Hi Mr. Sito,
I hope you don`t mind my trying to reach you. I am 27 years old and just recently graduated from the School of Visual Arts as an animation major in Manhattan. I know you are old-school Disney and I would love to get some advice from you.

I am finding very quickly that the animation industry today is not what it was when I started school. It is so computer oriented and not the paper and pencil industry I so dearly wanted to work in years ago. What I am mainly concerned about is the lack of mentor/apprentice learning. I want to really LEARN how to animate, not plug in a key frame here and there and let the tween tool do the rest. I went to school hoping to learn enough to get a job somewhere and allow my REAL education to happen through the mentoring that I was under the impression would happen there. I want to learn the skills the old animators at Disneys passed onto you guys when you started.

Do you have any advice as to where I can find that now? It`s difficult to be so passionate about an art form that is changing right before your eyes and not always for the good, before you even got to take a shot at things. Any advice you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Warm Regards,

Patrick Costa


Dear Patrick,

Thank you for your note. I understand your feelings. The animation business is not the same business I joined way back in 1975. But if it is any comfort, back then when me and my friends like Eric Goldberg wanted to do full Disney-Warners animation, we were told we were crazy. We were told animation, as such, was dying. That the films we loved so much like Pinnochio and Blitz Wolf were done with Depression Era budgets. That we would never see that kind of quality ever again. Back then, no one could see The Little Mermaid or the Simpsons in the future.

The lesson learned is no one can predict how this business may change. We may evolve like computer music. When the Moog Synthesizer was invented people said there would be no more orchestras, no more garage bands, no more jazz quartets. So audiences got their fill of synthesizer, then wanted to hear the brass of the trumpet and the gut of the strings. Orchestras and garage bands are fine.

There is a danger that the original skills of character animation and cinema technique are going to be lost while everyone is so busy learning the latest software. I`ve discussed with other educators the issue that too many classes have an overemphasis on modeling, as though animation is merely a dreary step until lighting. To stay with the musical metaphor, it`s as if an orchestra spent most of their time building their instruments rather than playing.

My best advice is to be stubborn in what you want. When Jim Henson was trying to make it in the late 50s, early 60s he was told "Sock puppets? Why are you wasting your time?" He made his Muppets something people wanted to see. If you desire to learn full 2D animation you are going to have to explore beyond the borders of your home town to see who is doing the good stuff. Animation of that sort is still best learned master-to-apprentice, and I say that as a university faculty. You have to find out who is still doing the good old stuff and how you can get on it. In my career I had to move first to Nelvana in Toronto, then to London for Richard Williams. We used to be called animation gypsies. Out here in LA there are still small pockets of resistance to the Digital Invasion. Around the world the argument 2D vs.3D is not as extreme as it is in the US and the UK.

Quality 2d went underground in the 60s and 70s and it may have to again. But it is becoming less likely to do a full time career strictly with a pencil. You will have to know some 3D for gigs between the ones you want to do. I don`t think the 2D fat years of the 1990`s will come back, but the major studios overemphasis on 3D as the only magic formula won`t last either. It will evolve and grow, as you will. So keep your ear to the ground and your eye on the prize. Success doesn`t go always to the best draftsman or the best hustler, it goes to the stubbornest.

Tom Sito