- My favorite Disney animated film
is "The Princess and the Frog."
It was the first time I saw a Disney
princess that looked like me.
As a black woman, I didn't get to grow up with those kind
of visual representations.
Having that at a young age makes you realize
that you can do anything.
My name is Raigan.
I'm 15-years-old, and my Disney dream
job is to become an artist at Walt Disney Animation Studios.
[PIANO MUSIC]
Now you can always find me in the art room.
That was the first room I went into,
and after that I've just grown used to the art room.
I always go in there.
I started noticing Raigan's talent for art
when she was really little.
As she got a little bit older, probably about middle school,
she kind of started advancing a little bit.
She would draw like little comic book sketches.
She does struggle, I think, a little bit, with venturing
out and meeting friends.
She really just wants to kind of be in the art studio
at the school or, you know, at home
drawing in her sketchbooks.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
RAIGAN: Today I'm gonna meet some artists
and learn about the process of making Disney animated films.
I'm really excited.
Great to meet you.
So great to meet you.
Welcome to Walt Disney Animation Studios.
I'm Ron Clements, and I hear that you
are a big fan of the movie "The Princess and the Frog."
Yeah.
I actually co-directed that movie.
Whoa!
Right?
RON: I hear that you draw. You're an artist.
Yeah.
This piece was one of the very first pieces ever done
on the movie of Prince Naveen arriving in New
Orleans for the first time.
And then we have a drawing of Mama Odie,
and this is a very early version of Tiana.
RAIGAN: Inside the hallways there was like a whole bunch
of like paintings and concepts.
You're like looking to each side like,
OK, got to make sure I look at every single one.
So that's just an example of the different kind of artists,
and you're gonna meet a great one.
[RELAXED MUSIC]
RON: This is Mark Henn.
This is Rachel Bibb. - Hi.
Nice to meet you
I remember when I was a small boy,
this was a dream job for me.
What's your dream about Disney animation?
RAIGAN: "Princess and the Frog," seeing her on screen,
I was like, I want to become part of that.
I want other kids to have that same excitement and joy
of seeing a character that looks like them on screen like I did.
MARK: Well that's great.
So we'll just start with a character
that you might recognize.
And so I've put a new piece of paper down so
I can start making my changes.
As an animator, I'm working very loose and rough.
I'm not too concerned about the final look
of the drawing at this point.
And that's where we are a team.
We heard that Tiana is one of your favorite characters,
right?
So everyone would draw her in a slightly different way.
And my job is to make sure that she always looks
like Tiana, no matter who drew her.
COURTNEY: Raigan, she's such a perfectionist with her drawing,
and she'll beat herself up if it's not perfect.
But there's like all these different steps.
The animator doing the first part
and then the clean-up artist coming in, finishing it off.
And you don't realize that those are two separate functions.
So that's kind of how we divvy up our responsibilities
on a single character.
And it's one of the amazing things about animation.
I don't know about you, but drawing tends
to be a very solitary process.
You sit alone in your room and you draw your drawings.
I'm glad that you said that because it means that I'm not
weird for being incredibly shy.
Animators in general tend to be very much observers,
so I think being quiet and being shy
would never prevent someone from becoming a great animator.
RAIGAN: When my mentors shared their life experiences with me,
it made me feel really, really good because it meant that I
wasn't this weird, awkward person who
has all these awkward stories to tell
and that they went through the same thing as me.
I want to see you draw.
[GIGGLING]
MARK: What we're gonna suggest is just a simple bouncing ball.
RAIGAN: OK.
We'll start with the ball in the air up high.
So now with your left hand, pick up the piece of paper
there so that you can flip between your first drawing
that you did and your second drawing.
You'll start to see, a-ha, it's starting to move a little bit.
OK, let's put a new sheet of paper down.
This ball is gonna hit the ground.
Now what happens when a ball hits a hard object?
RAIGAN: Flatten.
MARK: It's gonna flatten out a little bit.
But once the ball has hit the ground, now it's got to bounce.
When it goes up, it's actually gonna compress the other way.
So it doesn't quite get back to the full round shape
until right towards the end.
RAIGAN: Drawing the bouncing ball with Mark
and Rachel was really fun,
although I knew I was in trouble because I can't draw circles.
[LAUGHING]
Why don't we get going to the effects department
to meet our friend Marlon?
[MUSIC]
So are you familiar with what effects
are in an animated film?
Kind of?
Yeah, a little bit.
So usually what I say, like affects
is like everything that moves on screen
that's not the characters.
It's smoke, water, rain, fire, explosions, magic.
So you may be familiar with this scene
where Tiana meets Naveen for the first time.
Knowing that this was a film about amphibians,
we use a lot of water cues and bubbles
and things instead of traditional like pixie dust.
Sometimes they have like close-ups of like
plants and like how they sway.
Do you do that too?
Yeah, very often.
So most recently I worked on "Moana."
So in "Moana," it also has a bunch of effects,
but mainly a lot of water.
[LAUGHING]
MARLON: And, you know, water is really difficult.
And everybody knows what it looks
like, so you can really fake it. COURTNEY: Right.
OK.
MARLON: What you'll learn walking around
here today is there's both creative and technical
challenges.
You've got a character like Te Ka here,
who is like a living volcano, you know?
So you have to have like a character performance that's
believable, and then you have to have all these aspects of what
a volcano is to kind of eventually
view her with believability.
So I guess you're gonna go see Don and Josie now, from stories.
- All right. - So I'll walk out with you.
OK.
I didn't realize there were like so many steps.
I thought it was like, oh, all you have to do
is just draw the pictures and put them together
and voila, you've got a movie.
Hi.
Hello. I'm Josie.
- I'm Raigan. - Hi, Raigan.
I'm Don.
Hi.
It's very nice to meet you.
DON: Storyboarding was essentially
invented by Walt Disney.
Once the story team is assembled,
sequences are handed out.
And each story artist gets a sequence.
We could start to talk about an idea, but then you're like, OK,
I'll just draw it. You know, this is Tiana.
And it can be really rough drawing.
That's kind of the great joy of story
is that there are no rules.
It can be incredibly scary, but at the same time
there's so much freedom to create your own vision.
DON: Once a scene starts to kind of come together,
then you can refine it.
That's what the main job of the story artist is.
She's building a character with what was nothing before.
Now there's something.
They're actually starting to be attracted to each other.
I mean, that's what you start to see as these characters start
to come alive.
I heard that you do comic books.
Is that right? - [GIGGLING] Yeah.
JOSIE: Yeah?
Essentially you've been storyboarding already.
DON: Yeah, you're already storyboarding.
And then from there you get a bunch of notes
and just do it all over again until the movie is done.
[LAUGHING]
COURTNEY: One of the things that I always kind of struggled
with was, should I just leave her alone
to her books and her art or push her to be
a little bit more outgoing?
But after today, walking into this building full of people
just like Raigan, it's made me realize that
her little different quirks and stuff that she may have,
it will all help her as far as pursuing her dream.
RON: A lot of introverts are drawn to animation because it's
a way that you can kind of let yourself go express yourselves,
even if you are shy.
So I can relate to that in her.
RAIGAN: I realize that I don't really need
the approval of other people.
And I could just be myself, and it wouldn't matter.
[JOYFUL MUSIC]
Today has confirmed that being a Disney animator
is definitely, definitely, definitely my Disney dream job.
I'm going to go out and get myself a flip book
and start animating right away.
[JOYFUL MUSIC]
[DING]