Written by: Jorge Pontarelli
Professor Hendel Butoy realized he wanted to be an animator when he was just 12 years old.
“I’ve always liked drawing because I watched animations on television,” he said. “I enjoyed it because I felt like it was taking me to a different place, a different world. I think the reason for that is because growing up in a Christian home, I also was taught and believed the biblical stories I was told, which also took me into different worlds, true worlds.”
Butoy believed he could combine those two ideas of spiritual messages and great art forms. Growing up, he would play with his father’s camera and create stick figure films. He drew photos in his school books so that when he flipped through the pages, tiny animations would appear.
For a high school project, Butoy made a film that he now describes as “very crude and not much.” Yet, one of his teachers thought otherwise and took it to a film festival where Butoy met a fellow Seventh-day Adventist who was going to California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), a school founded by Walt Disney that teaches animation.
“If you are passionate about what you are doing, and you are actively creating and doing things, connections begin to happen,” Butoy said.
With the recommendation of the individual who saw his film, Butoy decided to go to CalArts.
“One of the prayers I had when I was entering this school was, ‘Lord, I don’t know if this is where you want me to go. However, I have a passion in my heart I believe is coming from you, so I’m going to keep going down this path until You close the door,’” he said.
At the time, CalArts was one of the few universities teaching animation, Butoy said. He further explained that he enrolled in the school in the late 1970s in the third year of the program’s existence.
Butoy said Disney’s vision for the institute was all of the programs — music, theater, film, fine arts and animation — working together to create things.
“Disney wished that [the] music school would make music for the animation school, and the fine arts school would do conceptual artwork for the film school, but it never turned out that way,” he said.
Even though Butoy enjoyed learning and creating animations, he had a hard time at CalArts.
“I struggled with every single thing,” he said. “Every single class that I had was a struggle; nothing came easy. But I sat there, and I did it. I said, ‘The only way I’m going to do this is if I sit here and put in the time and do it,’”
Since the animation program at CalArts was being taught by Disney veterans, that was the school where the company would send their scouts looking for the next generation of animators, according to Butoy. He explained that at the time, CalArts was the only school teaching character-specific animation in Disney’s style, so if a student graduated with a well-done portfolio, they were almost guaranteed a job.
Before he could graduate, however, Disney pulled several CalArts students, including Butoy, out of school to finish training at its studio. He began working at the company in 1979, and he took on all the roles that an artist can go through as an animator, he said.
He started as an inbetweener; an artist who draws frames between the extremes of an action; followed by an assistant; then an animator; a supervising animator; a directing animator and finally, the director.
“I never asked for anything while I was there. I didn’t ask for a promotion; I didn’t ask for how I could have this or that job. I just did the best that I could with what I had because I was just happy to be doing what I was doing,” he said. “Some animators would prefer to have this type of shot or that type of shot, and I didn’t care. I’ll take anything that I’m given because I know I’ll learn from it. And I think because I was willing to do anything and do the best that I could at it, I was given more responsibility.”
The first animated film that Butoy worked on at Disney was “The Fox and the Hound.”
“I got to do inbetweens on the little fox character, and then I also got to animate some shots with him,” Butoy said. “They gave me the sad shots where the fox is always sad and left out in the woods, and it starts raining on him.”
Butoy added that when he drew these shots with sad faces, he would feel the sadness of the character.
“I had to think of ways to keep myself cheerful because you have to get into the mindset of the characters when you animate them,” he said. “You’ve got to think like they do; you’ve got to feel like they do.”
Butoy also worked on “Oliver & Company,” “The Great Mouse Detective,” “The Black Cauldron” and “The Emperor’s New Groove.” He co-directed “The Rescuers Down Under” and “Fantasia 2000.” As a Christian working in a secular environment, Butoy’s co-workers would ask questions about his beliefs, he said. And through his answers, he was able to share his faith with them.
“They would notice my lifestyle was different — the things that I ate, the way I carried myself and the fact that I wouldn’t hang out with them on Saturday,” he said. “They didn’t feel like that was strange. They just felt like, ‘Ok, that’s what you believe,’ and they were fine with that. They supported it. But they did ask questions like, ‘Why do you believe these things?” So I was able to witness to them in some ways.
When asked why he decided to leave Disney, Butoy answered, “The same reason I got in. I was praying and asking that God would lead me, and one day, I got a call from Southern. They wanted to start an animation program, and they didn’t have a professor that was both a professional animator and a Seventh-day Adventist. And, somehow, they found me.”
The dean of Southern’s School of Visual Art and Design at the time invited him over to present a lecture to the students.
“When I did that, he asked me if I could do more,” said Butoy.
Butoy prayed, asking God if Southern was where He wanted him to be. He sensed it was time for him to leave Disney and begin to teach others what he had learned.
Butoy helped put the animation curriculum together, and has been teaching students animation for 19 years.
“We’ve had lots of graduates who’ve left here and gotten into the industry,” he said. “We [have] people at Disney, we [have] a graduate at Pixar and we have people at Sony … Nickelodeon, too. [At] every major studio, we’ve got a graduate that’s gotten there.
After almost two decades of teaching here at Southern, Butoy hopes for students to find what they are passionate about, and he encourages them to allow God to lead them.
“You have to have a love for the thing that you are wanting to do,” Butoy advised. “Be willing to work hard on it. Don’t give up when it gets tough, and keep praying and asking for God to lead you down this path. Because if He’s with you, you’ll be content wherever it is that He leads you.”
