The famed former Disney animator and ‘Brother Bear’ director channeled the tragic 2007 loss of his wife into his award-winning hand-drawn 2D short film about a lonely polar bear’s quest to find, and eventually make, a friend… until the weather warms up.
When animator Aaron Blaise lost his wife to breast cancer in 2007, he says he “felt like the sun would never rise again.”
“And, truthfully, there was a time where I didn’t know if I wanted it to,” admits Blaise.“I had been married to Karen for 20 years and I really felt emotionally adrift.
It was one of the main reasons I left Disney.I was lost.Then, over a decade later, I started making with my friend Nick Burch and met his wife’s sister Vedanta.
We fell in love and got married three years ago.You’ve got to go on a journey to find that hope and light again.That’s not what was about when I started it, but that's what the story became about.” Famous for serving as supervising animator on Disney classics like and as well as directing the Academy Award-nominated Disney film , Blaise completed his hand-drawn animated short in 2024.
The short, a compilation of 11,000 drawings all made by Blaise, tells the story of a lonely polar bear in an unforgiving environment on his quest to find a friend.While the bear is initially successful in creating himself a friend out of snow, the weather warms and the bear’s time with his frozen friend begins to shorten.The full film recently debuted on YouTube: SNOW BEAR - A Hand-Drawn Animated Short Film (4K) by Aaron Blaise has gone on to win many festival awards including Toronto Animation Arts Festival International’s Best International Film, Florida Film Festival’s Best Short Film, Denali Film Festival’s Best Overall Film and more.
Blaise himself was recently named as the 2025 recipient of the Winsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Award in animation by ASIFA-Hollywood and was presented the award at the 2025 Annie Awards.“I didn't set out to make another bear film,” shares Blaise.“And it’s not like I love bears in particular.
I love all animals.I just wanted to do a single character in a simple environment and a polar bear popped into my head.” Burch, who has worked with Blaise for roughly 14 years and partnered with him to establish Blaise’s Creature Art Teacher animation education courses, interjected, “His exact quote to me was, ‘It’s one character.It’s a simple environment and it’ll only take me six months.’” Blaise continues, “I just thought it was a fun, cute little idea.
It wasn't until I started really going into it, and I started attaching my own emotional journey to it, that it started to get really deep for me.That’s when I sunk my teeth into it and started researching Greenland’s Baffin Island and incorporating these giant granite cliffs and glaciers into the environment.Simplicity went out the door as I started to create this visually stunning, metaphoric version of my life.
Three years later, we have this 11-minute film that’s making people cry.We're up to almost 40 awards now.” While Blaise’s film wasn’t based on his partiality to bears, he has always enjoyed illustrating animals, starting at the age of six.Blaise would sit in the garage drawing pictures of the ducks from his father’s field guide as his father sat next to him carving decoys.
His interest in wildlife only intensified when Blaise moved to Florida and became entranced by the Everglades.After graduating from the Ringling College of Art with a certificate in Illustration in 1989, Blaise was hired by Walt Disney Feature Animation, where he spent 21 years helping create some of the most memorable illustrations of animals in cinematic history. “My dream initially was to work for National Geographic doing animal illustrations,” shares Blaise.“It wasn't until I was about halfway through school that I had an opportunity to do an internship with Disney.
Luckily for me, I had Glen Keane as my mentor.He took me under his wing, and he took this kid that knew nothing about animation but loved to draw animals and within a week I realized, ‘This is what I want to do forever.’ I love the richness of getting the drawings to look so great.I love the texture of the fur.
And I love to draw it.I want to feel that fur.I want to see that animal anatomy make all the right movements.” Though Blaise says he had “every intention” of taking trips up north to observe polar bears in person, he couldn’t swing the funds.
But ample research material was available from sources like, ironically, National Geographic and Disney Channel.Funny enough, after finishing the film, Blaise connected with Polar Bears International, a non-profit polar bear conservation group, and they brought Blaise up to Churchill, Manitoba in Canada during Polar Bear Week to see polar bears in the wild. “We live streamed the whole process,” shares Blaise.“We did things a little bit backwards, I guess.
But seeing them in the wild, in person, it was nothing like watching documentaries.It was so much better.And, to be honest, even though I love the film I made, I definitely would have made things a little differently had I seen these bears in the wild.” But as much as Blaise likes to focus on the anatomical details of his animation, the time spent illustrating at home instead of up north with the polar bears did give him time to reflect on the heart of the film.
As Blaise says, “Don't animate what a character's doing.Animate what they're thinking.” “This is a spoiler, but there's a scene in the film where the snow bear is melting,” shares Burch.“Aaron has talked to me about that scene and that it was literally like watching his wife Karen melt away.
I've watched this movie 500 times now, and I still choke up because I know what the underlying thing is there.” Blaise adds, “It's the fragility of life.That's what this is about.The snow bear melting is completely unexpected, but so is the bear finding other polar bears at the end of the film.
You get into a pattern of grieving and you get into this pattern of just getting through your life.You discover ways of making it from sunrise to sunset.You keep yourself busy and, over time, that's what gets you through.
And then, life turns sideways again.You meet someone unexpected.I wanted to have that in the film too because life never happens in the way you expect.
I tried very hard to take the audience down this certain path, and I threw him a couple curve balls.Because that’s what life does and that’s the role Vedanta played in my life.” And Burch becoming Blaise’s in-law was also an unexpected twist. “They say never go into business with family,” says Burch.“But I think there’s something to becoming family with your business partners.
It's a pretty unique situation to have happen.But, I couldn’t be happier.Vedanta is a writer as well and we would bounce ideas for the film off of her and she gave great feedback.
We were really open about the production process with audiences on social media, but we were also open with our immediate families and tried to get them to be as involved with the process as we could.” He added, “And, to Aaron’s point of life throwing curveballs, I had initially hoped to become a Disney animator, but that didn’t happen.But now here I am, 20-some-odd years later, making a film with the guy who directed .Who could predict that?” For a film with no dialogue, certainly has a lot to say.
And while Blaise hopes the film speaks to audiences everywhere, he also hopes the film speaks to the two women in his life. “If Karen could see it, and if I could talk to her, I’d want her to know that it’s been a long journey but I'm okay,” says Blaise.“To Vedanta, I just want to say thank you for being there and coming into my life and showing me that the sun does come up again and that you can enjoy that sunrise.” Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime.She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment.
Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
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