I grew up with a pencil in hand, and would spend hours drawing, getting lost in the graphite dust as it speared up my arms. When I wasn’t drawing, I was getting swept up into the magical world of classic Disney animated films. I carried this love of art and animation with me as I grew older, and continued to push my skills.

In junior high, I applied for the home study correspondence course at the Art Instruction Schools. This is the famous school know for having Charles Shultz, the creator of the Snoopy comics, as a student.

At some point during high school, I had the realization that people made the animated films that I loved to watch. It was while watching the “making of” special at the end of one of my Pixar DVD’s that opened my eyes to the world of animation in a new way.

I started researching online how to become an animator, and came across many of your well known art schools like California Institute of the Arts and The Art Institute. But one new school called Animation Mentor Online Animation School really stood out to me because of the unique model. They had working professional animators that taught students virtually all over the world. They were opening their doors a few months before I graduated high school, giving me a lot to consider.

During my junior year of high school, I joined the Texas Army National Guard, which helped me pay for my education, regardless of what I chose.

I decided to apply to the Art Institute of Los Angeles, and surprisingly enough, I got accepted! However, LA was a long ways from my small town in East Texas, and after talking with my parents, I decided to apply to the Art Institute of Dallas. Unfortunately, this go around I did not get accepted based on my math scores, oddly enough. Additionally, I toured the school, and as I walked the halls, I looked at all the amazing student artwork displayed on the walls and felt a bit insecure in my abilities. I didn’t feel my skills could compete with what I saw, so I stopped pursuing art school, and decided to just go to the local junior college to get my basic classes out of the way.

When 2008 came around, I was deployed to Iraq with the Army, and while overseas, I decided I wanted to go to aviation school to be a pilot. There was a top rated aviation school in East Texas called LeTourneau University. As I was getting close to coming home from Iraq, I applied, but was once again, turned down. They suggested I go back to the junior college and work on my GPA, which is what I did as soon as I got back home.

After getting some junior classes under my belt, I reapplied to the aviation school, and this time got accepted. As exciting as it was to get to learn about airplanes and dream about flying a jet…I quickly realized that I was a bit out of my element. I did not have the engineering or analytical mind that many of the other students did, and was really struggling in several of the classes.

After starting my second semester, I continued to struggle more and more. It wasn’t long before I found myself spending hours researching animation schools late at night. I rediscovered Animation Mentor, and wished I would have chosen to go there instead of where I was at.

Feeling discouraged, I picked up a pen and paper and wrote a letter to a Pixar animator named Aaron Hartline, who was also a mentor at Animation Mentor. I told him my story and asked for his advice. I didn’t really expect to hear back from him, but sure enough, a few weeks later I got an inspiring letter in the mail from Aaron.

I knew it was time for me to make a change, so I talked with my parents and got their blessing to leave the aviation school to pursue a career in animation.

I applied to Animation Mentor, but as my luck would have it, I was once again turned down. This shook me up a bit, but I didn’t let it deter me. I did what they asked me to do, and then applied again.

That summer, I took a road trip with a friend from LeTourneau out to California. Aaron agreed to give us a private tour of Pixar, which is closed to the general public. While there, I was talking to Aaron about how I got denied the first time I applied to Animation Mentor, but how I applied again and was waiting for their decision.

Within 30 minutes of us leaving the studio, I got an email on my phone from Animation Mentor telling me I got accepted into the school! I was on cloud nine for the rest of the day.

When I got home, I posted the letter to my personal blog where I usually wrote about stuff that nobody cared about except maybe my parents. However, in this case, a very popular blog called Letters of Note found my letter and reposted it on their website on September 23, 2010.

Immediately, the letter went viral and was being read by people around the world. I was getting emails from people I didn’t know across the globe telling me they had read Aaron’s letter and it was encouraging them to pursue their own dreams of becoming an animator.

Shortly after, Aaron wrote about the experience on his own personal blog.

“In the halls at Pixar co-workers would stop me and told me they read my letter,” Hartline said. “I gotta admit in this digital age of Facebook and Twitter, I felt like is there anything not private anymore? But then after reading the comments and emails I've gotten these last few months about how it inspired them as well, I was a bit taken back.”

As I processed what was happening, I had the though, “if this one letter written to me could inspire so many people around the world, then what would happen if I could get other professional animators to write letters to aspiring animators as well?”

That was the inception of The Animator Letters Project.

The second letter I got was from DreamWorks animator, Jim Vanderkeyl, who I had been corresponding with via email. He had been ensuring me that I was not too old to become an animator, sharing his own story as encouragement. Once I started the project, I asked Jim if he would write a letter, and he eagerly agreed.

From there, I watched the credits of the animation DVD’s I owned, wrote down every animator, director and producer that worked on the films then looked up the address to the studio online. Once I had that information, I wrote a bunch of letter. Hundreds of letters. I stuffed all the envelopes, mailed them off, and over the next few weeks and months, more letters started to trickle in.

I reached out to a few of the people that had contacted me, and asked if they could share how the project had impacted them. I had the idea to create a promo video that would help get the word out about the project, and encourage professional animators to write a letter.

My next step was to start reaching out to animators online by email, Facebook, and Twitter.

Twitter proved exceptionally helpful with spreading the word, especially when Pixar tweeted about the project to it’s nearly 12 million followers.

A few months later, Lee Unkrich, director of Pixar’s Coco and Toy Story 3 shared a link to the project’s website, giving it a huge boost in traffic.

Heck, even the legendary magician, David Copperfield gave the project a shoutout on Twitter to his nearly one million followers!

For the next couple of years, the project was getting a lot of attention.

On February 1, 2012, Brenda Chapman, writer and director of Pixar’s Brave, took to her blog to call other industry professionals to write a letter.

KCRW the Business brought several of the animators who contributed to the project on the air to read their letters, and I was even a guest on the show at one point.

Don’t get me wrong: It was quite the challenge to gather most of the letters. While some responded to my first request, others took YEARS of me following up with them before they finally wrote a letter. Many of them had their own lives happening, making it difficult for them to find the time to write. Perhaps they were in crunch time at the studio, or just had a baby - but regardless, I believed their story was worth sharing and would inspire others so I kept asking year after year.

John Musker, director of Disney’s Moana, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, sums it up perfectly in the beginning of his letter.

“I have been asked to write a missive that may in some small way inspire you, my unseen reader,” Musker said. “That is a tremendous burden to lay on anyone. I feel like I'm writing a commencement speech for a school that has yet to be built, for a student body that is bodiless. But I will try, because Willie Downs has pestered me no end.”

Even Lee Unkrich, expressed how I hounded him for years to write a letter. When he finally decided to write his letter before retiring from Pixar, it turned out to be just as inspiring as I expected.

“I feel like I’m the last person who should be giving you any advice,” Unkrich said. “Willie has been hounding me for YEARS to write a letter for his project, but it never felt right.”

Fast forward to 2015, I had 44 handwritten letters of encouragement written by animators at Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks and other major studios. I had already reached out to a number of publishers to try to publish the letters without any luck. Not knowing how to proceed, I contacted a few of the people within the animation industry that I knew had published books and asked if they knew who I could talk to about getting the letters published.

An executive producer on several huge Disney films responded and asked to talk with me on the phone to discuss the project. After telling him more about it, he loved the idea and told me he would pitch it to a few publishers.

A couple weeks later, I got a Facebook message from him telling me that the senior publisher at Disney Editions was interested, and asking for a proposal. I quickly put one together and he forwarded it on to the publisher. I waited a bit longer before finally getting an email from the publisher telling me they were interested in publishing The Animator Letters Project.

Since Disney Editions signed on the book, a total of 100 animators, directors and producers from within the animation industry have handwritten letters. These include legendary names in animations such as Pete Docter, Don Hahn, Byron Howard, Gary Trousdale, Roger Allers, Gary Goldman, Brenda Chapman, John Musker, Ron Clements, and Rob Minkoff.

The publication date has been pushed a few times, but currently, the book is set be released in 2023.

As for me: I loved Animation Mentor, I loved the people, I loved learning the art of animation - I loved it all. It was a tribe of people where I truly felt like I belonged, and it was a beautiful and exciting time of my life.

October of 2012, I got engaged to my now wife and started to think about how I was going to provide for our new family. The animation industry was going through a rough patch when a major studio went bankrupt, leaving hundred of professional animators without jobs. I saw this and panicked. I knew I had a long ways to go before I had the skills to work in a studio. So, I chose to quite Animation Mentor and go back to school and pursue a business degree.

To be honest, after leaving LeTourneau a couple years prior, I didn’t believe I would ever return to a traditional university setting. My GPA had tanked during my second semester there, and I thought my college years were over. However, here I was and after a few years, in 2017 I walked the stage and graduated with a bachelor's degree in business administration.

I won’t lie here. It’s been a very long, hard road. There are many days where I wish I would have pushed forward towards my animation dream, because I was so close I could taste it.

There have also been many days where I have felt insecure about this project, feeling like a fraud. How can I release a book about not giving up when I gave up?

But then I realized that life is full of big dreams, ideas and opportunities and it’s up to us to make the most of them.

In 2017, my wife and I had out first child, which changed my life forever as I was blessed to be a dad to a little girl. Today, we have three young kids, and my family is my whole world.

Their have been several times I have tried to pick up where I left off with animation, but have come to realize that, for me, the time has come and gone.

And that’s ok.

I may not be an animator at Disney or Pixar like I imaged for years, but perhaps through The Animator Letters Project I will inspire you to pursue your own dreams and give you the motivation to not give up.

Sometimes life has plans of it’s own and we make the best decisions we can. In those moments, doors we could have never imagined open in front of us, guiding us towards new adventures.

Today, I work as a communications professional within our family business, and use my skills as a storyteller in my job as a public affairs specialist with the U.S. Air Force Reserve. This gives me the amazing opportunity to tell the Air Force story through photojournalism and broadcast journalism.

I will always be a storyteller, and my love of animation is just as strong today as it ever was.

I hope you will be inspired by my story and all of the stories that make up this beautiful project to discover what it is that you want in life, and go after it wholeheartedly.