So that was the first big blow of being a survivor while your friends and their families get thrown to the wind. Then in one fell swoop, every got fired except 10 of us, who got transferred to Los Angeles. We’d put together a real family unit – we’d all started at the same time and had 15 years together. Then they decided to shut that studio down and transfer everything out to Los Angeles. 15 of those years were at the studio in Orlando.
What spurred you to leave the cozy studio confines?Īaron Blaise: I was with Disney for 21 years. I recently had a chance to talk to Blaise about his career, from the tough times to the rewarding times and his determination to break animation instruction down to its basics and make it accessible to anyone with the desire to learn.ĭan Sarto: You had a storybook career at Disney Feature Animation. Starting with a modest effort and simple website, three years later, Blaise and business partner Nick Burch now reach several hundred thousand students worldwide through their website and YouTube channel, offering video training in animation and illustration through courses priced at $75 or less. He decided it was time to focus outward and share his passion for illustration and animation with artists around the world, many who had no chance ever to afford increasingly costly media arts education. Then, while calmly taking stock of his life while sipping coffee on the backyard porch, Blaise came to the conclusion it was time to start fresh and never again have his professional fate determined by an anonymous executive. Lucie operations, where he’d spent three years with colleague Chuck Williams building the animation studio and developing the feature film The Legend of Tembo.
Then, after leaving Disney and regrouping with his family back in Florida, he was sent packing on a Friday morning along with nearly 300 other artists with the abrupt shuttering of Digital Domain’s Port St. He was respected and admired as one of the true Disney greats – his animal and creature work are breathtakingly beautiful.īut his perspective on career, and more importantly, on life, changed rather abruptly with the tragic loss of his wife to breast cancer. Mentored at Disney by the legendary Glen Keane, the veteran artist and co-director of Brother Bear spent 21 years at the venerable studio, 15 at Feature Animation in Florida before coming to Los Angeles when the Orlando studio closed in 2004. There are scores of supremely talented artists and illustrators in the animation business these days.
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