The Betty Black Blog

Young Ian, the teenager at Campion, knew exactly what career he wanted to pursue. He wanted to be in movies, but not in front of the camera. The youngster, with a talent for art and a love of Star Wars, wanted to go into special effects so it was no surprise that, in 1985, he headed off to the California Institute of Art. His mother didn’t like the idea at all, her own father was an artist so she knew too well that there wasn’t much money in it. But a boy must follow his dream.

Once at Art School, Ian found that he was “drawn” to animation rather than motion graphics so he changed direction. Upon graduation he went to work as one of the thousands of keen young artists at the Disney Studio. One of his first jobs was as one of the many assistant artists painting the backgrounds for Mickey’s The Prince and the Pauper in 1990. He continued doing background work and visual effects then character design for a number of Disney’s animated movies: Aladdin, Pocahontas, Tarzan and Disney Television’s Hercules. In 2002 he was given the assignment as Associate Art Director for Treasure Planet, a reworking of Treasure Island set in outer space. The movie was nominated for several awards, including an Oscar.

He was then given the job as Art Director for Chicken Little to be released in 2005. An animated movie has hundreds of artists working on it. Some will do backgrounds, some draw characters, some work on specific sequences. An Art Director’s job is to make sure that dozens of characters, hundreds of scenes and thousands of frames all fit together seamlessly so that when we go to the movies we will see a finished product which looks like it was done by one person from start to finish; a monumental job indeed! Chicken Little was number one at the box office grossing US$40,000,000 its first week-end. In total it has earned over US$314,000,000! Disney was back on top of animated films. And a Jamaican was partially responsible for that!

Disney then went into production of The Princess and the Frog, featuring the first Black Disney Princess, Tiana. As with Chicken Little, voices would be done by famous people. No less a person than Oprah voiced Tiana’s mother. So who would be Art Director for this project? Why not the same person who worked on the previous box office smash? The film was released in December 2009 and grossed US$25,000,000 its first week-end. Only out two months it has already earned US$166,000,000.

Gleaner photo

So thanks to the quiet Ian Gooding, born in St Andrew and schooled at Campion College, Jamaica has shown the world that we’re not only singers and runners, but we certainly know how to draw! His family must be very proud indeed that they encouraged the young Ian to follow his dream because, just like in the Movies, dreams can come true.

Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com

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