Hollywood Animator’s Training Institute Brings Art Out of Storage

There are about 50 self-storage facilities in Ventura County, according to the telephone book. These are the places people keep things that once defined them but no longer do: the stained coffee table from college, the boat the neighbors won’t tolerate in the driveway, boxes of records that outgrew the crawl space under the stairs.

But it is possible to underestimate these bland, anonymous bunkers.

Behind the roll-up doors to units 505 and 506 of the North Ranch Self Storage facility, tucked into the utopian predictability of Thousand Oaks Boulevard, a Hollywood animator is teaching his craft to a new generation of hopeful artists.

Sheldon Borenstein’s followers have come from as far away as San Jose to learn how to render the human form at his DPD Institute. And whether they fancy themselves future Walt Disneys, or dream more loftily of becoming the next Michelangelo, they have already learned one thing at Borenstein’s art school in a box: Art is struggle.

When it’s cold, the frigid metal chairs bite into their legs. When it’s hot, they sweat.

On a recent night, Borenstein sits among 11 pupils, who are in turn observing a nude, dark-skinned model of French, Brazilian and Colombian descent. A 39-year-old suburban husband and father of three, appropriately cartoonish with ruddy cheeks and a loud playful voice, Borenstein says teaching is “almost a religious thing. I love seeing the students grow. I love watching them get their jobs.” Some of his students have gone on to Disney, Warner Bros. and DreamWorks SKG.

As he chats, he strains to keep his voice in check, out of respect for the man teaching the Thursday night figure drawing class this semester. That is Glenn Vilppu, a famous man among animators and Borenstein’s mentor. While Borenstein is respected, Vilppu, now in his 60s and hard of hearing, is considered a master of classical drawing. A former Disney animator, Vilppu was director of the character animation department at CalArts in Valencia, has written books and opened a gallery. He teaches animation at UCLA, and works as a consultant for animators in Japan and other countries.

“The guy’s God, he really is,” says 25-year-old Ryan Carlson, who works for Disney as a cleanup animator.

The model takes her position atop a makeshift platform of wood, concrete block and green carpeting. Balding and spritely in a black turtleneck and khaki pants, Vilppu walks to a sheet of paper tacked to the wall and begins doodling.

“The relationship from here, to here, to here, to here,” Vilppu says, connecting one squiggle to another with easy strokes of his pencil, “is like in music. The parts are just so many notes on the piano. And then you pull them together.”

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Suddenly, his squiggles take on the unmistakable form of a woman, one leg outstretched, an arm pulled back over her head.

The students gasp with delight, as at a magic show. They have just witnessed alchemy, but now they are expected to reproduce it. Vilppu gives them five minutes.

He made it seem effortless. As they try, they are reminded how difficult it is.

Borenstein likes the “artsy” feel of teaching class in a storage unit. But he concedes the idea was more pragmatic than creative.

He started the classes in his Agoura Hills garage two years ago, but grew worried the homeowners association would frown on his use of nude models. He looked into renting space in a shopping center, but the cost was prohibitive. It was his wife who suggested he look into a storage unit. Borenstein was skeptical, but the North Ranch facility was new and clean. And the owners went out of their way to make Borenstein happy, wiring the place for electricity and knocking out a wall to increase space.

So far, Borenstein said, no other location has seemed nearly so appropriately Bohemian. Certainly, no place is so close to his home.

The DPD Institute is not the only place in the region for animators-in-training. Hopeful artists for years have studied through the California Art Institute in Westlake Village, the American Animation Institute in North Hollywood, Associates in Art in Van Nuys, and academic programs at UCLA, Cal State Northridge and the prestigious CalArts in Valencia.

While Borenstein spent years at Filmation, Warner Bros. and other studios, and on cartoons such as “He-Man” and “Ghostbusters,” he is not a household name in the industry. For more than a decade, in addition to his animation, he has carried a full-time job as a sales executive for a Thousand Oaks printing company. And while he hopes to expand his programs at the institute, he has yet to offer computer animation courses.

Still, word of his school, and its focus on classical training, has spread among the local student artist community. He has taught at Cal State Northridge, and commutes once a week to teach a class at Cal State San Jose.

So far, he has signed up close to 300 students for 12-week classes covering head and hand drawing and an animation studio skills course. Classes range from $250 to $300.

The students are a mixed group.

Angela O’Sullivan, 22, of Camarillo, has one year of art studies remaining at Cal State Northridge. She is hoping DPD will improve her ability to convey three dimensions on a two-dimensional page. And she hopes it will help her get a job in the industry.

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Ashley Eriksson, 15, of Valencia, enrolled at DPD because her high school art teacher thought she was good enough to pursue specialized training. Her mom drives her back and forth to class each week. Mother and daughter have been pleasantly surprised to see improvement not only in her drawing skills but in her grades in academic courses. Ashley has been accepted to the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts this semester.

Far from disliking the idea of attending art school in a concrete bunker, some students find inspiration there.

Johanna Spinks of Malibu, a portrait painter who studied at DPD, liked the raw feel of the storage unit so much that she rented a unit one door down from Borenstein’s. She paints there during the day, after dropping off her daughters at school in Thousand Oaks.

“Saying to people, ‘I spend all day in a storage unit’ is a little uncomfortable,” Spinks says. “But, you know, you have to struggle for your art. So when it’s freezing in the mornings, or in the summer when it’s very hot, I think of all the people who have struggld before me.”