Centralight

37 centralight winter '10 Alumni News 37 centralight fall '14 CMU alum was drawn to a career in animation Keith Sintay has found decades of success in movies and TV since leaving Mount Pleasant Keith Sintay, '91, always had a knack for drawing but started at CMU studying international marketing, with a minor in German. "Back then, there was no Internet, and there was no real way for me to figure out how to be an animator living in Michigan." When he was a sophomore, Sintay's sister connected him to a Disney animator. "He told me to get a portfolio and get a degree in illustration," Sintay says. "I immediately changed gears and went into the art department. I took all the figure drawing classes I could." After graduating with a fine arts degree, he headed to Florida and got a job at the Magic Kingdom to be near the Disney studio. "I worked at the Haunted Mansion, I was a Jungle Cruise tour guide, I worked as a puppeteer for the 'Little Mermaid' stage show." State's top library job now belongs to a Chippewa It was during his time as Pluto that he learned he had landed a coveted animation internship. "People were so surprised because I didn't tell anyone I was trying for it." In the early 1990s, Disney was receiving 2,000 portfolios every three months; it selected 10 to 15 people every six months to join the team as an intern. Sintay was chosen on his fourth try. His first film was 1995's "Pocahontas." Sintay now has nearly two decades of experience and three dozen film and TV credits to his name, including a busy 2014 which has featured work on the blockbuster movies "Transformers: Age of Extinction," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," "300: Rise of an Empire" and TV's "Sleepy Hollow." "CMU got me out into the world," Sintay says. • Randy Riley, '84, Michigan's new state librarian, recalls a conversation he had with the father of a college roommate. When the parent discovered Riley's major was history, he paused and said, "You know, you might consider becoming a librarian." Riley was too polite to say what he was thinking, which was, "Librarian – are you crazy? That's the last thing I'd want to be!" Thirty years later, that crazy idea led Riley to become the person in Lansing who is responsible for both the Library of Michigan and for helping dispense federal and state aid to public libraries throughout the state. Public service librarianship, he notes, is really one-on-one teaching. And particularly with special collections material, if you do it right, the researcher becomes someone to whom you say good morning and good night and happily see doing productive research using the skills you have shared with them. Service and education are part of the mission Riley brings to his new post. But that commitment to service and education is something he can link to his days as an undergraduate at CMU. He says he loved his years in Mount Pleasant and cherished the fact that he was taught by dedicated faculty who were committed to the education of their students. It was an unspoken lesson he observed, learned and embraced. And even if he didn't realize it at the time, his years at CMU also included some pretty good advice from his roommate's parent. •

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