Lots of young people grow up with dreams of hitting home runs and scoring touchdowns. But for Keith Sintay, the dream of becoming an animator was just as much of a challenge.

Now at the age of 41, the Central Michigan University alumnus has done the animating for movies like “Mulan,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and one of this summer’s most highly anticipated movies, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

Sintay has had superior artistic abilities since his childhood, but it actually wasn’t until he moved into Merrill Hall that he considered it as a career option.

“I could draw better than most of the kids in first grade and second grade – it was just a natural thing for me, but I thought that everybody could do it,” he said. “I wasn’t great by my standards now, but I could draw, and growing up I took it for granted and didn’t pursue it.”

While living in Merrill during the 1980s, he stumbled across the mascot artwork that a fellow resident had sketched to represent the terrace floor. The mascot, known as the “terrace rat,” was not especially well drawn, so the rest of the floor asked Sintay to make improvements.

The resulting image was put on T-shirts for each of the residents and sparked the beginning of an animating career. He went on to design flyers and shirts for fraternities and sororities, and did illustrating work for Central Michigan Life.

The experience eventually landed him a competitive 16-week internship with Disney MGM Studios in Orlando after first being rejected numerous times. Disney would receive about 2,000 portfolios every three months from across the world, he said.

Only 10 to 15 people were selected each period, but Sintay kept getting feedback and worked to improve his technique after each rejection.

“The amount of competition was obviously very huge and it was very daunting,” Sintay said. “I just kept teaching myself anatomy, technique and proportion, and just worked my way toward becoming a really skilled artist.”

The internship wasn’t easy after he landed it, but it was well worth the effort when he was offered a full-time animating job with Disney in Los Angeles. He now lives in California with his wife, Connie, whom he met at CMU one day while returning artwork to the CM Life office.

Sintay said that it has been the opportunity of a lifetime, having worked on a large number of feature films since starting with “Pocahontas” in 1995.

Recently, he has also designed CGI animations for live-action movies like “I Am Legend” and the new “Transformer” movie, which began showing in theatres today.

“Transformers” was a particularly special film for Sintay, who worked under the direction of Michael Bay.

“Michael Bay is a character in himself,” he said. “He really knows what he wants, and he’ll make sure he gets it – even if it means throwing some four-letter words out there.”

studentlife@cm-life.com

E-mail the author: Jake Bolitho