Andreas Deja

Nothing is worse in animation than animating a character that is boring. The audience won’t care for it and be affected by it therefore depleting the weight that character has to play in the film. What does work very well, however, is an animator that can make a character very interesting in design, acting, performance, expressions, movement, thought process, emotions, and all the other important aspects in bringing a great animated character to life. This is what the old guys did best and oftentimes newer animators have had trouble following their footsteps in making this come together. There are a few however that do continue to do this in an interesting way and one of if not the best at making interesting characters is Andreas Deja, number 11 on our countdown and the honoree of today’s post. Andreas Deja is well respected all throughout the animation industry for his flashy stylized sense of design and his ability to animate unique interesting characters as well as his unique way of putting these together with his European sensibilities, superb acting with movement, and his knowledge of the way the old guys at Disney faced challenges and did their craft. While many other animators that want to be like the old guys find a particular idol or two and copy their work he takes inspiration from all of the guys and puts the knowledge he learned from his talks with them to help him make his own work better. Deja will always be remembered for his villain trilogy (Gaston, Jafar, and Scar), which showed people a psychological process and interesting acting skills that had rarely been seen in animation for several years, but also has done lots of other great characters, including Roger Rabbit, Triton, Hercules, and Lilo. He also has been a very important part of the animation industry by sharing his knowledge of Disney history with others and always talking to students and young people in the industry about what’s needed for great character animation. However, Andreas has also been known for refusing to try CG animation and he’s been adamant that hand-drawn is all that should ever be at Disney. “If you take the drawings out of Disney, it’s just not Disney,” he passionately said. Deja is one of the most interesting and accomplished of the new Disney animators and has created work that will stay with people forever. Andreas Deja was born on April 1, 1957 in Gdansk, Poland but moved to Dinslaken, Germany when he was a year old. Living in a lower middle class family in a town in the middle of nowhere Germany he found himself growing up to be fascinated by the idea of drawing and was particularly fascinated by comic strips and brief clips of Mickey Mouse shorts on the Wonderful World of Disney. Although his family didn’t go to the movies, at the age of 11 he and a friend took their money and went to see the Jungle Book. Seeing the movie changed Andreas’s life forever and he instantly knew that working on animated films was what he wanted to do. “It was just the most beautiful thing I ever saw,” remembered the animator decades later. “It left a very strong impression on me.” Deja in particular was intrigued by the animation of Sher Khan the tiger, which he would later find out was done by his career idol Milt Kahl. He saw the film over and over again and new immediately all he wanted to do was work at Disney, making him decide to send the studio a letter a few years later. He got a response from the studio much to his thrill and got some elusive answers to his questions. “The studio just encouraged you to become an artist in your own right first,’ explained Deja. “To got to art school, to study animals, to study the human figure, anatomy, and just a very solid academic art training was what they recommended.” Around the age of 14 he began to attend several life drawing classes and go to the zoo frequently to study the animals and their movement. Although it was a lot of work Andreas fell in love with doing this and always pushed himself to