By Austin Gonzales
NEW YORK CITY – Animation is a medium that connects individuals through stories that films aren’t able to quite capture. A regular live-action production would take an entire film crew to assemble someone’s visionary image. Still, Benny Candie’s content that works in the animation industry comes from the heart. Candie sat down with the Collegiate to talk to us about their experience so far in the industry and the problems animators are facing today.
Candie moved from Michigan to New York City to attend and eventually graduate from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) with a BFA in Animation. Thanks to SVA, Benny worked on several projects, including coloring and clean-up for SpongeBob 360 2 VR.
Candie’s skills would catch the attention of The Future Perfect Project, an organization that helps amplify the voices of LGBTQ+ youth in the United States. The project would interview people and find animators whose style would fit that individual’s story. The Future Perfect Project reached out to Candie on two separate occasions for animations, as well as a character design workshop.
“It was a workshop for mostly high school teenagers to learn about designing a character. I gave them shapes, circles, triangles, and squares to start out with and go from there. These different shapes are unique to character design and reflect the world because nobody looks the same. Maybe their character has scars, maybe they are in a wheelchair, maybe they’re Muslim or Jewish. I wanted them to know to now be afraid of trying new things.”
Candie’s talents with The Future Perfect Project would open more doors in the industry and with a hope for change behind the scenes for BIPOC animators. “It’s easy for things on screen to watered down and pandered to, so I appreciate that there are people working on these shows that are LGBTQ+. The people working on these things are making stories that are personally connected to them. Unfortunately, some in the industry don’t even bother to try, and the entire team would still be made up of cis-gendered white males.” Although the progress animation has made over the years has been tremendous thanks to shows like Cartoon Network’s ‘Steven Universe’ or Disney Channel’s “The Owl House” featuring gay, bi, and even trans characters.
In 2020, Cartoon Network contacted Candie to work for their Adult Swim series, “Teenage Euthanasia” at the word of two separate animator colleagues. After being tested for background and character layouts, CN would hire Candie to work on the show as a character layout artist for five months of production. All that work for big-time TV companies hasn’t stopped Candie from working on their personal projects. In their spare time, Candie loves to make short films for their website’s portfolio and hopes to have it out by next year.
“I have it all boarded and designed, I just need to do my tie-downs and production on it. That is my goal! I miss making short films. They are my favorite things.”
You can check out all of Benny Candie’s work on Candie.me and you can follow their Instagram/X under @lovingparts.
