Jackie Huang:
"I loved animation from really early. I think I saw one of those behind the scenes videos. People drawing just lines on paper and then when they moved the pages together it all moved, and there was something so magical about that to me. That’s what I wanted to do.
Art was kind of like magic and I wanted to bring that and keep that as I grew up.
I graduated from USC, and then I wound up going to ArtCenter. I wanted to work in feature animation. While I was there I was trying to fill up my schedule for a semester and so I wound up taking a course called 3D Paper Engineering. I actually didn’t know that I was any good at it and it probably wasn’t until the very end of the class that I realized how natural it came to me?
I did, like, portfolio reviews where you go to professionals and you show them what you’re doing. and so many of them would get to, like, the very back of the section find all the paper art, and be like,
“What is this!”
“You really should do this.”
I…felt like…a failure, actually. If I stopped pursuing animation and went to pursue paper art, really that meant that I wasn’t going to achieve my childhood dream of wanting to work for Disney.
One of my mentors asked me, “If you got a job in animation, would you do paper art anyway?”
And I said, “Yes.” And she’s like, “Then just do it. Just go and be the best paper artist in the world.”
Disney has a gallery in Downtown Disney called WonderGround, and WonderGround picks artists that have unique styles and then asks them to do freelance work for them and reinterpret their characters with their own personal style. I got contacted asking if I would be willing to participate.
I was like, “Of course! How can I say no?”
The only way to figure out your own path is to tell the story that you were born to tell. From the lines on the paper that can dance and become an animation, and now it’s using everyday tools that people encounter. Paper, scissors, glue…and rearranging those into something more extraordinary.
This is, probably the best thing in the world. I want that wow moment, that magic moment when they open a pop-up or look at a paper piece and come up to it and have to touch it. And then bring someone else to come look at it too.
For me, seeing art changed my life.
I hope that my art winds up sparking the imagination of another person. Encourage them to do something that they have always wanted to do. Or if it makes them feel something so they know that they’re not the only ones who feel that as well? Maybe hoping that happens as well one day?"
