BURBANK — Nine years ago Julio Leon was a class-cutting, back-talking high school senior who showed up at a student-training program at the Walt Disney Co. studios with a portrait he had penned of himself.
The picture resembled a police mug shot, complete with bars and a booking number, and Disney executives interpreted it as a sign that Leon thought prison was his destiny.
But instead of jail cells, Leon's life today revolves around animation cels--cartoon celluloid images. During the Disney training program, his sketches, with their distinctive graffiti flavor, caught the attention of a veteran animator who encouraged Leon to study drawing. Two years ago Leon was hired as a cartoon artist at Disney, making good money in the job of his dreams.
Now he wants to give back.
As part of the same Disney mentoring program that rescued him, Leon, now 26, is mentoring a kid cut from similar cloth. Anthony Hein is a high school sophomore with patchy grades, an eye for graffiti and a notebook brimming with vibrant sketches. He's thrilled to be paired with Leon.
"Man, he gets to draw things for the 'Tarzan' movie," Hein said. "That's a sweet job, 'cept sometimes he has to work too much."
Hein and Leon, who swap ideas about everything from cartoons to hip-hop music to how to handle a can of spray paint, are among this year's matches between Monterey High School in Burbank and employees at Disney. It's a symbiotic relationship in which 10 students every spring get an opportunity to shadow a full-time Disney employee and add a few lines to their resume while Disney has a chance to get its hands on talent while it is young and can still be shaped.
So far, Disney has hired a handful of students from the job-shadowing program, though Leon is the first animator.
His involvement with 19-year-old Hein (who is old for his grade level because of many failed classes) is proof that mentoring works on many levels, Disney executives say.
"It's really refreshing when you see a young kid like Julio who's gotten a break and wants to help someone else," said Claudia Peters, director of corporate communications for Disney. "For someone that age to be so conscious of where he came from is pretty neat."
Leon may be streetwise and knuckle-tough, but he doesn't like to broadcast where he came from. He grew up in Burbank, got kicked out of school in the 10th grade for fighting and skipping class, and ended up at Monterey High, a continuation school for students who fall behind.
