Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1055975
D E PA R T M E N T 31 KEYFRAME MARLON WEST PROMOTING A DIALOGUE ABOUT GUN VIOLENCE On January 1st, Marlon West set out to raise awareness about gun violence. His plan was to do one push-up for each person killed by guns in the United States during 2018. On days when no life was ended by a bullet, West thought he would hold plank position for thirty seconds. Now, 282 days into his year-long commitment, and the day when he just holds plank has yet to arrive. So far, the number has not even dropped into the single digits. The fewest number of push-ups he's done was on Super Bowl Sunday, when the body count was 17. Every day, before he gets out of bed, West checks the numbers on the Gun Violence Archive. He does a simple subtraction to figure out how many push-ups to do for that day. It's a grim calculation and he admits that it weighs on him. He didn't anticipate how much it would affect him, or the baseline of sadness that he carries with him since starting the project. " When I compare it to people who have been shot or have lost a loved one…it's a small weight to carry," he says. Somewhere between taking his daughter to school and going in to work at Walt Disney Animation Studios, he tries to find a quiet and compelling place to do the push-ups. He chooses parks or iconic landmarks around Los Angeles, to make it visually interesting for the videos he posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Often, he doesn't have time to go anywhere, so he chooses locations at Disney where he works as Head of Effects Animation. West has lost family members to gun violence, but he says that there wasn't any watershed moment that prompted him to embark on this project, it was a culmination of things. He wanted to draw attention to every life lost to gun violence in the year and start a conversation about it. In each daily post he tries to include a particular story, so that people don't just see a number. What became painfully obvious to him early on is the amount of gun deaths that are due to domestic violence, with many incidents that involved multiple gun deaths being murder-suicides. That was particularly shocking to discover. He feels that the conversation around gun control needs to be reframed. "I think that people characterize each other as stridently for and stridently against—where the vast majority of people have a more reasonable position," he explains. He believes a shift in approach could effect change that would have a meaningful impact on the body count that reaches tens of thousands a year. West points out that he's not anti-gun, and says that people who are gun We spoke to three members of the animation community who made the leap from being supporters of a cause, to taking on far more active roles in their desire to contribute. Be it raising awareness of gun violence, rescuing vulnerable animals, or fighting for the rights of undocumented immigrants, these artists explain what led them to take the first step on their journeys to make a difference. HOW DOES ONE GO FROM FEELING STRONGLY ABOUT A CAUSE, TO ROLLING UP THE PROVERBIAL SHIRTSLEEVES AND DIGGING IN? MARLON WEST PROMOTING A DIALOGUE ABOUT GUN VIOLENCE On January 1st, Marlon West set out to raise awareness about gun violence. His plan was to do one push-up for each person killed by guns in the United States during 2018. On days when no life was ended by a bullet, West thought he would hold plank position for thirty seconds. Now, 282 days into his year-long commitment, and the day when he just holds plank has yet to arrive. So far, the number has not even dropped into the single digits. The fewest number of push-ups he's done was on Super Bowl Sunday, when the body count was 17. Every day, before he gets out of bed, West checks the numbers on the Gun Violence Archive. He does a simple subtraction to figure out how many push-ups to do for that day. It's a grim calculation and he admits that it weighs on him. He didn't anticipate how much it would affect him, or the baseline of sadness that he carries with him since starting the project. " When I compare it to people who have been shot or have lost a loved one…it's a small weight to carry," he says. Somewhere between taking his daughter to school and going in to work at Walt Disney Animation Studios, he tries to find a quiet and compelling place to do the push-ups. He chooses parks or iconic landmarks around Los Angeles, to make it visually interesting for the videos he posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Often, he doesn't have time to go anywhere, so he chooses locations at Disney where he works as Head of Effects Animation. West has lost family members to gun violence, but he says that there wasn't any watershed moment that prompted him to embark on this project, it was a culmination of things. He wanted to draw attention to every life lost to gun violence in the year and start a conversation about it. In each daily post he tries to include a particular story, so that people don't just see a number. What became painfully obvious to him early on is the amount of gun deaths that are due to domestic violence, with many incidents that involved multiple gun deaths being murder-suicides. That was particularly shocking to discover. He feels that the conversation around gun control needs to be reframed. "I think that people characterize each other as stridently for and stridently against—where the vast majority of people have a more reasonable position," he explains. He believes a shift in approach could effect change that would have a meaningful impact on the body count that reaches tens of thousands a year. West points out that he's not anti-gun, and says that people who are gun WINTER 2018 31