I arrived in Arizona on August 21, 1996, stepping into a new chapter of my life to work on Anastasia, the very first feature film of Fox Animation Studios. After two days of trying to shake off the jet lag and settle into a new country, they called me in to start. I was still exhausted, still adjusting, but I showed up because this was the opportunity I had dreamed of.
On that first day, I looked calm and relaxed at my desk, but inside I was nervous. I hadn’t touched a pencil in three months, and suddenly I was handed a musical sequence: Anastasia singing and dancing, with Pooka bouncing along beside her. It was a beautiful scene, but it was also a test. My hands felt rusty, my mind was racing, and I could feel the weight of starting over in a new studio, a new culture, a new level of expectation.
Even with five years of experience and 55 Hanna‑Barbera titles behind me, I knew I had to adjust quickly. Fox had a different rhythm, a different creative energy, and I had to push myself to rise to it. I had to prove not just to them, but to myself that I belonged there.
But once I started drawing, something familiar returned. The nervousness didn’t disappear, but the joy of animation pushed through it. That moment, captured in the photo, shows me smiling and focused but it doesn’t show the courage it took to sit at that desk, pick up that pencil, and begin again.
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