Darla K. Anderson: From Digital Angel to Producer and Beyond

On Tuesday November 11^th the Brooklyn Theater at Pixar Animation Studios was filled to capacity with professionals, students and animation fans as they eagerly anticipated the arrival of one of Pixar’s most well-known members, Producer Darla K. Anderson. Ms. Anderson, who joined the studio in 1993, has the illustrious distinction of working on some of the animation industry’s most beloved films. Her accolades include winning the BAFTA award for Monsters, Inc. and Producer of the Year in Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures from the Producers Guild of America for Cars. She spoke to the entranced crowd with her signature humor and drive about her story from growing up in Glendale, California to becoming one of the film industry’s most respected Producers.

Hollywood Calling

Darla Anderson grew up with stars in her eyes.

Born and raised in Glendale, California, she dreamed of starring in commercials and TV, and being a part of the Hollywood scene. Her mother did not want her to be part of the industry, believing it was not a great environment for children. However young Ms. Anderson dreamed of being part of the film production world. Her hero at the time, Jodie Foster, was the same age, and she envisioned starring alongside Jodie in films and becoming fast friends.

Life Takes A Turn

Her childhood dreams were cut short when at 13 her mother died tragically in a car accident. Through a series of events young Ms. Anderson found herself homeless at age 14. Knowing that the foster care system would not be a good alternative for her, she slept on the couches of friends.

During this dark time she believed that life was not worth living and wondered if she should simply give up. However she made a huge life decision to be in the game and go for it.  The loss of her mother, she said, “makes you super confident and incredibly insecure.”

She decided to stay in high school in Glendale and then moved on to community college, where she earned a $500 scholarship. Most of her professors were retired from UCLA and USC so she received an excellent education at a fraction of the cost.

She then went on to San Diego State where she earned a degree in environmental design. “I’ve always thought with a Z axis,” she said. “I always thought in 3D.”

She credits her determination and the mother of a close friend from college for helping to keep her afloat.

“I’m not sure where I would be in my life without these people,” she said, referring to her friend’s family, particularly her friend’s mother. “She has unconditionally loved me.”

I Wanna Be A Producer

Upon graduation all of her friends were getting jobs in sales and making lots of money immediately out of school. By contrast Ms. Anderson’s path proved to be far from linear. She traveled from odd job to odd job, from running an ice cream store to even serving as a truant officer. This was in the 80s, where yuppie-dom and earning as much as humanely possible was considered the standard way to live. Ms. Anderson’s seemingly unconventional lifestyle baffled her friends to no end.

But her life path would take another unexpected turn when at age 25 she met a guy at a party and discovered that he was a producer for Primavera Video Productions. It was at that moment that Ms. Anderson found her calling in life – she would become a producer.

She promptly called Primavera and announced that she was a producer and would love to work for their company. “They said thank you for your confidence we will hire you as a PA go make that coffee over there. And that is how [I] started as a PA,” she said.  

Primavera specialized in B movies, corporate videos and commercials, and Ms. Anderson volunteered for every shoot. One day she saw a flying logo in the editing room, the very early stages of 3D animation. And at that moment, she knew where she wanted her film career to take her. “I was in love. Completely, utterly in love with 3D animation,” she recalled.

She left Primavara and got a job at a small company called Angel Studios where she served as executive producer of the four-person company. While at Angel she often traveled to LA to sell ad agencies computer animation. “Back then nobody liked computer animation. It was really a hard sell,” she said.

The SIGGRAPH Moment

However, this proved to be the right course of action. She attended SIGGRAPH, now a stalwart gathering of the best and brightest in the animation and VFX industry, but at the time a fledging gathering of a handful of people.  “[There was] maybe 200 people employed in the industry at that time, “ she said. “SIGGRAPH had one party in a hotel room held by the guys at ILM.”

It was at SIGGRAPH that Ms. Anderson first heard of the company that would make her career: Pixar. At that time only three minutes of computer animation existed, and the people at Pixar wanted to make a full-length movie. “No one thought Pixar could do it,” she said.  No one, she recalled, but Pixar and her.

Going on gut instinct, she packed up her two cats, quit her job before she was fired, “rather be a bandit than be abandoned,” she remembered, and made it her goal to move to San Francisco, work for Pixar, make 50 thousand a year and come out of the closet. Once again, everyone thought she was nuts risking it all on a small company that no one had heard of to work in computer animation, a medium that at the time few had any faith in. “When I first came to Pixar nobody thought it was a good idea. You’re doing what? You’re working in San Francisco?” she said.

Ms. Anderson, however, would not be deterred.

Journey to Pixar

When she wanted a job, Ms. Anderson said, she would always call the president of the company. She felt that, after losing her mom at such a young age, she had nothing to lose, which enabled her to be “fearless with authority,” she said.

That fearlessness enabled her to pick up the phone and call then Vice President of Pixar Animation Studios Ralph Guggenheim and invite him to lunch.

She had no money and “emptied out the change in my drawer to pay for lunch,” she recalled. The experience proved to be invaluable, and she and Mr. Guggenheim formed an excellent professional relationship. At the time however, there were no jobs to be had, since the Disney deal with Pixar had not yet been struck. 

This information only stoked the fire in Ms. Anderson, and every six months she would call Mr. Guggenheim to see what jobs were available. She even received a thanks but no thanks letter from his assistant basically asking her to stop applying. “But Ralph kept taking my phone calls so I ignored those letters,” she said, figuring that if the boss keeps picking up the phone she was in great shape.

The Digital Angel Throws Her Hat In The Ring

Two years later her persistence paid off, and she joined Pixar in 1993 as producer of the commercial group. Her hope was that she would be a producer for Toy Story, but she realized that she would need to cut her teeth in commercials in order to prove that she was the right person for the job.

Her determination and the hard work of her group enabled Pixar to earn the funds necessary to finance Toy Story. “Our group of 25 people ended up getting Toy Story out the door,” said Ms. Anderson. Mr. Guggenheim even honored her work by bestowing her the title “Digital Angel” in the Toy Story credits, which she had often been called at her previous job.

Toy Story proved to be a smash hit, and enabled Pixar to move forward with their sophomore project, A Bug’s Life. For that film, Ms. Anderson didn’t bother to throw her hat in the ring for the producer job because she had only done commercials and knew nothing about marketing or licensing.

But when she saw the applicants coming through the door, she experienced her second epiphany. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing but neither do they,” she thought. She wrote to then Pixar CEO Steve Jobs and then Chief Technical Officer and now Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios President Ed Catmull an email entitled “Deep Thoughts” – a letter that basically pitched Ms. Anderson for the role of producer at Pixar.

During the interview process she met with the top brass at Disney in order to prove her mettle, since “Disney owned all of Pixar’s stuff at that time,” she said.

Her enthusiasm impressed the executives at Disney, but she still needed more time to learn the ends and outs of producing.

“Disney loves charts and graphs and analysis – I love looking at that too but I cannot produce it,” she said. She ended up getting an associate producer job rather than a producer job when the process was complete.

The day she didn’t get the gig Mr. Jobs personally apologized to her. When she told him she would accept the job he promptly asked, “Why would I say yes?”

“Because A,” she said, “I have no leverage, and B, I have a lot to learn.” This was the answer that Mr. Jobs wanted to hear. “Steve said they told him that if you were the right person for the job I’d take it.”

From Assistant Producer to Producer

A Bug’s Life had to prove that Pixar was not a one hit wonder, said Ms. Anderson.

Steve Jobs had warned her that after you have the big hit you quite often have the sophomore slump. “Then Antz came out and there was a lot of pressure,” she remarked. “Every time I turned the corner, [Steve] would say – hi Darla, is the film great yet? We all felt the pressure. We have to make it great.”

The Pixar team rose to the challenge, proving that Pixar had what it took to sustain itself as a feature film company. And Ms. Anderson’s excellent work on A Bug’s Life led to her being named a producer for many of Pixar’s future films, including Monsters, Inc. Cars, and Toy Story 3. As a producer, Ms. Anderson wears many hats and overseas all aspects production, but the key, she says, is the story.

“My central focus is story for obvious reasons,” she said. “Story is the most important thing…Everything reports to story for me.”

Story is also her favorite part of the process because it’s so difficult.

“You don’t ever have it. If you’re really trying to tell some truth it’s just a beast that will wrestle you to the ground.” She adds that being a little ADD makes for a good producer. “I get to jump from thing to thing and get paid for it and not get in trouble.”

“My focus is this big creative bent,” she said. “Everyday is super hyper different. Marketing. Casting. Music. Putting together the right team.”

Work/Life Balance: Reality or Myth?

“I don’t have a career mantra – be honest, put yourself out there, go for it,” said Ms. Anderson on her career goals. This assuredness and ability to stay true to herself enabled Ms. Anderson to come out of the closet, earn her stripes at Pixar and in 2008 marry fellow Pixar Producer Kori Rae.

And she admits that like many men and women, work/life balance can be a difficult process.

“We suck at it,” she said with a laugh. However both she and Ms. Rae have found ways to encompass both their professional and personal lives. “We’re allowed to talk about work until we get off the Bay Bridge.” She remarks that having a spouse who also works in the film industry is helpful, as they understand what it takes to get a film into production.

“We compliment each other on advice. If you’re a producer you’re going to work a lot of hours. We’re fortunate that we can work sane hours but it’s for four years.”

On Being a Leader and a Woman in the Industry

Having someone else in your corner, whether that is a spouse, mentor or friend, can help navigate the difficult waters of the industry, particularly when it comes to women and their history in film and animation. 

“You don’t want to be conscious of it but if I look back I can see if I were a guy things might have panned out differently,” she said. Fortunately, her life experiences, professional sponsorship, mentoring and friendship from individuals like Mr. Jobs and John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, along with her character and determination have enabled her to persevere through trying times.

“I grew up as a tomboy and had friends who were boys. When Hilary [Clinton] ran I woke up. The way the media was handling that bothered me. I rolled up my sleeves and decided to start mentoring and speaking,” she said. Her mentorship has included speaking and working with interns at Pixar, participating in lectures across the country and helping women to make inroads in the industry.

She finds that both women and men are hard on themselves on the job, and that women in particular punish themselves more when they make mistakes or do not speak up, especially in meetings.

Working alongside Mr. Jobs enabled Ms. Anderson to see the power and trust that were created from speaking honestly on the issues.

“He was very direct and he appreciated direct feedback,” said Ms. Anderson. “I’m not afraid to say I didn’t get that. If I don’t understand it then everybody didn’t get it or I need to hear it again. I think that’s universal for all of us. You have unlimited silver bullets to use.”

Also, she has realized that the times she has received constructive criticism were often a blessing in disguise. There have been times when colleagues have pulled her to the side to address things she may have said, and Ms. Anderson appreciates their candor.

“For somebody like me, there’s a lot of great things I possess, but I need a friend to tell me – maybe you shouldn’t say that,” she said. “When I get that feedback, I think thank you, I want to become a better person.”

If you fail she says, don’t apologize, just pick yourself back up.

“I’m really hard on myself,” said Ms. Anderson. “I use that to drive myself. [So] I would say lighten up and be kinder to yourself.”

No matter a person’s gender, there is something that everyone can excel at, concluded Ms. Anderson, whether that is working at Pixar or participating in other creative endeavors.

“I have this faith there’s a place for everybody. We’re all here for a reason. We belong on a team,” she said.

“I want everybody to be ambitious. There’s enough for everybody.”

Special thanks to Darla Anderson and the staff at Pixar for helping us create this excellent members only event!

For more information on Women in Animation San Francisco:

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Intern Fridays: Disney Intern Nicole Ridgwell

Intern Fridays features interviews with former Interns at animation, film, and video game studios. Today we bring you Nicole Ridgwell, former intern at Walt Disney Animation Studios.  Enjoy and stay tuned for future Intern Friday Interviews!

What is your current job title and where do you work?

I’m finishing my last year at Academy of Art University studying animation. I also teach music lessons and play in a band called Sioux City Kid. 

What does your job entail?

I teach private violin lessons and preschool music classes, and I teach a program called Music Together where kids and their families participate in group classes. I just finished a pacific northwest tour with my band, where I sing and play violin.

What inspired you to become an animator and a musician?

I’ve always loved art and music. My family lived in a trailer without electricity when I was a kid, so I spent most of my time painting and playing violin. In high school I got involved in theatre, music and art. I became inspired after seeing how deeply my philosophies were influenced by what I watched. Once I graduated I spent about a year as a professional musician playing in bands and teaching. The lifestyle was really fun but I knew I wanted something more; I wanted to leave my mark on the world. I realized that animation combines everything I love together; painting, drawing, music, acting, and collaboration. A good animator can make people laugh, make them cry, and can change the way they see the world. I applied to Academy of Art University and moved to San Francisco, and have been here ever since.

Where did you study?

I’ll be finishing my BFA in animation this winter at Academy of Art University. I also took classes at Animation Mentor and The Animation Collaborative in Emeryville.

Why did you choose to apply to Walt Disney Animation Studios for the internship?

As a kid, I was hugely inspired by Disney films. My family had no TV but our neighbors had almost every animated film on a giant shelf in their living room. I remember lying on their rug watching Aladdin on repeat, then running outside to pretend we were flying on a magic carpet. Disney films nurtured my imagination. The first three years I lived in San Francisco I worked as an actress at The Cinderella Company, playing Disney princesses at kid’s events. It was an incredible experience, seeing how much Disney inspires kids and affects their worldviews. Ever since then I think working for Disney has hovered in the back of my mind.

What did you submit for your portfolio and how did you prepare for the submission?

I submitted my demo reel, letters of recommendation, resume, cover letter, and drawings online in Disney’s careers section. I prepared by asking teachers that I respected to write letters of recommendation as early as possible, and I made sure my portfolio had only my strongest drawings. I included gesture drawings, animal drawings, and a few illustrations. Same thing with my demo reel- I only included my best work. I included a two person dialogue, single person dialogue, pantomime, and a body mechanics sequence.

What do you believe separated you from others who were also applying for the internship?

I was shocked when I got the call; I’m still not entirely sure why they picked my reel over all the others. Our mentors at Disney mentioned to us that they picked Reece (the other intern) because his reel was hilarious and made them laugh, and they picked mine because they felt my acting was genuine. I think the best thing to separate yourself from other candidates is to animate shots that are personal to you. I don’t choose shots based on what studios want to see, I choose shots based on what I want to animate. I think that’s what makes my reel unique. 

What was the interview process like for the Disney internship?

There actually wasn’t any interview process. I was animating in lab at Academy when I got a call from Matt telling me the internship was mine if I wanted it. The next day I started planning my trip to LA! 

What department did you intern in and what specific tasks did you accomplish as an intern?

I was one of two CG animation interns in an eleven person group composed of visdev, story, modeling, rigging, texturing, TD, production, and animation interns.  Disney had a giant room devoted to talent development on the first floor of the building where we worked. As a summer intern group, we made a minute and a half short film from scratch- all the way from story through lighting and sound. While technically my only job was to animate, all the interns were very involved in the whole film-making process. In addition to the film we also worked on outside projects with our mentors.

What was the best and most unexpected thing you encountered as an intern for Disney?

The culture. I had never worked at an animation studio before, and coming from a background as a musician and actor, I was expecting it to be a high stress environment. But while everyone does work hard, it is one of the most fun places I’ve ever been. Everyone is so friendly, helpful, and kind. My mentor Michael went completely above and beyond his duty, often visiting me multiple times a day to give feedback, and sending me music playlists to listen to while I worked. I felt welcomed and included from the moment I stepped into the building and looked up at Mary Blair’s art hanging all over the walls.

How did the internship prepare you for your current career?

I definitely have a lot more speed and confidence in my school assignments than I did before I went to Disney. I think the biggest thing that changed about my work is appeal. I really learned there that you can’t let the rig dictate what shapes you make. I also learned a lot about how to work with a team and hit deadlines.

What is your opinion on paid versus unpaid internships?

I believe internships should be paid. It’s a tough question because I know any chance to get your foot in the door is a rare opportunity these days. I am lucky enough that I’ve never been in a position where I had to work without getting paid.

What advice do you have for aspiring artists who want to intern at a studio or game company?

Be yourself! Make sure your work is unique to you and your interests. Work hard and don’t give up. It’s a competitive industry but don’t believe it when they say that your reel doesn’t get seen if you send it cold. I sent my reel to Disney cold and it still got chosen. If you are going to an art school, make sure you go beyond their curriculum in your studies. Take outside classes and motivate yourself to learn as much as you can. 

Thank you so much for interviewing me, it’s been an honor!

Thank you Nicole for the interview! You can view Nicole's work at her website:

http://nicoleridgwell.blogspot.com/

And at Vimeo/Twitter:

https://vimeo.com/nicoleridgwell

https://twitter.com/nicoleridgwell

And for more info on Women in Animation San Francisco visit our Facebook Page at:

https://www.facebook.com/wiasf

and Twitter at:

https://twitter.com/WIASanFrancisco

Guest Columnist Jenny Lerew: A Commentary on Women in Animation

In the 1970s there was one must-have for every aspiring young animator's bookshelf: Christopher Finch's oversized, heavy and beautiful The Art of Walt Disney.  Illustrated books detailing the history of animation, and more specifically, the Disney Studio, were almost nonexistent at the time; and at over 400 pages the Finch book was something I pored over for hours. I'd already fixed on the idea of being an animator, seeing it as the perfect career to marry my love of drawing, film, and performance.  I considered animation to be "the illusion of life": turning lines on a page into characters that lived and breathed in an invented world of color, design and graphic imagination.

Every page of Finch's book was filled with story sketches, animator's roughs, background paintings, and photographs– not just of Walt Disney, but also of his artists working at their desks, drawing just as I did and looking not much older than I was. But they were working on such memorable films as Snow White, Pinocchio, and Bambi.  Decades before I was born they'd managed to achieve the gold standard: working at the greatest animation studio in the world on films whose influence would long outlive them.

The old images fascinated me and I wanted to know more about them. One was particularly striking.  It showed a young woman, Retta Scott, animating on Fantasia.  While far from being an expert in either social history or 1930s studio-hiring practices, I knew that a woman employed as an animator in those days was rare, and that this had been the case from the beginning. The form of cartooning which preceded and inspired animated cartoons and newspaper comic strips, also had many more men than women employed in the field, and this disparity carried over into the new medium of animated cartoons. With rare exceptions, cartooning/animation work became a "guy's thing," though the intended audience for the cartoons and comic strips was both male and female.

So, by the mid-1930s, it seemed that any woman with artistic talent or experience who applied to a studio for work in animation was limited to a career in the "ink and paint" department, doing the crucial but creatively stultifying tasks of tracing animators' drawings on celluloid and painting the underside. This was by necessity an assembly-line sort of job, and while the women who did it were rightfully proud of their skills, the work certainly didn't allow for individual expression.  But there was Retta Scott, engaged in what was a traditionally male job. She was an anomaly—a female animator!  I later learned that Scott had worked in the story department as well as in animation, and in fact, there had been other women assigned to the story and development departments, including Sylvia Moberly-Holland, Bianca Majolie, and most famously, Retta's friend Mary Blair, whose career and influence would extend further than many of her colleagues'.

In the 1930s and '40s, a confluence of talent, opportunity, timing and connections were required for a talented woman to land a creative job at Disney.  This was also true for the men but to a lesser degree. It's impossible to know how many women who aspired to be animation artists were actively discouraged from trying, but certainly some were, as evidenced by the Disney Studio's 1930s form letter sent in response to women inquiring about jobs as artists. It stated that "women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men." While clearly untrue when one considers the placement of the women previously mentioned, the letter nonetheless expressed the company's attitude towards the idea of women artists in general.

This was unfortunate since not only were women at the Studio making artistic contributions, their work was also having a positive impact on the history of animation. The work of Mary Blair, in particular, caused a transformation in the look of Disney animation, and the opportunity for her to create stunning art was due to the direct involvement of Walt Disney, whose appreciation of her unique style and sensibility was not hindered at all by her gender. But Blair was a stunning exception; for most women, the opportunities to achieve personal distinction in animation were simply not available. Had it been otherwise, it's anyone's guess who else might have made her mark as Blair was able to.

Throughout my working life I've been asked the question, "Why aren't there more women in animation?" and I've never had an answer. I can only speak for myself and explain why I do what I do—a story that differs little if at all from that told by my female and male colleagues.  But while the question still gets asked, things have changed more rapidly in recent years than ever before. As a student at Calarts in the late 1980s, I was in a class where the guys far outnumbered the girls, and for the first decade or so I was able to tick off the names of all the other females who were somehow involved in animation.

Now, there are so many women working in the field that I can't begin to keep track of them all– many working as I do in story, but also in visual development, animation, character design, and every other classification. Online blogs by aspiring female animation students are even more numerous, and from a cursory check, show ever-increasing sophistication and range in personal style and storytelling ability.  It's a wonderful state of affairs for my industry and for everyone who's involved with the art of animation, and it'll be fascinating to see what the future will look like when a picture of a woman creating animation will draw no special notice at all.

Jenny Lerew is an animation story artist whose numerous film and television show credits include Animaniacs, Bee Movie, Shrek 2 and the soon to be released Mr. Peabody & Sherman. She is also the author of The Art of Disney/Pixar Brave available through Chronicle Books. 

You can see her at the upcoming Panel Discussion: Women in Animation hosted by the Walt Disney Family Museum and held at ILM on Saturday, March 15th. 

For more information on Jenny Lerew please visit her website at http://blackwingdiaries.blogspot.com/ or follow her on Twitter @blackwingjenny

Thank you to Jenny and the Walt Disney Family Museum for making this article and the upcoming talk possible.