By Eva Trieger
SAN DIEGO — Perry Chen. You may remember hearing this name associated with Comic Con, two time Oscar winner Bill Plympton and Disney director, Rich Moore. But Perry Chen is an animator in his own right. He sketched himself onto the animation scene in 2011, with a collaborative animated short film entitled Ingrid Pitt: Beyond the Forest. This poignant six-minute movie depicts the true story of an eight-year Jewish girl who escaped a work camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Ingrid Pitt was not much younger than Perry when she and her mother escaped from Stutthof concentration camp. Nearing the end of the Holocaust, the Germans marched Ingrid and her fellow prisoners into the forest. Ingrid’s mother protected her children by tossing them into a ditch and covering them with her own body. The hand of G-d was surely at work when the Russian air force began shooting at the Germans. Ingrid and her family spent the next few years living in the forest in a Partisan camp.
Perry Chen’s innocent, childlike animation makes this haunting tale all the more realistic. Ingrid Pitt narrated the film shortly before her death in 2010, but it is Perry’s sensitive drawings that convey the terror, fear, relief and pride of this young Jewish girl.
Lest you think Perry has set down his pencil, markers or sketch pad since the completion of that short film, let me put you in the picture. Following his success with Ingrid Pitt: Beyond the Forest, Perry has appeared on television and at film festivals all over the country. Just last year Perry and his mom, Dr. Zhu Shen, lost Changyou Chen, father and husband respectively, to metastatic skin cancer. Perry sought to immortalize his father with the creation of an animated film, Changyou’s Journey illustrating his father’s youth as a Chinese peasant. His ideas came from stories his dad had shared with Perry. This film has a very different tone from Ingrid Pitt. The second film is filled with vibrant color and depicts a happy, enchanted childhood.
Continuing to grow as an artist, Perry has explored new materials in animation and shared these with a large crowd last Saturday. Aaron Brothers in the Mira Mesa neighborhood of San Diego hosted a reception where Chen demonstrated some of the latest tools of his trade. While children and adults clamored to get in close enough to see him work, Perry responded to questions by store manager, Rosemarie Bergdahl . As sponsor for COPIC markers, long lasting multihued markers made by a Japanese company, Perry drew and explained facts about a platypus, while working freehand. The young artist used this opportunity to demonstrate Toon Boom Animation software along with a Wacom digital tablet to create a moving image of a man running. Perry explained that animation is done frame by frame, “they are still pictures that move together, and when they move together, they tell a story.” This unique technology allows one to sketch an arm in one position, while noting the position from the previous frame. Toon Boom software enables the recording of 24 frames per second. This style and technique was taught to Perry by Warner Brothers’ animator Rusty Mills.
The afternoon event drew a large crowd of curious people, some familiar with Perry’s work, and others just becoming acquainted with this precocious artist. The thrumming store provided the opportunity to purchase Perry’s Ingrid Pitt DVDs, COPIC markers and special paper for all aspiring animators in the crowd.
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Trieger is a freelance writer specializing in the arts. She may be contacted at eva.trieger@sdjewishworld.com