Mushka - miaumiau

The Folks behind the Toons

Andreas Deja

Born on the first of April of 1957 in Gdańsk, Poland, Andreas Deja credits seeing Disney's The Jungle Book as an 11-year-old with inspiring him to become an animator. 

After graduating from the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, Germany, Deja immigrated to the United States and earned a job at Disney, initially working as a character animator.  The first animated feature that Deja worked on was the 1985 fantasy adventure, The Black Cauldron.   

Deja’s went on to do character animation for Queen Mousetoria in The Great Mouse Detective as well as Elmo St. Peters in The Brave Little Toaster.  His skill for character design and animating facial gestures and posture distinguished him and he was eventually promoted to supervising animator for the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  He additionally designed the various characters for the animated film Oliver & Company.  

Deja helped designed and acted as the lead supervising animator for some of Disney’s most memorable characters, including King Triton in the Little Mermaid, Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, Scar in the Lion King, adult Hercules in Hercules and Lilo Pelekai in Lilo and Stitch.  He additionally animated Micky Mouse in a number of animated shorts and features.  

Deja is an openly gay man. In interviews with The Advocate and Entertainment Weekly, Deja has spoken about how his sexuality and experiences as a gay man living in a largely heteronormative society have influenced aspects of his character design and animation style. 

In 2006, at the 34th Annie Awards, Deja was awarded the Winsor McCay Award for outstanding contribution to the art of animation.  

Deja made his directorial debut with the 2023 animated short film Mushka.  The short is about a young girl in the Ukraine who raises a tiger cub and must contend with various difficulties as the cub grows into an adult tiger.  The film won awards for best animated short at several film festivals.   

Day 22 - Mushka from Everlasting Nightmare (my OC comic) is doing it the worst anyone ever has.

I'm still not sure I like how thin he looks... but I was struggling, so I stopped. Keep trying Mushka! You'll get it eventually!

And wow would you look at that I'm neither. And where's that graph I saw I know it's somewhere

There it is! Only 23%

Animator Andreas Deja, who spent 30 years at Disney and created iconic characters such as Scar in the Lion King and Jafar in Aladdin, is looking for collaborators in order to complete his new indipendent project.  

The hand-drawn animated short movie is titled 'Mushka' and is about the friendship between a girl and a tiger. The movie is 30 minutes long and it is hand-drawn but colored using Tv Paint. Andreas has been working on this project for years and he considers it his passion project. He needs the help of animators with experience and who live in the LA area. You can leave your e-mail and read more about the project on Andreas’ Blog.

Here’s a sneak peek of the movie:

This was drawn in a week as a birthday gift. It’s Mushka and her lusus (in my artistic depiction, actual appearance of lusus may differ) sharing a happy moment.