Blog9:
Andreas Deja- Animator at Disney
Another form of digital art lies
within animated movies, venturing down memory lane brings me to talk about an
animator who works at Disney known as Andreas Deja. Deja is well known for
working on villains such as Jafar from Aladdin,
Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, and
Scar from The Lion King. Deja was
inspired to become an animator at the age of 11 after watching a Disney
favorite The Jungle Book. He like
many artists began studying graphic design in Germany. His lifelong fascination
of Disney eventually led to his lifelong
dream. He was hired in 1980 to work on animating his first film The Black Cauldron. In order to become a
great animator, Deja sought mentorship from what was known then to be the nine
old men who were veterans at Disney. He gained an extensive amount of
information from each one to the point where he stated that he was planning to
write a book for each one of them. Once he became well established, Deja was eventually
creating a variety of villains with different personalities. He said that the
most evil character he worked with was Scar from The Lion King. Any character that is Disney related means that each
character must be as close to being human as possible. This is because Disney
has always aimed for their audience to become emotionally attached to these
characters whether they be good or evil. If people aren't hooked on a character
then they won't be interested in watching the movie. In order to create a truly
evil character for The Lion King Andreas
had to put an emphasis on the character's facial expressions. For example, Scar
has edgy- looking eye brows that raise fairly high to indicate that he is
thinking or exhibiting anger. He stated in an interview that his inspiration to
making Scar was the voice actor Jeremy Irons who "had a way of playing
with the words and twisting them so that they would come out very sarcastic and
always a bit unexpected." He also clarified that his voice actor Jeremy
has physical features such as dark circles under his own eyes that gave him
inspiration to create the dark circles under Scar's eyes. Deja explained that
after watching Jeremy perform his voice acting, he immediately ran back to his
studio to work on his character through all his excitement and a head bursting
with great ideas. It was very interesting and informative to read about Andreas
Deja because it helps educate on how a great artist develops an idea and how he
began as a fan who in the end evolved into the creator.
