God formed Man out of dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The Man came alive—a living soul! – GENESIS 2:7
Where there was once only raw dirt, God breathed and the man was animated. God’s canvas: the soil of His own creation. His inspiration: Himself. Humankind was to be His great masterwork: a self-portrait crafted from the dusty particulars of a freshly ordered earth.
This week, I met briefly with a Disney animator at his office in Burbank. He’s been giving direction to pencil lines on paper for several decades. His role is unique among the artists housed in the whimsical Fantasia-inspired studio. His job is to ensure that any drawn character making it from sketch to computer to screen retains the emotional subtlety that almost imperceptibly yet critically gives the character a “soul.” The only way to better convey the soul of a line-drawn figure, is by making adjustments to the lines themselves.
He froze an image from an upcoming Disney movie on his computer screen and picked up a stylus. Then, looking at the image on his screen, he drew three bold black lines directly on the image: he moved each of the character’s eyebrows only a fraction of an inch in either direction and then he re-curved the corners of the mouth. That’s it. Everything and virtually nothing was different. But, right before us: the soul of the character came to life. What wasn’t there before, was now unmistakably present.
Then, he motioned us over to his drawing table. It was as you’d expect: a few pencils on a drafting table and a moveable incandescent desk lamp illuminating a stack of blank pages. The area around the desk was crowded with initial sketches from Disney movies. He showed us a few of them, flipping quickly through the pages, setting the characters into motion. Then, he turned back to his desk, grabbed a pencil, and clicked on the light. I don’t think he realized all of the impact of what he was about to do.
He drew three iconic circles on a page: a round head and elliptical ears. Within seconds, the master had begun his creation. Subsequently, he drew three more of the same image in slightly different poses. He separated all four pages between each of his fingers and flipped quickly between them all — back and forth in rapid sequence. Where there was previously nothing, a character-in-motion emerged. Four frames told an unambiguous story of surprise. Whimsical pencil scratches were drawn to life. He signed the bottom corner of the top-most drawing and handed the stack of four to my son. It was as if he had entrusted a ten year old with life itself — a life crafted by the hands of a master.
I couldn’t help but think that ours is a sacred trust: to uphold what has been created — for us, for everyone else. The implications flickered forward at 30 frames per second: every earthly character, regardless of how rough or polished we may imagine their sketch to be, is still a work of the Master, sprung sacredly to life and given to dignity.
– Jeff