Disney animator Glen Keane gives NFTS masterclass

Disney character designer and animation supervisor Glen Keane gave a Screen Arts lecture to a packed audience of NFTS students.

After screening his new animation Duet, Glen sketched one of his most iconic creations, Beast from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast under a camera projected live onto the School’s cinema screen. 

Speaking in conversation with the school’s head of directing animation, Helen Nabarro, Keane talked about his career and answered questions from the students.

Keane said his career began when his portfolio was sent to the wrong department at CalArts; he was applying for a painting course and was instead accepted to the animation course.

Despite enjoying a career stretching back 40 years, he said he still often feels like a beginner: “I’m constantly learning my craft and trying to grow as an artist.”

Known for his work as character designer and animation supervisor for Aladdin, Pocahontas, The Little Mermaid, Tarzan, Tangled and Beauty and the Beast, amongst many others, Keane also designed the characters for Paperman, winner of the 2013 Oscar for Best Short Animation.

In 2013. he was named a ‘Disney Legend’.

After 38 years with Disney, Keane said he felt the time had come to step out on his own and he left in 2012 to work on Duet with his son Max.

The film was designed to explore spatial awareness and the sensory inputs of a mobile device to create a distinctive storytelling experience, and was consequently shot in 60 frames per second which is practically unheard of in animation (typically 24 frames per second).

Producer Gennie Rim showed students how the film Duet will work on a mobile phone, where the viewer can choose to follow any of the film’s characters, creating a different viewing experience each time.  

Asked what advice he would give to students, Keane replied: “If you are offered the opportunity to do something that you don’t know how to do – say yes, dive in and do it anyway – that’s exactly what I did with Duet.”

Keane talked in detail about how he designs a character, how he needs to get under their skin before he even starts to draw, and how he puts something of himself into every character.

Encouraging students to “…always think like children in order to keep your work fresh,” Keane said he sees “…animation as sculptural drawing, expressive, bold, a seismograph for the soul.”

He believes there will always be a place for 2D drawing and design despite the growth of computer generated animation.

Even on Tangled, which was completely CG, Glen found that drawing was the best tool he could use for showing his team how he wanted Rapunzel to look and how she should interact with her hair. He would often draw over the top of the CG images to show how the image should be working.

Following the lecture Glen visited some of the animation students in their studios to see what they were working on, and offer some one-to-one advice.