Who can write a letter?
Any professional animator within the industry that would like to share their story to encourage and inspire aspiring animators to keep pushing on towards their dreams! It doesn’t matter if you have been in the industry for 50 years or 1 year, you have something to share that is unique and personal to YOU.
Where do I send my letter?
You can mail it to Willie Downs, 605 West Main Street, Whitehouse, TX 75791, or if you’d rather, you can email me a scan of it to wfdowns3@gmail.com.
Are you going to publish a book?
My goal is to eventually publish a book full of the letters once I have enough content. Their is a long ways to go before I have enough letters to publish a book, but their isn’t any hurry either. This is an ongoing project and when the time is right and enough letters have been written, I’m sure a book will follow. When the book is published, 100% of the proceeds will be donated. I would love to start a scholarship funded by the proceeds of the book, that can help send an aspiring animator to school who can’t afford it. If starting a scholarship isn’t feasible, then alternatively I could donate the funds to an animation charity or organization.
Who runs The Animator Letters Project?
The Animator Letters Project was started by Willie Downs, who is currently a student at Animation Mentor, set to graduate in September of 2013. He also keeps up the blog, posting new letters in his spare time.
What inspired you to start the project?
I was in the middle of going to school for something I didn’t have a passion for, and knew in my heart that I wanted to become an animator. Unfortunately though, I felt trapped in my decision and was facing uncertainty about switching degrees. Looking for advice, I wrote to animators Aaron Hartline at Pixar, and Jim Vanderkeyl at DreamWorks. Both of them wrote me back, giving me amazing words of advice and encouragement to follow my dreams and to not give up. I posted the letter I got from Aaron on my blog, and a very popular blog called ‘Letters of Note‘ found the letter and posted it on their website. Within no time, the letter had exploded across the internet and around the world, and I started receiving responses from people just like me who had found encouragement in my letter. This sparked something inside me! “If this one letter written to me can impact other people’s lives…then what if I can get more professional animators to write letters to aspiring animators, encouraging them to not give up on their dreams!” At that moment, The Animator Letters Project was born.
I have a question that isn’t answered here.
Feel free to contact me here with any questions you may have, and I would be happy to answer them for you!
Willie Downs
