An Animated Life

>> The following is a presentation of KBTC Profiles.

>> I always think an artist is like a bridge builder.

Most people are on one side of the bridge, you come across to this side of the bridge because you see something else, and you can build that bridge for other people to come across.

And I think animation is unique in building bridges like that.

It allows you to focus and share with the world, something that the world doesn't see yet.

>> Is this not magic of a higher order?

[ Music ] I am Tony White, I'm an animator, an author, and a teacher of animation.

And I'm probably one of the last of the traditional hand drawn animators still working today.

I run a school called the 2D Academy, which is both based in Bellevue, Washington and online.

And I teach weekly animation classes.

Basically animation is a whole sequence of individual drawings that are slightly different, projecting at a certain speed and when you see them running at that certain speed, it gives the illusion of movement.

Animation's been around for a hundred years and the scary thing is, I've been around for 50 of those years.

I personally still love the tactile organic way of hand drawing on paper.

The thumbs coming round like that.

And the rest of the hand's like that.

Realistically in this country, my industry, traditional 2D animation doesn't exist and there's no chance of getting anyone to support it anymore.

If you go into 3D animation, everything's done on a computer.

They build like a digital puppet and that's given to the animators and they all move those puppets frame by frame individually within the software.

But to me, I respect it, but I love the organic feel, every drawing has an emotion in it.

If you physically handcraft the movement, then you're going to learn it so much better.

If you just set it up in a software and set a key position there and a key position there and let the software do the in betweens, yeah, it's going to move, but it's not going to move beautifully.

I can see that the elbow of one arm on one key is there, and the other one is there, so it's going to come through on an arc.

The funny thing is, I got into animation by default.

But in the UK I just could never get funding for any of my projects on the movie level.

So in 1998 I basically sold up, closed down, sold up, got on a plane and came to the states and I said, that's where I'm going to make my movies, because that's where they make movies.

And then Disney closed the studio down on 2002, and everything died.

So then I had to think okay, what's plan B?

And so I found the 2D Academy and so now I have a balance of teaching to survive enough to do all the work I want to do.

Animation is, in my opinion, the greatest art form ever because it not only drawing, it's coloring, it's painting, it's music, it's choreography, it's acting, it's everything in one.

And it's all done at the tip of the pencil.

It's a long process and you've got to be insane to do it, but when you see something you've done coming alive on the screen, with real-life, it's a magical feeling.

You feel like a rock star with thousands of screaming fans and it's the best art form in the world.

It's not hard work if you love it, you know?

It's just what I was born to do.

[ Music ] >> Funding for this edition of KBTC Profiles provided by the KBTC Association.

KBTC Profiles are available at KBTC.org.