When I look back on my young life to figure out how I ended up with my current conundrum, everything boils down to Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. From the first time I saw it, I always knew I wanted to someday work at the famous Mouse House and be an animator, bringing fantasy to life through film. That desire saw me through two years of Fine Arts at Dawson and four in Concordia’s Film Animation department. As I near the end of my final semester and look forward to life beyond graduation, I can attest to the patience required to spend nearly every waking moment hovering over a light table and staring at layers of drawings through my glasses like a modern-day Bob Cratchet. Which may be why Disney (or would that be Scrooge?) closed down all of their hand-drawn animation studios around the world, leaving only broken dreams and former employees in their wake.
It’s the hardest reality an animator can face. In the end, a few seconds of light flashing across a screen is all anyone has to show for their efforts. The exception being recent Academy Award winner and former Concordia Film Animation student Torill Kove. Celebrating a year since the release of her short animated film, The Danish Poet, Kove braved a cold to attend Cine Gael’s Irish film screening in the DeSeve cinema last Friday night. As she took the podium and placed her statue directly in front of me, my persistent pessimism was pushed aside by the sight of the almighty Oscar. As clich
