really wanted to do Lilo and not Stitch because I hadn’t done a character like Lilo. So I adored working on that character as well.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a very important film for me. Aside the fact that it was a mix of live action and animation, the animation needed to be very soft and within the style of the early Hollywood and Disney animation. We call it very squash and stretch, meaning non-realistic. When you do loose animation like that for a whole year, it changes you as an animator because you get all the stiffness out of your animation that way. It really loosened me up and helped me to produce better, more fluid animation.
What is it that got you into animation in the first place? Is it something you always knew you wanted to do, or is there something that sparked interest that for you?
Well, I always liked drawing. I can remember as far back as kindergarten that I drew comic characters, from Disney comics mostly. I saw my first Disney animated film when I was about 10 or 11—the original Jungle Book—and that was a life changer.
The whole idea of me leaving my family and friends to go to America and draw cartoons for Walt Disney, that was just not going to happen. Everybody tells you so. But l sent a letter to Disney Studios at the age of 12 or 13, and asked, “What can I do now in Germany to sometime work for you in the future?” They wrote back, and I still have that letter. They told me to draw how I see the world. Draw real things and draw them often. I took that advice really seriously and did that for years to come.
“Draw real things and draw them often.“
Andreas Deja, Disney animator
So many of the characters that you’ve worked on have meant a great deal to people across generations. What does that mean to you as an artist to have had that lasting impact on so many people?
It happened lately that I could reflect on my career and think, “did all this really happen?” When everybody else around you keeps saying that something like that is just not going to happen, you sort of believe it. But you also think, “Well, what if it can?” When people still come up to me and say that my characters were a part of their childhood, that almost brings tears to my eyes. I didn’t expect that the movies my generation did would have this long life. We were just concerned with doing a job as good as we possibly could. It’s an amazing feeling to find out that work still matters to people.
After gushing about classic Disney and career highlights for about ten minutes, the conversation naturally shifted to Andreas Deja’s short film, Mushka. Mushka tells the heartwarming story of a young girl who befriends an orphaned Siberian Tiger in Russia. The short film is completely hand-drawn and is about half an hour long. Deja worked on the project for roughly eight years.
I’m glad you brought up Mushka. You mentioned that it took you years to create because you drew it completely by hand. Even with a lot of animation nowadays having shifted to CG animation, why is taking something frame by frame like that a process that continues to be important to you?
It’s what I was used to. It was also the kind of filmmaking that got me to Disney. I fell head over heels with the work of Walt Disney and his animators. It was everything to me. It was my childhood and beyond. I cannot leave that alone yet. I don’t think I ever will.
When Disney said, “We aren’t going to do the hand drawn films anymore, we are going to shift to CG,” I thought, “Well, I’m not ready to do that.” I have things to express with drawings and stories to tell, so maybe I’ll put on a different hat. Maybe I’ll do my own project and I’ll be a director, producer, animator, and all of those hats. It just turned into this big adventure, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I’m really proud of it and I’m glad it’s out now for everybody to watch.
Mushka was your directorial debut as well, correct?
It was, and I was perfectly happy being an animator. You might’ve heard this, that people call animators actors with a pencil. We really are the actors of those specific characters. And as an actor, you’re being given an outline or storyboard, so we know what’s happening with our character. Being on my own after having done this for 30 years, I had to create my own project because nobody was giving me those scenes of work. I’ll be honest with you, it was scary at first.
Was there anything specific that sparked the inspiration for why you wanted Mushka to be a tiger? Why that storyline?
I love drawing animals, and that was a big factor why I chose an animal/human story. I have some experience studying big cats from The Lion King, but I thought a tiger would be cool with stripes. I thought, okay, why don’t I pair a tiger with a little innocent girl? There could be some dynamics that I could really build a story around.
One thing I liked is how you drew Mushka with the little tuft of hair that makes an “M.” I thought that was a very cute detail.
I hope that didn’t escape most people; It was sort of a hint. That’s basically how she gets the idea to call him Mushka, which translates back to sweetheart. I wanted to show that with the “M” on his forehead.
Are there other certain stylistic choices that you try to incorporate, especially when it comes to Disney villains, in order to evoke a certain reaction with the audience?
When I come onto a movie like Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin, I’m not the first artist to work on that character. Writers and concept artists have already done some rough graphic concepts, so by the time I get onto the movie and get started, I already have something to read or something to look at. I can kind of pick and choose and say, “Well, I like this. I don’t like that.”
Sometimes even a voice has been chosen. The voice gives you so much. My job is to create animation and patterns of acting that work so that the audience really believes that voice is coming out of the mouth you just drew. It has to work. Many people don’t know this. They think the voice actors come in afterwards, but it’s actually the other way around.
When you’re listening to those voice tracks and animating a character, how much does the character evolve throughout that process?
It’s actually everything. In some cases, it went as far as the character looking like the actor. In the case of Scar, there would’ve been so many different ways to configure his face and his look. But I saw something in Jeremy Irons when I watched some of the movies he had done prior to The Lion King. There was just something in his face that was fascinating. I’m going to try and keep the dark circles under his eyes and certain mouth configurations that are unique to him. In the end, it almost became a caricature of Jeremy Irons.
We did some final voice work with him, and I had already animated the sequence where Scar is setting up Simba before the stampede on the Rock. I showed it to Jeremy Irons, and he looked at the monitor and says, “Oh my gosh, he looks like me!” and he was toucking his face. I said, “I hope that’s okay, because that was intentional.”
“Have a bit of your own soul in it.”
Andreas Deja, Disney animator
Nerdist: If you could share a message to the next generation of animators who look up to you, what would that be?
Don’t be shy. “Follow your dream” is such a cliche, but it’s a real thing. If you have ambitions, if you have a passion for something, reach for the stars and reach out. Don’t wait by the phone or by your computer to be invited. Reach out to professionals that can give you advice and get informed. Educate yourself about what the industry is doing, and then work hard on your craft. If people tell you that you’re so talented, that might be true, but that’s not enough. You have to polish your craft and learn how to personally express yourself. That’s really important. Have a bit of your own soul in it. That’s a really important step.
Now that Mushka is finished and out to the public, what’s next for the renowned animator? He teases that there might be a few upcoming projects in the pipeline, including another animated short film. He wants to continue with hand drawn animation. In addition, Deja is working on a feature documentary film about Wolfgang Reitherman and a book about animator Milt Kahl. He plans to begin working on his second short film this fall.
You can watch Andreas Deja’s first animated short film, Mushka, on Prime Video.
The post Disney Animator Andreas Deja on MUSHKA and the Beauty of 2D Animation appeared first on Nerdist.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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