Tell us how your art career led you to animation.
I didn’t start in animation until I was 40. I’m a painter. I had my masters from ArtCenter. I taught at ArtCenter for about 13 years, and I had my own school for five years. About that time [in the late 1970s], I said, you know, I need somebody to give me a check. I had a bunch of my students already working at Disney. I knew absolutely nothing about animation—nothing—but some students said, well, call Disney, they’re always looking for people who can draw. So I did.
[Disney] already knew me, my reputation. They said come on in. They hired me. Working in production, I started teaching there at the same time [at] Disney University. This was when they were building up a lot of the people coming into the studio. It was all for in-house. At that time, the studio was making The Fox and the Hound. I was working on [that], but they also had all these drawing classes, so I was teaching figure drawing classes, too.
Please describe your transition from fine art to animation.
When Disney hired me, I knew nothing about [animation]. They asked me, what do you want to do? I said, well, I don’t want to be an animator. That sounded so boring, doing the same drawing over and over. They said, we’ll have to figure out what we’re going to do with you. I walked out after they hired me and [immediately] bought a book on Disney. I didn’t know what they were talking about. They put me on production right away. The first day, across the desk, with another one of the storyboard guys, we were doing storyboard sketches for The Fox and the Hound. I found it wasn’t really any different from what I had been doing in my own work.
What is the relationship between your own work—with your fine art background—and your animation instruction?
What I teach is traditional Renaissance drawing. The whole idea—if you think of the Renaissance, of Michelangelo—everything they did started from the imagination. Drawing in reality is just visual thinking. That’s what animation is. Renaissance is narrative painting—it’s all storytelling! Look at Da Vinci’s Last Supper. That’s a story. It really deals with movement. What I teach is to be able to communicate emotion, feeling, that’s the essence of what animation is.
How did all of this lead to your seminal involvement in The Animation Guild’s American Animation Institute?
I’ve taught at The Animation Guild [for more than 30 years]. At the time I was the head of character animation at CalArts. I was the acting director. I left there and came to The Animation Guild. I literally handed in my resignation, got in my car, drove down to The Animation Guild and said, let’s start a day program. They said, who’s gonna come? I said, don’t worry, they’ll come. Well, we had a line all the way around the block for people signing up.
How does it feel to be recognized by the Annie Awards for your contribution to the art and industry of animation?
It was a big shock. I’m a teacher. To get patted on the back for being a good teacher … it’s a good thing.
At 85, Vilppu is still an active art instructor. Along with teaching at various academies, for the past nine years he has also run his own online art school, serving students around the world. For more information about the next semester, starting on March 28, go to the Vilppu Academy.
Vilppu posts a video of himself drawing every day on his Facebook page. You can also follow him on Instagram.
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