Studio Gives a New Image to Students

Nine years ago Julio Leon was a class-cutting, back-talking high school senior who showed up at a student-training program at the Walt Disney Co. studios with a portrait he had penned of himself.

The picture resembled a police mug shot, complete with bars and a booking number, and Disney executives interpreted it as a sign that Leon thought prison was his destiny.

But instead of jail cells, Leon’s life today revolves around animation cels--cartoon celluloid images. During the Disney training program, his sketches, with their distinctive graffiti flavor, caught the attention of a veteran animator who encouraged Leon to study drawing. Two years ago Leon was hired as a cartoon artist at Disney, making good money in the job of his dreams.

Now he wants to give back.

As part of the same Disney mentoring program that rescued him, Leon, now 26, is mentoring a kid cut from similar cloth. Anthony Hein is a high school sophomore with patchy grades, an eye for graffiti and a notebook brimming with vibrant sketches. He’s thrilled to be paired with Leon.

“Man, he gets to draw things for the ‘Tarzan’ movie,” Hein said. “That’s a sweet job, ‘cept sometimes he has to work too much.”

Hein and Leon, who swap ideas about everything from cartoons to hip-hop music to how to handle a can of spray paint, are among this year’s matches between Monterey High School in Burbank and employees at Disney. It’s a symbiotic relationship in which 10 students every spring get an opportunity to shadow a full-time Disney employee and add a few lines to their resume while Disney has a chance to get its hands on talent while it is young and can still be shaped.

So far, Disney has hired a handful of students from the job-shadowing program, though Leon is the first animator.

His involvement with 19-year-old Hein (who is old for his grade level because of many failed classes) is proof that mentoring works on many levels, Disney executives say.

“It’s really refreshing when you see a young kid like Julio who’s gotten a break and wants to help someone else,” said Claudia Peters, director of corporate communications for Disney. “For someone that age to be so conscious of where he came from is pretty neat.”

Leon may be streetwise and knuckle-tough, but he doesn’t like to broadcast where he came from. He grew up in Burbank, got kicked out of school in the 10th grade for fighting and skipping class, and ended up at Monterey High, a continuation school for students who fall behind.

At Monterey, he excelled in art.

“Julio was the chrome man,” said Peggy Zirves, his art teacher at Monterey. “Everything he drew, people, wood, outside scenes, looked like they were chrome. He obviously had a passion for drawing.”

Leon was chosen to participate in the first year of Disney’s mentoring program, an important turning point in his life. After the program, Leon received a $1,000 scholarship from the entertainment giant to take private art classes, which helped him compile the portfolio he needed to land an animation job.

Disney gets involved with struggling students because it wants to help those youths who need it most, said Joan McCarthy, Disney’s community relations manager.

“It’s important to us to be a good corporate citizen and reach out to our community,” McCarthy said. “And we feel that the magic of Walt Disney can really help.”

From reading to first-graders at Glendale schools to hosting the Monterey High graduation ceremony on a sound stage lined with Disneyland trumpeters, Disney employees reach out to hundreds of local students every year. Yet the mentoring program is the only one that gives young people a chance to learn a trade and peek into the top-secret Disney workplace (reporters must sign agreements not to reveal what they see before they can step foot into the animation building).

It’s pretty hard to miss Hein when he’s in the animation building. In the warren of hushed cubicles and clean-cut faces, Hein--with pants ripped at the bottom and T-shirt stretched tight across the belly--doesn’t exactly blend in. His haircut looks like a tarantula is sitting atop his head, with his skull shaved bald except for a few strands of bangs slathered down with mousse.

“Nobody else in the school has it,” Hein said of his hairstyle.

During the job-mentoring program, which ended two weeks ago, Hein met Leon twice a week in a cubicle covered with drawings for “Tarzan,” Disney’s animated feature scheduled for release this summer. Leon has been drawing “Tarzan” backgrounds for the past two years--too long for Hein.

“I couldn’t be in a ‘cue’ [cubicle] looking at the same drawings for two years,” Hein said. “It’s like jail.”

Although the program is officially over, the two continue to get together on weekends. Sometimes they go over drawings. Leon helps Hein with perspective and human figures, but Hein gravitates more toward graffiti art, a common interest between him and Leon that helps bridge the gap in age and life experience.

And while the two like talking about graffiti’s different styles and techniques, they don’t sit around scheming about which wall to tag next. Those days are over for Leon, and Hein says he’s content to leave his mark on construction paper.

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Leon isn’t the preachy type--he hates when people refer to him as a “mentor.” Although he wants to do all he can to help Hein learn the ins and outs of the animation business, he doesn’t want to tell him what to do.

“I can tell Anthony likes drawing, and he should be practicing every day,” Leon said. “But I know that he’s not going to be at home drawing pictures when his friends are out partying.”

Hein is not sure what he wants to do when he finishes school. Maybe mix music, perhaps work in a record shop, or strive for an animating job such as Leon’s, where starting pay is upward of $60,000 a year.

That figure is still the stuff of legend among those who knew Leon at Monterey High.

“That’s our big joke,” said Zirves, the art teacher. “Here’s a kid who thought he would end up in jail or pushing a janitor’s cart. And look at him now. He’s already making more money than the rest of us.”