Disney's 'Brother Bear' co-directed by a former Naples resident

He'd go to the beach and instead of playing in the surf, he'd paint birds.

"My dad was a charter captain, so I'd go to the Everglades a lot," Blaise says. "I was a little nature boy. I'd go out with my buddy and catch snakes and keep them in my room. I was always out in the woods painting and drawing. I was all over the place." He dreamed of doing nature portraits for National Geographic or Smithsonian magazines. But right after college as an illustration major at Sarasota's Ringling School of Art and Design, his career took a turn and, much his own surprise, he became an animator for Disney's new Florida Animation Studio in Orlando.

And instead of becoming a modern-day Audubon, Blaise has just made his directorial debut for Disney's newest animated movie, "Brother Bear," which opened nationwide in theaters Saturday.

As did almost every other child in America, Blaise saw Disney movies when he was growing up, but "it was nothing I made a connection to," he says. "Emotionally I loved the films, everyone does. But it wasn't anything I thought I'd be doing. I was so involved with what I wanted to do with painting and drawing, that everything else was outside my view. It wasn't until someone else introduced me to (animation) that I realized the potential of it." Blaise took part in a six-week experiment to see if fine artists could be taught animation skills.

"I got hooked," he says.

He's been with Disney's Florida Animation Studio at MGM Studios in Orlando since the day it opened 14 years ago.

"All of a sudden you feel Frankenstein-like, or godlike," he says of animating. "I can draw as much, I always loved drawing, but now I'm drawing and I play back 500 drawings I did, and it's alive on screen, it's breathing. It's a really amazing feeling. It hooked me right away. It incorporates a lot of other arts -- acting and music and painting. It's drawing, it's everything. It's a perfect blend of artistic media." First Blaise was an assistant animator on a Roger Rabbit short called "Roller Coaster Rabbit" and on "The Rescuers Down Under," then he became a character animator for "Beauty and the Beast" and "Trail Mix-Up." He then advanced to a supervising animator for Rajah on "Aladdin," Young Nala in "The Lion King" and Yao in "Mulan." When he heard about a project in development called "Bears," he lobbied his boss for the opportunity to work on it.

"I e-mailed him, I just wouldn't let go," Blaise says.

When they had a meeting, Blaise told him how he does nature painting in his spare time, traveling around the country -- even to Alaska.

"It's a natural fit," he concluded.

But his boss had even bigger ideas and asked him, "Did you ever think about directing?" And so Blaise found himself co-directing "Brother Bear" with Bob Walker.

The story tells of three Native American brothers living in the Northwest. When the youngest, Kenai, receives his totem -- the symbol the Great Spirits give to each one to help guide a person through life, he's disappointed. His totem is the bear, the symbol of love. Kenai tracks down a bear he feels is responsible for killing his oldest brother. The Great Spirits, to teach him a lesson, turn him into a bear. Kenai has to adjust to his new body and life as a bear in a story that combines humor and drama.

During the opening scenes with humans, "we actually keep our camera locked down, and use muted colors," Blaise says. "When Kenai turns into a bear, the screen all of a sudden goes cinemascope. We do it very subtly. Another thing we do is saturate the color (when he turns into a bear). We brighten everything up. Also, from that point on, we freed the camera up. There's a lot more moving in and out of the shot. The camera movement becomes a lot more fluid. We're trying to get the audience to see differently and come at it from a different perspective. It's a different point of view. It's like a mild version of Dorothy landing in Oz.

"In the human world, the animals look like animals, the way we see them. But then he goes into the animal world, we gave them a lot more character, a lot of expression in the faces." The movie took six years to make.

"An animated film takes five to six years from conception to the screen," Blaise says. "We're constantly writing and rewriting. The actual production is a 36-month schedule. It's a very long, long, labor-intensive process." The directors made sure to include plenty of humor in the film, including casting Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as two moose. The actors recreate their "SCTV" characters Bob and Doug McKenzie as two somewhat dumb-witted Canadians.

"That was fun to do," Blaise says. "We make these movies for ourselves. We want everyone to identify, and we want adults to identify too. We make family films; we want everyone to have a great time. If we're laughing when we're writing it and animating it and everything else, then we think the audience will too.

"Rick and Dave in there was one of those pieces of gold that happened. I've been fans of those two since I was a kid. It just seemed like a logical thing to do (to cast them in those roles). Animals should have different dialects like people do. Canadian moose -- they were two of the first guys we cast in the movie. It was a no-brainer, it was great." For those patient enough to sit through the entire movie, the film contains humorous fictional "outtakes" as the credits roll.

"We talked about doing outtakes and came up with some fun scenes," Blaise says. "They don't have to fit into the movie. We left it wide open and came up with 65 ideas. Those are the ones that stuck. They were a lot of fun to do, little windows, one-off gag ideas, and the crowd just loves them. It leaves everybody laughing and feeling good." The movie contains a star lineup, including Joaquin Phoenix as the voice of Kenai, D.B. Sweeney as Sitka and Michael Clarke Duncan as Tug, a jovial bear.

Nancy Cartwright, known for the voice of Bart Simpson on the animated TV show "The Simpsons," worked as a voice coach for the movie.

Singer/songwriter Phil Collins, who had contributed to "Tarzan," wrote and performed some of the music for "Brother Bear." Other singers such as Tina Turner, The Blind Boys of Alabama and the Bulgarian Women's Choir also perform on the movie's soundtrack.

"Phil came on four years ago and we worked very closely together," Blaise says. The two worked via video conferencing, with Collins in Geneva, Switzerland.

"The music's great," Blaise says. "He wrote all the songs. We don't want to be accused of doing the same thing twice, we're always striving to do something different with our films. We wanted to find another singer that might fit the opening song a little better than Phil. Phil asked Tina Turner to sing it. They're good friends. I hopped on a plane, flew to Zurich, Switzerland. And it hit me, I'm sitting on this beautiful hillside with Tina and Phil sitting across from me. How the heck did I get here? I grew up in the boonies of Naples. It was a highlight of the film for me, that's for sure." "Brother Bear" opened to positive reception in New York and Los Angeles last week.

"You put that much of your life into something, you want everyone to love it," Blaise says. "You want everyone to have a good time and have the kids take the message, learn from it. If they can do both, it's great."