Indigenous animation
Instructor: ‘If you can imagine it, you can animate it’

ABOVE: Sam June watches as John Ramirez, an art director with the Acme Network, sketches a storyboard for an animation project she is working on. Directors from various well known animation houses took part in a six day Navajo Animation Bootcamp last week. BELOW: Dave Master of the Acme Network watches over Flora Benn and Al Werito as they work on an animation project at a computer lab at the University of New Mexico-Gallup on Friday afternoon. Directors from various well know animation houses took part in a six day Navajo Animation Bootcamp last week. [photo by Brian Leddy / Independent]]

By Karen Francis
Diné Bureau

GALLUP — Each of the animated films at the mini-film festival on Sunday afternoon was only about a minute long, and some were only partially colored, but they represented a major achievement for the 14 students that completed the six-day animation boot camp from the Indigenous Institute for Native Arts.

The first boot camp was such a success that another beginning camp and an intermediate one will be held in the winter, said Gloria Begay, organizer of the course.

Professional animators who have worked at Disney and Warner Brothers. brought their expertise to the class, which was held at the University of New Mexico–Gallup branch.
Those same animators — John Ramirez and Dave Master — are willing to return to teach more students the basics of animation. Ramirez and Master, who worked together at Warner Brothers for many years, helped students to learn about storyboarding and emotions of characters.

For the first three days, Ramirez and Master covered storyboarding, story development and character development. Then, Chris Kientz, with the state of New Mexico, and Robin Lasiloo helped the students to apply software technology with their animation.

“Everybody said there’s a lot of talent here — artistic talent in young people — why not develop it?” Master said.

The project that Begay put together is the beginning of that effort to develop talented young artists to pursue their own individual art or work for a studio, he added.

“This project is especially exciting because it’s about culture and history,” Master said.

He said that animation is a great way to preserve language and culture “because it can be oral and visual at the same time.”

“If you can imagine it, you can animate it,” he said.

The intent of bringing the animation boot camp to Gallup was to engage more Native students in the field of animation. Two reasons to do so are to preserve the Native stories and to create cultural and bi-lingual material.

“We don’t have a Navajo language curriculum that’s standardized at schools,” Cheryl Guerito said.

Guerito, from Ojo Encino, is studying to teach elementary education. The film she worked on as a student was called “Red Nail Polish.”

She was inspired by one of her instructors who told her a story about how she painted her nails red and then went on to use the red nail polish on the family’s livestock. The characters spoke the Navajo language.

Nearly all the characters were Native in the animation that was created by the students. Some had Native teachings incorporated while others were more humorous and brought out laughter from fellow classmates at the screening.

Students in the class helped each other with various elements of creating a short piece, including helping with drawings and by providing voices for characters.

Flora Benn, who works with Navajo Nation Broadcast Services, took the class to enhance the video production that she does for the Nation.

“I’m also learning how to make my production better. I do a lot of video and I want to integrate animation into my video production,” she said.

After seeing his animated short film “Cranky Old Lady,” Aaron Ben said, “I think I need to make changes.”

Ben, 14, said that animation “seems like a fun hobby.”

However, he didn’t realize how much work was involved.
“I never actually used to draw but I’m learning,” he said.

For Frankie Kee, 15, from Gallup , he is artistically inclined and decided to check out the class.

“I wanted to get a feel for animation,” he said. He realized through the course that animation is not just about drawing.

He came to understand more about audience perception and the importance of the story line.

Kee’s work was entitled “Bad Luck” and was about crossing the path of a coyote.

“It’s not finished,” he said. He added he will continue to work on it.

The main challenge, Kee said, is learning new technology in a short amount of time.

“We had to learn in six days what usually takes weeks and months,” he said.

Though the students had so much learn in so short a time, they still taught their instructors, some of whom were visiting from Los Angeles.

“It’s fun to learn so much about the Navajo culture — to see how the kids relate to it and how they put it into their films,”

Ramirez said on his last day teaching at the boot camp.
“I’ve probably learned more than I taught… We’ve had a great time,” Master said.

Master, who founded the Acme Animation, said that the students can continue involvement through its interactive Web site.

Begay said she will continue to seek funding and innovative ways to help Natives learn about animation and filmmaking.