By Mary O’KEEFE

There is this animated film titled “The Snow Bear.” It is hand-drawn animation by Aaron Blaise, a former Disney animator and director of “Brother Bear.” 

First off, this is a hand-drawn short film. We honestly don’t get to see many of those anymore. I took a film class once where we watched Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty.” We went through a lot of it, frame by frame. I remember marveling at how delicate Princess Aurora’s hands were. I was amazed at how someone could draw in such detail. 

Although animated films like “Toy Story” are wonderful to watch there is still something magical about a film that is hand-drawn … and “The Snow Bear” does not disappoint. 

Often art is inspired by a tragedy in an artist’s life and this short film was Blaise’s way of working through the loss of his wife.

Blaise told Animation World Network (ANW) when his wife died of breast cancer he “felt like the sun would never rise again.”

In the article titled “Snow Bear: How Aaron Blaise Lost Love, Then Found it Again” by Victoria Davis, Blaise shared how devastating the loss of his wife of 20 years was for him. He stopped working at Disney; he said he “was lost.” But then, 10 years later, he started creating “Snow Bear” with his friend Nick Burch. During this time he met Burch’s wife’s sister and they fell in love. They eventually married. 

“You’ve got to go on a journey to find that hope and light again. That’s not what ‘Snow Bear’ was about when I started it, but that’s what the story became about,” he told ANW. 

Blaise said the film became about the fragility of life and how a person can get into a pattern of grieving and “you get into this pattern of just getting through life.”

To be honest, I watched “The Snow Bear” prior to reading Davis’ article so what I got out of the movie was something different. Like most art, we all come at it from a different perspective. What I saw from this movie was more environmental. It made me think what the last polar bear may face and in Blaise director’s statement on his website, he does look at the film as an environmentally-focused film as well. 

“I spent over three years bringing ‘Snow Bear’ to life in my personal studio, working on every aspect of the film’s creation – from storyboards to final animation … entirely on my own. This project marks a return to my roots as an artist and storyteller, reminiscent of my days animating on ‘The Lion King,’ ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘Aladdin,’ as well as directing Disney’s ‘Brother Bear.’ In ‘Snow Bear,’ I wanted to capture something deeply personal: a sense of awe for the natural world, paired with the emotional depth that only hand-drawn, frame-by-frame animation can convey.

“The film was inspired by the resilience of our planet’s polar regions and I’m honored that both Polar Bears International and the National Parks Conservation Association have chosen to stand behind it. Their missions underscore the very themes I hoped to illustrate: the fragility of our environment and the importance of protecting it for the generations yet to come.

“More than anything, I want viewers to leave this short film having felt a range of emotions, from laughter at a lonely polar bear’s resourcefulness to reflection on how we, too, can find hope in the most challenging of circumstances. Ultimately, I believe that if ‘Snow Bear’ can make audiences pause, reflect and feel even a spark of wonder, then I’ve succeeded in my goal of bringing a little more beauty to our world.”

In a recent study by “Nature Climate Change” and reported by WWF, by 2100, even if we moderately reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, local extinctions of polar bears in some parts of the Arctic are likely. 

“If we fail to reduce our emissions, by 2100 we may lose all but a few high-Arctic subpopulations in and around the Last Ice Area,” states the article. 

This film, to me, humanized the polar bear. It gave him emotions of being alone and gave him creativity to respond to that loneliness. 

I know that natural evolution involves extinction of certain species; however, climate change, if continued at this rate, will cause a sixth mass extinction.

“A recent study authored by the University of Connecticut’s Mark Urban found that close to one third of species across the globe would be at risk of extinction by the end of the century if greenhouse gases continue to increase at current levels,” according to a 2024 article in today.uconn.edu. 

Now, knowing Blaise’s backstory on creating “The Snow Bear” I can see it as his personal story of grief and resilience. I can, of course, also see how fragile our Earth, and its species, are. 

And yet I don’t think my initial reaction was that far off because I grieve for our Earth, and its species, that are facing changes they have no control over. But, spoiler alert, the film does end in hope, which follows his life’s journey through grief, which also gave me hope from the perspective of looking at the environment. 

Information on “Snow Bear” can be found at https://snowbearshort.com/ and can be seen on YouTube.

We may be seeing some showers today into Friday. Most of the rain is expected to arrive before 10 a.m. Saturday will see the sun again but it will be a little cooler with highs in the upper 60s. Those temperatures will continue through Tuesday.