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Whatever you can do or dream you can do begin it. Boldness has Genius Power and Magic in It. Goethe

 Whatever you can do or dream you can do begin it. Boldness has Genius Power and Magic in it. Goethe


How’s about starting with the successes? 


I’ll begin by telling you about the small breaks. The pinholes of opportunity that allowed me to progress (proceed) (dash forward) (advance) There are the big ones like being hired at Disney Feature Animation as a computer cleanup person. My dad thought I as cleaning the machines. Working my way up from Animator to Lead animator at Industrial Light and Magic on shows like Dragonheart and Mars Attacks, “Ack Ack” and lots of non obvious, smaller ones. 


I’d like to point to the smaller ones especially. These are the ones that meant the world to me when they happened, even though they didn’t necessarily dash me forwards in my career. Or at least I didn’t think so at the time. 







California Here I Come


Anasta Anahou instead of Richard Williams (that’s what was written in my calendar)



Disney Film Screenings


We were invited to watch screenings of the films as a work in progress.

In Beauty and the Beast, the big musical number Be my guest was sung to Maurice when he arrived at the castle. It was moved to the middle of the story and sung to Belle instead. It was a big impact moment and needed to be later in the story for the arc to build. (Ask Kirk and Gary or Leon) we thought they’d ruined the film. 


Lion King I suggested no words in the opening , pantomime only. (Were there words originally? Ask Don Hahn) I didn’t like the goose stepping hyenas, I thought they were a problem uniwito humans, not the animal kingdom. I still think that I was right on that one. 


I owe Don Hahn  a lot. What I learned from my time at Disney were the components and structure of a good story. 


And I would put it to good use much later when I started playing with the idea of creating my own characters for a book series called Finny. My 4 1/2 years at Feature Animation were my master class in storytelling. characters and story.


Oh and did I mention that Don Hahn has a great book out on the creative process? It’s called Brainstorm. Check it out. 













Now I spend my time teaching. Seeking out the students with the spark. 

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