How an Aussie Student Went from Collecting Trolleys to Animating Spider-Man

A former Port Hedland trolley boy explains how he got Into the Spider-Verse.

Eddie Chew’s got a hell of a CV.

Back when he was a student, he worked as a "trolley boy" at Coles. Today, he’s a Senior Animator on Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse.

Now that’s what we call a glow-up.

Back in the day, Eddie could only fantasise about such a dream job while collecting stray trolleys in Port Hedland parking lots.

As he tells Student Edge, "Something had to pass the time!"

Eddie grew up in Port Hedland, Western Australia, dreaming of becoming a comic book penciller for Marvel or DC Comics (leaving "drawings all over my notebooks during class"), before moving to Perth and getting his degree at Curtin University of Technology.

"I knew that in order to pursue my passion within the multi-media art space, I needed to leave Port Hedland," he says.

"Animation entered my mind in university while I was doing my BA in multi-media. Once that realisation set in, I was 100 per cent focused and ignored everything else."

He now calls Vancouver home, and in the years since leaving Perth, he’s worked as a Lead Animator on Pacific Rim 2: Uprising and a Senior Animator on films like Star Trek Beyond, Captain America: Civil War, The Meg, Jurassic World and Furious 7. (Live-action movies with special effects need animation, too!)

His wildest movie memory comes from Gravity.

"I left my desk for a moment and came back to find Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón sitting in my chair watching my shot and complementing my work," he remembers.

That said, working on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse—the new animated flick centered on Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) and the many different Spideys across parallel dimensions—is something of a career culmination for Eddie.

"My brothers and I were nuts over Spider-Man and comic book superheroes," he says.

"We would save all our money and spend every last cent on comics."

"Giving life to a childhood favourite like Spider-Man, my adult self is very fulfilled, and I want to high five my 10-year-old self for keeping at it."

He says Aussie students wanting a career like his don’t necessarily need to leave home anymore.

"There are excellent world-renowned studios in Australia," he says, before adding, "Having the opportunity to work and travel around the world is a definite bonus in my perspective."

He offers this advice for any future animators: "In the realm of technicality, practice your skill every day, the same way you develop any skill, and be patient with your learning. Purchase or rent a copy of Autodesk Maya and enrol in an online course. Technical skill is an absolute, and the sooner you understand it the more you can practice it."

He also says to master the 12 principles of animation: "Timing, exaggeration, easing in and easing out, squash and stretch, anticipation, staging, arcs, secondary action, solid drawing, appeal, follow through and overlapping action, and posing."

Finally: "If you want to pursue your career in animation and take your career abroad, having a university degree helps the Visa process."

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse arrives in Australian cinemas 13 December.

Header Image: Sony Pictures