When Amir Avni was growing up in Israel in the nineties, his friends watched anything that was on TV. But for a kid, Mr. Avni had pretty refined taste: He favoured the ultra-expressive, wacky characters on The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and The Ren and Stimpy Show, two American imports by Ottawa native John Kricfalusi.
By the time he was 14, Mr. Avni was flirting with the idea of making his own career out of drawing – inspired largely by the work of his favourite animator. One day, just like millions of kids before him, he penned a letter to his idol, complete with drawings he’d toiled over for hours.
Fan letters are a dime a dozen for their high-profile recipients, but for the senders, they’re highly personal confessions often accompanied by earnest requests for guidance. Requests that usually go unanswered.
What would make Mr. Avni the envy of that legion of starry-eyed kids is that he actually received a reply.
The response was written by Mr. Kricfalusi himself: a total of eight pages with instructional drawings that sprang from the margins of the yellow note paper, and a copy of animator Preston Blair’s pivotal work How to Animate Film Cartoons.
A dozen years have passed since then.
Mr. Avni is now 25 and living in Oakville, Ont., a few months shy of graduating from Sheridan College’s animation program. He’s done work for a spin-off of Ren and Stimpy, contributed to an animated feature film, and been recognized by the Hollywood chapter of the International Animated Film Society. No big deal.
When Mr. Avni reflects on the success he’s enjoyed, it’s impossible for him not to trace it all back to Mr. Kricfalusi’s letter.
“I kept looking at it for inspiration. If I was in a slump I went back and read it,” he says.
When he mailed his letter, he didn’t expect anything in return from Mr. Kricfalusi, so he was startled when a thick envelope with an American postmark arrived in the mail a few months later.
“Your comics are pretty good, especially your staging and continuity,” Mr. Kricfalusi scrawled. “You might have the makings of a good storyboard artist.”
After several pages of instructions, he signed off cheekily: “ALLRIGHT Bastard, let’s get to work. Draw! and slow now.”
He included his personal e-mail address, encouraging Mr. Avni to write to him if he had any questions (“not too many I hope! I get a lot of email and it’s hard to answer it all.”)
The explanation for this display of generosity could be that the shoe was once on the other foot: Mr. Kricfalusi still remembers his own childhood search for recognition from a legend. And he aimed straight for the top.
“When I was a kid I wrote Walt Disney,” he explains from his home in Los Angeles. “I got a letter back from his secretary, not from Walt himself. I wouldn’t expect him to – he must’ve gotten a million letters a day.”
Without a proper mentor, Mr. Kricfalusi would spend hours parked in front of the television, freeze-framing taped cartoons and copying images from the screen onto paper.
With those memories still fresh, he realized that Mr. Avni deserved a proper reply to a letter into which he’d invested so much effort, Mr. Kricfalusi says.
“I think it was because he was so hard core and eager about it. I recognized some of myself when I was a kid,” he says. “I saw his dedication ... I must’ve had a free hour of time, so what the heck, I’ll write him back and tell him what to do and see what happens in a few years.”
From Mr. Kricfalusi’s letter blossomed a long-distance mentorship: Mr. Avni would beg his informal teacher for new exercises, complete and scan them, and e-mail back.
