A BYU Provo animation professor and a team of his students have been working over the past year to capture a Polynesian legend and share their skills through workshops this week for students at BYU-Hawaii and later in Samoa.
Ryan Woodward — the professor who worked on feature film projects including Space Jam, The Iron Giant, Batman, and Spiderman 2 and 3 before joining the Provo faculty — explained his wife, Tiffany Easterbrook, is part-Samoan and his interest in creating The Turtle and the Shark grew out of a 1998 visit to her extended Galea'i family in Laie. "I instantly fell in love with this place," he said.
While attending an educator's conference in Honolulu several years ago, Woodward conducted a workshop at BYU-Hawaii on figure drawing and production techniques. "That started the wheels rolling in my mind," he said. "I thought, there are so many interesting stories and cultures out here."
Woodward said he and and his student team "chose the turtle and the shark because of the beautiful themes associated with that legend — love and sacrifice. We felt those themes fit in with the mission of BYU."
The legend tells the story of a man and woman, deeply in love, who flee to another island after he is chosen to become a meal for a Fijian cannibal king. Fearing their act of disobedience will dishonor their families, they willingly throw themselves into the ocean at Vaitogi, America Samoa, and are transformed into a turtle and shark who the villagers can sometimes summon together, even to this day.
Woodward [pictured on the right] added he's submitted the film to about 20 film festivals. "On top of that, one of our main purposes was to have a great film that we could present to the Polynesian Cultural Center," he said. "To our joy, they've really embraced it."
He emphasized the team's visit was not designed to influence any existing programs or classes at BYU-Hawaii, "but we just felt like there are more than likely some artistic, animated, filmmaking minds here who would benefit from this kind of a workshop. I believe there's a strong potential of storytellers out here in the Pacific and with the connection in Asia."
Woodward noted many stories on the U.S. mainland "have become very commercial and formulaic, while out here they seem raw. They seem natural and rooted. The storytelling is so unique and different that I can see it really exploding out here, in addition to the connection with Asia, where animation is huge."
"Our goal is to infuse that inspiration in their minds so they can see there is a way to do this," Woodward said of the workshops both on campus and coming up in Samoa. He and his team will also meet with Hauula Elementary School students. "I hope they tell the stories they want to tell. For any artist, the expansion of knowledge benefits you creatively. I'm also excited for my students and how this experience will benefit them."
One of those students is Jared Greenleaf [pictured at left], a 2006 BYU-Hawaii fine art alumnus from Kapaa, Kauai, who participated in Woodward's earlier workshop on campus and is now working on his master's degree in Provo.
Greenleaf, who is half-Filipino and a former Japanese-language tour guide at the PCC, explained he was brought into the animation project "because of my knowledge of various Polynesian cultures, a knowledge I didn't really think I had until I was put against those problems... Some of my designs were the ones favored. Ryan told me they wanted to contribute back to the Polynesians in respect for using their legends," and invited him to join the project. He also said the work allows him to combine his interests in both traditional and high-tech art.
"Jared already had a passion and a drive for animation and filmmaking when I met him, more than anyone else here at that time," said Woodward. "Because the program here is rooted in fine arts, he had to pursue those interests on his own."
When he finishes his studies in Provo, Greenleaf said among other interests he hopes "to end up back on Kauai. There's a lot of potential for great artists there, for young artists in public education who might not have the resources to prepare them to get into a school they deserve to go to."
BYU-Hawaii junior Devin Northrup — an ICS-Communications major from Lindon, Utah, and also California — has been participating in the on-campus workshops.
Already a part-time animator for University Advancement, Northrup [pictured at right] said he developed an interest in video in high school, which led him to master After Effects™ motion graphics and animation software, "so this workshop is interesting to me. Their kind of animation is more characters and stories, which adds a different perspective and helped open my eyes to a few different ways that I can perhaps branch out more and improve the skills that I have."
"I'm very impressed with the knowledge of both the professor and the students. They obviously know what they're talking about and the teaching is relevant. I feel like it's applicable to more than just those who are interested in story-based animation. It will also help those who are graphic designers and who use those same basic skills in other fields."
Northrup, who served a Samoan-speaking mission in New Zealand, added that he loves The Turtle and the Shark animation. "I've seen it in both English and Samoan, and I like them equally well." He explained there's more than one version of the legend, "but I think the version they picked is probably more applicable to general audiences. The way they animated it stays very true to culture; and I love how it looks like it's portrayed on tapa cloth. It just has a very Samoan feel to me."
Woodward added that working on the Polynesian project and staying with a local family in Waialua has "sincerely changed me. It's truly something that I wish more people could witness. It's changed how I view things."
Click here to watch some sample clips from The Turtle and the Shark.