Kaiser grad wins an Emmy for ‘Simpsons’ animation

Nothing attracts a crowd at a party like a shiny golden statue in your hand. Just ask animator Paul Wee, the Hawaii native who just won an Emmy for his work on the Fox series "The Simpsons."

Better still, check out the photos on his Facebook page. There he is with "Glee" star Jane Lynch. And with "New Girl" star Zooey Deschanel (and her sister, Emily, of "Bones"). And over there with Hugh Dancy from "Hannibal," and fellow Emmy winners Claire Danes from "Homeland" and James Cromwell from "American Horror Story."

To think about it makes him laugh.

"It opened a lot of conversations," Wee said from his office in Burbank, Calif. "It gave you a lot of equal footing and cachet. They see your statue and they don’t have one so they are, ‘Hey, can I see that?’ It’s really fun."

Wee, who grew up in Hawaii Kai, received a Creative Arts Emmy for outstanding individual achievement in character animation. It’s a juried award, which means a panel of his peers gave the 50-year-old Wee its unanimous approval.

He received his award a week before the prime-time Emmys on Sept. 22, and he and his wife, Laurie, were invited to the Fox party afterward.

The artist got his start in the industry in 1987, working on the Saturday morning cartoons "A.L.F.," "Super Mario Brothers" and "C.O.P.S." Two years later, he landed a job on "The Simpsons" and has been there ever since. He’s one of about 100 animators who work on the show.

His Emmy is for work on the 2012 "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween show, which brought Wee’s time with "The Simpsons" full circle: His first episode was the Halloween episode of the series’ second season, in 1990.

"Everyone feels I won for my years of work," Wee said. "It’s sort of a lifetime achievement, unofficially."

It feels good, as it should.

"It’s made me feel more self-confident about how people feel about my work," he said. "You don’t always get the feedback you need in this business. Generally, the artists and the animators are the grunts, the boots on the ground. We make the show but we don’t get recognized."

AS FAR BACK as he can remember, Wee has drawn. Drawing is the dominant memory of his youth.

"That was my first love," he said.

Wee drew anything and everything. He drew a lot of superheroes but switched to science fiction themes after watching "Star Wars" in 1977.

At Kaiser High School, where he graduated in 1981, Wee drew on his desks with a pencil. Every day after school, the janitors would scrub the drawings away but Wee would come back the next day and draw some more.

"It was a creative impulse that could not be denied," Wee said. "If you are an artist you do it. No one has to tell you to draw. It’s part of your being."

After high school, Wee earned a degree in graphic arts from Honolulu Community College, then went on to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, now known as the Otis College of Art and Design.

His first jobs on those Saturday morning cartoon shows paid the bills, but the scripts were rarely funny, Wee said.

"It was really tedious, sometimes," he said. "When ‘The Simpsons’ came along I watched it and said this is the funniest thing I have seen in a long time."

To get the job, he had to create a 5- to 10-second animated scene from a "Simpsons" scenario. In those days everything was drawn on paper. Now, he draws on a computer.

But even after nearly 24 years of drawing Bart Simpson and other residents of the wacky town of Springfield, Wee hasn’t tired of the job.

"Drawing something that long, it can get tedious," he said. "But the writing and the performances transcend the tedious. You know what you are doing is going to be worth it."

Fans can watch the show’s 25th season premiere at 8 p.m. today on Fox.

AND that’s a wrap …

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Mike Gordon is the Star-Advertiser’s film and television writer. Read his Outtakes Online blog at honolulupulse.com. Reach him at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.