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Michael Vila, a junior attending Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, located at located at 500 SW 127 Ave. in Miami, is using his own skills and dream of being an animator to brighten the lives of patients and their families at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Broward County.
Born and raised in Miami of Cuban-Colombian heritage, Vila’s work consists of stop-motion, 2D animation, and 3D computer animation along with live-action short films and journalist pieces.
“I want to be an animator and filmmaker when I grow up,” Vila said. “I love the art of animation. I found it really young, and I’ve had a history of medical complications. When I was in the hospital, I really couldn’t animate any shorts, which really bring me joy, and I realized that there’s people that are currently there and they don’t have anything to distract them and just bring them joy.
“It can be boring and scary when you’re in the hospital. It’s a really cold place. Even if you don’t know how to animate, just seeing the magic of something coming to life in front of you is something I wanted to share. They’re really the people that need it the most.”
Vila said that he and his team bring a lot of art supplies such as crayons, pencils and special design paper. Some of the papers can be used to make flip books, a simple type of animation.
“It’s another form of entertainment and it really gets your mind off of things, away from needles and surgeries and stuff,” Vila said. “I got a real good response so far with the patients in the hospital and the families. We teach them how to draw in a way that would translate into animation, so they draw their own special characters with crayons and stuff.
“We also teach them how to use flip books so they can take that home. We take their designs and we animate them in a form like short films which we bring back to the hospital so all the kids can watch them.”
Vila said that the Joe DiMaggio Hospital has been helpful as far as arranging things. He has been working with them for the past six months.
“It’s been the best partner ever,” Vila said. “I initially reached out to them in 2024 to propose the activity. I approached a lot of hospitals around Miami and they were the first one to say ‘yes.’ It was a little farther than my other local hospital, but they’re the first one to take a chance on us because it was like a very new type of activity. As far as I know no one has ever done an animation-based thing like this, especially also making shorts for a hospital.”
Vila described the set-up there, and how it works.
“Joe DiMaggio has a special floor and it’s the top floor of the hospital where all the patients can come in and play games and watch TV,” Vila said. “They have a special area where creative activities can be and that’s where we roam. We bring our own stuff and when they’re drawing, they forget everything of what they’re going through. The parents say it really helps them because it gets their mind off the stress and also when they watch our other shorts they are able to see what we’re doing.”
They have gone a total of five times so far. Each time that they go back it’s with a new type of activity.
“We premiered the first short film that we did, a short animated film that we premiered to the whole hospital. Another time we brought clay and we taught the kids how to do stop motion animation with iPads. Another time we brought flip books. You just draw little doodles within them and we taught them how to use those so they could take them home.”
Every activity is different but in all of them the kids draw characters. It takes them a little bit in between, maybe a month or so. Every time they do an activity they can come back and show a new cartoon.
Their animated short film, Heroes of Joe DiMaggio, can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/gupFH8d09bA?si=6etpS_DkzTfRtUBk.
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