Alumni brothers animate for a better tomorrow

Animator Jason Carpenter has always been drawn to projects that have an added layer of meaning behind them. So when he was invited to work on Davis Guggenheim’s He Named Me Malala, a partly animated 2015 documentary about teenage Pakistani activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, it felt like the perfect fit. 

“I think it’s about capturing something meaningful in a story that kind of resonates emotionally with somebody as opposed to sort of glitz and eye candy and stuff like that,” Jason says. 

Animation from the documentary "He Named Me Malala."

In 2016, Carpenter won an Emmy in the Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation category for his work as animation director and product designer for He Named Me Malala. He admired that the film presented the opportunity to animate a true story, which Carpenter says was challenging at times. “The landscape is always changing … so it requires a flexibility in terms of how the animation works and continually fits in.”

Jason and his younger brother Michael have both made names for themselves in the world of animation. Jason, 43, earned his bachelor’s degrees in art and design and industrial design in 1997.  Michael, 40, followed suit, earning his bachelor’s in industrial design with a focus on animation in 1999. 

Michael and Jason Carpenter

“I feel like I learned how to think at NC State and, you know, there’s a sense of optimism there that you can really do anything, and that’s empowering,” Michael says. “It’s kind of a magical place.”

The brothers, who now live in Santa Monica, Calif., remember drawing spaceships together at the Montessori preschool they attended in Greensboro. They were always building or drawing something, Jason says. When the Carpenters became animators, they worked on a different kind of spaceship — the Spaceship Earth ride at Disney World’s Epcot.

They both worked in the field for a few years before pursuing master’s degrees at the California Institute of the Arts and landing the Spaceship Earth project in 2006.

Located in the heart of Epcot, in what is known affectionately as the giant golf ball, Spaceship Earth takes visitors back in time for a look at the history of communication technology. The Carpenter brothers were tasked with adding an animated component to the ride to make the experience more interactive. Answer a series of questions, and at the end of the ride you’ll see an animated short with a photo of yourself incorporated throughout.

“Spaceship Earth actually felt really good to be a part of because Epcot Center’s whole mandate is to kind of empower children to design their own future, so to speak,” Michael says.

A couple years after the release of He Named Me Malala, Jason hopes more feature film work is in his future. Michael is interested in exploring virtual reality, which he describes as “the Wild West of creativity.”

This article was originally published on the NC State Alumni Association website.