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Tempe artist, animator tells secret of her success: ‘Draw all the time’

By Mark Moorehead

Creators of DreamWorks’ new animated motion picture Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron include Tempe native and recent graduate of Arizona State University Molly Schaar Idle.

Idle’s drawing talent was instrumental in the creation of Little Creek, the young Lakota brave and main human character in Spirit.

Little Creek, if you’ve not seen the film, is the Indian who comes to befriend Spirit, the wild and courageous mustang that refuses to be reined in.

Students at Bright Beginnings charter school in Chandler, where Idle’s mother and a neighbor have worked, often ask her what they should do to become an animator.

Her answer: “Draw all the time.”

Idle says she sketches constantly and carries a sketchbook everywhere she goes because “you never know what you’re going to see or when you’ll get an idea.”

Also, Idle says the most important guide to follow if one wishes to become an animator is to take life-drawing classes and draw from people and animals about eight to 10 hours a day.

Even then, the future isn’t always guaranteed. Few graduates with a degree in fine arts strike it rich with a job of their dreams within two months of finishing college, as Idle did.

However, even dream jobs are sometimes preceded with rejection, Idle admits. After thousands of drawings and four years of rigorous study, Idle mailed her portfolio to DreamWorks in her last year of school.

And, like many college graduates, she received a rejection letter from the prospective employer advising her they were looking for people with experience.

Then, a month later, to Idle’s astonishment, she received an offer from DreamWorks to enter a training program to see if she had what it takes to become a member of their team.

After a grueling 12 weeks of intensive work, Idle was offered a permanent position as a full time animator in the children’s film The Road to El Dorado. She has been working at DreamWorks ever since.

Drawing the same animated character month after month might seem like just plain work or simply another job to those of us outside looking in.

Not so says Idle. “It’s tons of fun and exciting working with so many other talented artists.” And, Idle says, it’s challenging.

“As a breakdown artist I take the extreme poses the animator has drawn and then fill in all the blanks and make it move fluidly throughout the film. I try to keep each drawing looking like the same character in every scene.”

Otherwise, Idle says with a laugh, the audience will look at the next scene and say “is that Little Creek or his brother? “

Making one character move across the screen requires a lot of drawings. So how many does it take to make all the characters move a across the screen from beginning to end in an animated film like Spirit? An unbelievable 421,154 drawings were scanned during production.

To gain a small perspective, those drawings, if placed end to end, would extend from Phoenix to Tucson.

“There are 24 frames per second of film, and that translates to about 24 drawings per second for each character; that explains why it takes four years to make an animated film,” says Idle.

Working a dream job in California is great. However, Idle says, her roots remain firmly planted in Tempe, where her parents still live.

She also enjoys visiting students at Bright Beginnings in Chandler, where next year she plans to assist them with painting a mural on the school wall. 

When Idle was asked what she missed most about Tempe since moving to California she replied, “The friendly people and Changing Hands Bookstore.”

Idle is currently working on DreamWorks’ animated film Sinbad, scheduled for release next summer.

In addition to her film work, Idle has written and illustrated a children’s book titled Emma’s Gift, scheduled to be published late this year.

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