Friday night in Shamblin Theater, the Department of Visual Arts hosted “Artist Talk” which featured guest speaker, Disney animation artist Andreas Deja.

Deja has animated characters for several well known Disney movies including Gaston from “Beauty and the Beast”, Jafar from “Aladdin”, Scar from “Lion King” and several others. Deja has also had the chance to work alongside some of the most famous animators at the Disney company.

These core animators and directors are known as the “Nine Old Men,” nicknamed by Walt Disney himself. In honor of the legacy and animations these men have created, Deja recently published a book detailing the animation styles and techniques of the animators.

Deja’s book, “The Nine Old Men: Lessons, Techniques, and Inspiration from Disney’s Great Animators,” gives a detailed analysis of animations by Les Clark, Wolfgang Reitherman, Eric Larson, Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, John Lounsbery, Marc Davis and Ward Kimball.

Deja decided to write the book in order to focus on the animations and not simply the artists’ backgrounds. “It just fell into my lap. There already is a book, but it leaves you wishing for more visuals,” said Deja. “There is a lot of great text, but we want to see more art.”

These artists have animated characters many know and love such as Captain Hook, Peter Pan, Cinderella, Prince Charming, Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio, Bambi and many more iconic Disney characters.

The artists were not given one character to animate, but all created different aspects of every character. “It’s not one person’s work; at Disney you work in a team,” said Deja.

Deja spent the evening showing sketches and animations from these nine artists and explaining different techniques of design the artists used to make the animations come to life. Many of the artists drew a variety of characters with different styles to balance the realistic characteristics with the cartoon characters.

An example Deja gave was Eric Larson’s work on Cinderella, a very realistic character, and his work on the mice, characters with a more cartoon-like style.

The audience also had the opportunity to hear about the process of creating the animations and turning them into a film. Deja shared how artists would use live action models to help animate the characters as realistically as possible.

Deja told students also how animators would actually voice their characters in the animation process, and used his work on Lion King as an example.

“Scar gave me a real nice opportunity to explore acting because of the great voice I gave my character,” said Deja. “I didn’t enjoy him drawing-wise that much. The design is not that great, but the acting potential was there because of the voice.”

Deja told students that the most profound lesson he ever learned was how to animate feelings, not drawings. According to freshman and graphic design major, Shadani Fleming, those animated feelings were a big part of her life growing up. Reminiscing on the animations while learning the process of creating reminded her of her childhood.

“I really liked how he spoke about the original men from Disney, and how they met and worked with Walt Disney,” said Fleming. “It was pretty cool because they made my childhood.”

For more information on upcoming events and guest speakers within the College of Entertainment, visit http://www.lipscomb.edu/cea/news-events

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