Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1513434
Ted Ty: I think since the lm is really about emotion, there were the emotional sequences that struck me most. One was called "Arrow" internally—when there's an arrow in Nimona's leg and Ballister pulls it out. It seems like a bit of an under the radar, innocuous type of se- quence. But it's the rst one where Ballister is not just thinking about his needs and his understanding in his world, and begins to care for her and is a little bit more open-minded than he has been up to that point in the lm. And Nimona notices. So she in turn reveals a bit of the truth of who she is and what transforming into dierent forms really means to her, essentially. It means freedom. So it was a great sequence because it was the rst moment of that grain of trust that you feel with people when you have a conversation where there's an understanding that there's trust there. It really deviates the path of your relationship to something much richer and fuller—and that's what that was for us. CGW: Did you watch anything early on in your life that lit your re for animation and made you decide to pursue this career? Ted Ty: There were a lot of things. I grew up in Montreal, Canada, and there was a national lm board, so my mind was always very open to Marshall McLuhan and a lot of dierent experimental types of animation. Since I would do drawings on my own all the time, I was self-taught. So I would draw whatever I felt like. When I saw Sleeping Beauty for the rst time, that's the lm that really impacted me more than any other. Because even if you know nothing about animation, it looks like a masterpiece. Now, by modern day standards, of course, you know the storytelling. A lot of people have issues with it, but at the same time, it was a fairy tale based on the mentality of that time and really reaching back to the essence of a fairy tale. So I think that inspired me. The animation was absolutely beautiful. Eyvind Earle's backgrounds—it le a lasting impact on me. Then, randomly, I saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and that was cra- zy and really new. And then, out of the blue before I even knew about animation, my sister bought me a copy of the bible of animation written by Frank [Thomas] and Ollie [Johnston]—two of the "Nine Old Men" from Disney—called The Illusion of Life. I'm like, 'What is this amazing book with these drawings?' She's like, 'I thought you might like it.' And it ended up being pretty much attached to my hand my entire career. Thanks, Sis! CGW: Is there any advice that you wish you had received when you were rst starting out? Ted Ty: I think as artists and as people in general, we fear the un- known. We question the validity of what we do and how well we do it—our own sense of self-worth via whatever we do. And I think that will always continue. I think what I would have passed onto myself is to really try to navigate your path to where you should be as an artist. Don't let your highs get too high and your lows get too low, because the truth is somewhere in the middle, and it allows you to think more clearly. Kendra Ruczak is the Managing Editor of CGW. The lm's animation was divided into 44 sequences during production.