Didi Hatcher
I'm Diana "Didi" Hatcher, an animator/illustrator at FableVision. I was born and raised over the ocean in Bulgaria, bouncing back and forth between the capital Sofia and my grandparents' little village house out in the Balkan Mountains. According to my mom, I began drawing as soon as I was able to hold a pencil, at the fresh young age of 2. As a kid I was never bored, as long as I had paper and a pencil. I had an equally burning love for music, however. And science. And later, writing. At one point I had to make a choice, as there's only one of me...so I picked the path of the visual arts, and have tried whatever I could get my hands on-drawing, painting, sculpting, photography, illustration, web design, and now animation.
I went to high school at the American College of Sofia, Bulgaria (nevermind the "college" part, it's still a high school). It was established in 1860 by American missionaries, as part of a chain of schools aimed to spread the American spirit of freedom and independent thinking to third-world countries. I fell in love with the idea that, unlike at regular, oppressive communist-style Bulgarian schools, at ACS I could finally be myself and grow as an individual. This love of "the American way" gave me enough courage to apply to U.S. colleges, and on a snowy Friday the 13th I was admitted into Harvard.
It may sound a little weird, going to Harvard to study visual arts. Why not go to an art school, many people have asked me. Well, like I mentioned, I have very broad interests in a lot of areas, so I didn't want to limit myself to just art at an arts school, and miss out on meeting great minds of all fields of study. While Harvard may not have taught me how to use Flash, it taught me how to teach myself; how to think, how to approach concepts and problems and see into their essence. This has helped greatly in guiding my talent and keeping me on a constant strive for improvement.
While at Harvard, I discovered the joy of animation, which soon became my main interest and I graduated in 2007 with a B.A. in Visual Arts with specialty animation (the only one out of a class of 1,650!). Soon thereafter, I found myself at FableVision - at first as a freelancer, and later full-time. I have been enjoying working on all kinds of projects here - animated films, games, illustrations - particularly enjoying the process of making things fun! I am enchanted by the idea of using creativity and art to help kids learn and grow into individuals. It resonates with my own unhappy school days of mindless memorization, before I discovered the American approach... how I wish we'd had a FableVision when I was in school! Pete's mission has been another stage of my continuous growth and appreciation for creativity in all its forms.
Didi can be reached at didi@fablevision.com
