From Sacramento to Disney, animator lives out his childhood dream on the screen
When Sacramento native Andrew Feliciano was in kindergarten, he was told to write down what he wanted to be when he grew up. He confidently answered “Disney animator.” It’s a good thing his mom kept that paper, because in the credits of Disney’s “Raya and the Last Dragon,” you will find Feliciano’s name as an animation supervisor.
It’s a dream achieved thanks to dedication, perseverance, and a little help from a Sacramento school nurse.
“The first animated film I saw was ‘The Jungle Book,’” Feliciano said. “I loved that movie. I loved Baloo, he was my favorite. I watched that movie every single day.”
From then on, Feliciano put his focus on drawing. He started drawing Disney characters in the 1990s.
“I kept things from The Sacramento Bee,” he said. “I actually found one recently, when ‘Hercules’ came out (in 1997) there was a big movie poster in The Sacramento Bee. I thought it looked so cool, so I would keep things like that and I would always set them down next to me and draw a copy of it. That was my early training.”
He also watched shows on PBS that taught kids how to draw to learn more about things like perspective. Other early animated favorites were “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “The Lion King.” Are you catching the Disney theme? All of the animated classics came out in the 1990s.
“’The Lion King’ was a life-changing experience for me,” he said. “I watched ‘The Lion King’ for the first time at the drive-in movie theater in Sacramento. It was a double feature, and ‘Lion King’ was the first movie. We had a minivan, and my dad took the seats out and stuck them on the ground. And, spoiler alert, when Mufasa died, I lost my mind. I couldn’t believe what happened! I was so shocked. I thought ‘This can’t be real.’”
If he hadn’t been completely sold on animating before, that movie did it.
It wasn’t just the animation itself that Feliciano became interested in — he started paying attention to certain animators as well. He was so interested, he would stay through the credits of animated films to see who worked on them. He started recognizing Glen Keane’s name as supervising editor for Ariel in “The Little Mermaid,” the Beast in “Beauty and the Beast,” and Aladdin from “Aladdin.”
Feliciano said his high school classmates might have thought he was a little weird for knowing so much about an animator.
While other kids might have found it odd to be so focused on being an animator, his determination paid off. Everyone at Capital Christian knew Feliciano wanted to be an animator, including the school nurse.
It was the school nurse who arranged for her cousin Matthew Bates, an animator on Disney’s Oliver and Company, to meet with Feliciano when he was 16 and give him some advice. Bates was impressed with Feliciano’s talent and especially his motivation. Bates encouraged Feliciano to go to college to study life drawing and animal drawing, and work on still life to develop that side of the craftsmanship.
The next step was a couple of years at American River College to take art classes and also play football. After that it was California State University, Fullerton for more art classes. From the outside, it looks like Feliciano had laser focus on his goal and never strayed from it. That’s exactly how it was — no backup plan.
“A friend of mine in high school asked me ‘What happens if you don’t end up at Disney?’” Feliciano said. “I was so blindly confident, I said ‘that’s not an option.’”
Coming out of college, his skills weren’t where they needed to be to work at Disney. He continued to sharpen his skills and started freelancing while working at the YMCA to make ends meet. Meanwhile, Tony Bancroft, Feliciano’s mentor, Disney animator and director of “Mulan,” took him under his wing.
“He helped me continue to grow and introduced me to people where I got my first chance in freelance work,” Feliciano said.
He spent a little time at Nickelodeon as well. His first love is traditional animation, but he took more classes for computer animation. At one point he was working full-time at Nickelodeon during the day, doing freelance TV work in the evening, and then doing classes every second of the weekend that he could.
It all paid off and the goal was accomplished. Feliciano arrived at Disney. “Raya and the Last Dragon” is his first credit as a supervising animator, but he also worked on “Frozen II,” “Ralph Breaks the Internet” and “Moana,” among others. For “Raya,” Feliciano oversaw the animation of the characters of Tong and Little Noi, and the crowds — which are everything from humans to animals to bugs.
His job involves developing how characters behave and their mannerisms.
“It’s all very exciting to be a part of,” Feliciano said.
Creating a Disney animated movie is not a short process. When Feliciano got started on “Raya,” it had already been worked on for a couple years in story development. Then there was a year of pre-production, and finally a year of animation production.
“Raya and the Last Dragon” was released Friday, March 5, and when you watch it you can look for Feliciano’s favorite scenes — shadow puppets at the beginning, and later in the Tail Ruins, when the characters enter the temple.
“It reminds me of Indiana Jones, and I’m an Indiana Jones fan,” Feliciano said. “I liked feeling like I was a part of so many different aspects of the movie from start to finish. It was fun to have that kind of involvement.”
“Raya and the Last Dragon” will be available in theaters mostly outside California, which doesn’t yet allow indoor gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic. It will also be on Disney+ with premier access.
