From King Triton to …
King Triton, Gaston, Jafar, Scar, Hades and Mama Odie – what do they all have in common? You sure know your Disney animation history if you answered “Andreas Deja”, the German animator who was responsible to envision these unique characters and bring them to life on the big screen.
Without question Andreas Deja is one of the most sucessful and best known animation artists still creating marvels for Disney in the traditional world of 2D animation. Considering his German roots and the fact that he was responsible for the character of voodoo magician Mama Odie in Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” currently playing theaters around the world it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Disney flew him to Germany to help promote the movie. During his press tour he also gave an interesting interview to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung talking about his past and his future in Disney animation.
As the interview is available in German only we took the freedom to sum up some of the highlights for you …
So … highlights … difficult … Andreas Deja talks a bit about how he ended up at Disney Animation (mentioning along the way that one of the tips he got before applying was NOT to send in any drawings of Disney characters). He also talks about having worked for one year together with Tim Burton (yes, THE Tim Burton) on Disney’s animated feature “The Black Cauldron” before (via working on “The Great Mousedetective” and being sent to London for “Who framed Roger Rabbit”) starting his string of headline character animation mentioned above. So where is the new stuff??
Here we go … what about the fact that Pixar was preparing its own feature based on the fairy tale that inspired Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” and that it seems that some of the elements of that adaption were integrated into Disney’s feature? More juicy? Hmm … what about this: according to Andreas Deja there are already FOUR follow-up projects to “The Princess and the Frog”:
- the next feature by Musker and Clements
- a sequel to “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” jointly with Dreamworks
- Snow Queen
- a new Winnie the Pooh feature (to cite Andreas Deja: “the Disney characters of Winnie the Pooh shall be used for something ambitious for a change after they have been nearly burned commercially”; in December 2009 they were in the process of doing test animations with the characters)
Ok, so you already knew this? Then – do you also know on which projects Andreas Deja will work next? See, I thought there must be some news even for you in that interview 
Currently Andreas Deja is scheduled to work on the already long in planning “Snow Queen” feature in 2011. Before that he has been signed up for the new Winnie the Pooh feature … to draw … [drum roll please] … TIGGER! Yes, Andreas Deja, often seen as the expert for villains will animate the high energy Tigger character. He lets the readers of the FAZ know that Tigger was his preferred character in the Winnie the Pooh universe and therefore applied specifically to animate him – and got the assignment! It should be interesting to see which take Andreas Deja will have on this iconic character…
P.S.: the interview is certainly of interest to anyone who has a general interest in Disney animation … so don’t let my short abbreviation keep you away from it!
