THE PASSION IN ANIMATION

It was the lure of Technicolor cartoons flashing on the screen that hooked Kim Ooi, supervising director of 2007's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", at a very early age. Growing up watching and drawing cartoons was something that he enjoyed, so it was no surprise that he became an animator.

In fact, in his ten years of working as an animator, he has stayed with the same company, Imagi Studios. Talk about job satisfaction. He has also worked with famous people including Jeffrey Katzenburg, a film director/producer and the CEO of DreamWorks Animation who was responsible for hits such as "The Lion King" and "Kung Fu Panda", as well Raman Hui, the co-director for the "Shrek" trilogy.

Another perk about being an animator is seeing your creations hit the big screen. Besides "Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles" which debuted in 2007, Ooi's next full-length movie "Astro Boy", is slated to play at a theater near you in October this year. "Astro Boy" is about a young robot who seeks acceptance in society and realizes what it really takes to be a hero when his city and family are in danger. It is voiced by, among others, Nicholas Cage and Freddie Highmore (of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" fame).

He has also done television series as well, notably "Father of the Pride" and "Zentrix"; the former was actually the first fully animated CG prime time show and featured the voice of John Goodman and a plethora of other major celebrities.

Despite his great success, Ooi came from humble beginnings; he grew up in a middle-class family in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with his sister and parents. He later attended the Vancouver Film School in Canada. After graduating, he started his animation career doing children's cartoons, commercials, and storyboard creation for large advertising agencies in Shanghai and Hong Kong. He also supervised TV cartoons at an animation studio in Hangzhou, China. Now, at the age of thirty, he is animation director at Imagi Studios in Hong Kong and as Raphael from "TMNT" briefly puts it, is "…done taking orders."

As for advice he usually gives to aspiring animators is: you don't have to be good at drawing, especially if you're doing 3-D animation. "You gotta love animation first, you gotta have that passion… it's the passion that drives the creativity in the animation."

The Invisible Death