(upbeat jazz music)
- I'm Ken Duncan.
I'm the founder and Chief Creative Officer
of Duncan Animation Studio, and I'm here to tell my story.
- My name is Stephanie Alexander.
I'm a storyboard revisionist and animator,
and I'm here to tell my story.
- Yeah, I've been drawing since I was really young.
I still have a comic book that I did with a friend
at the age of eight.
We did a 50 page comic book.
We were always drawing cartoons.
My sister told me about this guy, Walt Disney,
and I went to the library and read about him,
and I thought his life was so cool,
and he was doing cartoons, so.
From then on, I wanted to be an animator.
- So, I've always wanted to draw.
I've been drawing since I was really little.
I got really serious about drawing,
probably when I was around 10 years old.
I would buy pretty much every
how to draw book that I could find.
In high school, I started to find visual development books
for animated films, and that inspired me
to go into animation as a field.
- Actually, one of my biggest mentors was,
when I started to work in the industry,
I ended up in Europe,
and I worked in London for Oscar Grillo.
Argentinian gentleman who had a studio in London
doing commercials, and I learned a lot from him.
He was an amazing artist and he owned his own studio,
so it was kind of inspiring that he could do both.
- So, one of my earliest mentors
in school was David Pruiksma.
He was, at the time, at LCAD,
one of the co-chairs of my major, and he was ex-Disney.
He really inspired me to develop my animation
and art style further.
- My first job in animation was during college.
Our teacher was being asked to be an animation supervisor
in a studio in Paris.
He was looking for an assistant,
and a bunch of us put in our portfolios,
and I was hired to go to Paris
and work on an animated feature.
- My first job coming out of school
was as an animation assistant on Mary Poppins Returns.
And I got that job, actually,
through my mentor, David Pruiksma.
Ken at Duncan Studio reached out to him first
to come on as an animator, and when he couldn't,
he put forward several students, including myself,
to go in and test for an animation assistant position.
Eventually, I got the job.
- So, my career really began in Europe.
I worked on features, I went to London, to Madrid.
I working on commercials and ended up in Ireland
working on a film called Land Before Time.
So, for most of my career, I've been an immigrant.
For 25 years, working in Europe and the United States.
About a year after coming to the United States,
I ended up at Disney in the 1990s.
- I've been in this industry now for two years, officially.
My first job out of college was Mary Poppins Returns,
as an animation assistant.
And when that was done, I was eventually brought on
at a studio called Oddbot Inc. to work
as a storyboard revisionist on Muppet Babies,
where I am currently located.
Working with Ken and the crew at Duncan Studio
on Marry Poppins was a really incredible experience for me.
A lot of the staff, a lot of the people there were ex-Disney
and were people that I had grown up watching.
You know, I would be talking with an animator,
and he would just in passing be like,
"Oh, yeah, I animated that frame of The Iron Giant
"that you see right there."
And I would just be like, oh my god,
that was one of the things that inspired me
to become an animator.
- I feel I became successful, or made it, as they say,
probably when I became a supervisor at Disney
on a film called Hercules.
I did the Meg character.
- Well, thanks for everything, Herc.
It's been a real slice.
- And then, after that, I did the Jane character in Tarzan.
- Little baby monkey that drew a picture!
- Yes, go on?
- Suddenly, the monkey starts crying.
- Oh, poor thing. - But I turned around,
and there's a whole fleet of them!
- And Captain Amelia in Treasure Planet.
- And doctor, again, with the greatest possible respect,
zip your howling screamer.
- So, during that phase, I really felt I had made it
as a supervising animator.
- I thought when I had started on Poppins,
that that was when I had made it.
Because it's like, oh, this is my dream job.
This is what I've always wanted to do.
And I quickly realized, once I was a few months in,
that you still have to figure out what comes next.
You have to figure out what comes after this.
I think animation, as an industry,
you never quite feel like you make it.
Because there's always something new
and challenging around the corner for you.
That's kind of what helps keep people, in a way, humble.
- For many decades, animation in general,
it was an unwritten rule that, sort of,
men were the animators and women were the assistants,
or the cleanup department.
I've talked to a couple women about this,
and they truly felt this.
So, for anybody to be an artist or an animator,
you need some help, some assistance, and some encouragement.
So, if there was a feeling
that you weren't getting encouraged,
I think it dissuaded people from advancing.
- I have occasionally kind of been the butt
of a joke or two, of like,
"Oh, you're a pretty good animator, for a girl."
It's a small offense.
It's not something that I really take to heart.
But I do think it's kind of a symptom of a greater problem.
We're challenging those old ideas
about where a woman or minority's place is in this industry.
'Cause I did work really hard to get where I am.
I'm not really good at what I do in spite of being a woman.
I'm just really good at what I set out to do,
because I put that time and effort into it.
- My goals for the future, for the studio, really,
we're trying to develop our own content,
and currently working on a feature film idea
that really has a female lead,
and it has an ecological aspect to the story.
Female doesn't need a male character to help her.
We've also got a sci-fi series, et cetera.
So, looking forward to creating some really cool stuff.
- My goals are always changing.
As a storyboard revisionist, right now,
as somebody who works in other people's boards,
I would love to have a chance to do storyboards myself,
and maybe even eventually get into directing.
But there's definitely a part of me
that wants to go back into a traditional animation field
and into a project that really brings attention
back to that art form, which I really admire
about Duncan Studio and Ken's work,
is that he does keep that alive.
And I think that that's really admirable.
- For kids who really wanna be an animator,
it's really important to be curious
and to really research, and to study people,
study life, study design, and really reach out
to other people that have done the art form
to learn from them.
If you pursue the art form that you love,
you're gonna do just fine.
- It's challenging, but it's incredibly rewarding.
You need to make sure that you're putting the effort in,
you're putting the time in,
you're really learning film language
and learning how to be a team player,
learning how to collaborate.
I would say this industry is part luck, part who you know,
and a big part being prepared.
Relevant skills, a reel,
a portfolio when an opportunity arrives.
Because I've missed opportunities because I wasn't ready.
And I've gotten opportunities because I've been ready.
- In order for our animation art form to advance,
we have to be more inclusive,
to include people from different cultures,
include more women, to get their point of view on stories
and to really show the world a new way
of looking at entertainment.
- I think that animation is wonderful.
It's a great medium, and it's unlimited
in what you can tell in animation.
And that's what I really admire about it.
(whimsical string music)