A vision of animation

Thursday, Dec. 23, 2004 | 12:50 p.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

December 24 - 26, 2004

Dan O'Sullivan has a clear vision -- clearer than many.

Recently the 24-year-old Las Vegas resident of 14 years received his bachelor's degree in media arts and animation from the Art Institute of Las Vegas and has his sights set on getting a good job in the relatively new but burgeoning field of multimedia animation.

And, during this, the holiday season, he says he sees the tremendous value in the precious gift of support from a loving father and grandmother who have raised him to be an independent and highly motivated young man.

O'Sullivan also looks with a critical eye upon those who use situations such as disabilities to gain sympathy, yet he has the compassion to encourage others to find within themselves the courage to accomplish their goals against all odds.

For a young man to have so much foresight is quite amazing, considering that his own eyes have failed him.

Born without pupils and afflicted with acute glaucoma that has left him blind in one eye and with little vision -- 20/60 -- in the other, O'Sullivan has never shut his eyes to a good challenge, such as the technological career he has chosen.

And although he has to put his face closer to a computer screen than others to do the work, he says he would compare his final product with that of anyone with perfect eyesight.

"A disability should not be your identity," O'Sullivan said.

"It's like walking up to people and saying, 'Hi, I'm Bob, I'm blind.' I do not want to be identified as the blind animator. That's degrading. Everyone has trials to overcome -- some far worse than being blind. I want to be identified simply as someone who is good at what I do."

O'Sullivan says he has been inspired by his father, Ken O'Sullivan, who is legally blind, with worse than 20/200 vision, but for 15 years has been a mail processor for the U.S. Postal Service.

"I don't care for the word disabled," said Ken O'Sullivan, who has enough vision to see that mail is lined up properly to run it through a machine that sorts it by the bar code on envelopes. "When I think of disabled I think of a broken-down car on the side of the road. That's not me and that's not my son."

Grandmother Una O'Sullivan-Pierce has guided her son and grandson down paths to make them self-sufficient and successful despite their disabilities.

"Daniel has always had a positive attitude -- a great outlook on life," said Una O'Sullivan-Pierce, who recently retired from a career of selling new homes. "He has never sat around and cried 'poor me.' "

James Lester Murray, southern district manager of the Nevada Rehabilitation Division, which oversees the Bureau of Services to the Blind and Visually Impaired, said Southern Nevada has about 20,000 blind residents and that about $500,000 is spent annually on their vocational rehabilitation needs.

And he says it is not uncommon for disabled people such as Dan O'Sullivan to set such high goals for themselves.

"In our job development process, we try to convince employers that people who are blind can function at as high or a higher level than sighted people in some areas," Murray said.

"Some individuals and employers look at blind or visually impaired people as being severely handicapped. But that is a stereotype. They (blind people) can do things that lead to self-sufficiency."

To that end, Murray's agency provides clients with assisted technology, mobility and home management skills, and, in O'Sullivan's case, textbooks and counseling that helped get him through school.

Born in Long Beach, Calif., O'Sullivan came to Las Vegas with his grandmother following his parents' divorce. Una O'Sullivan-Pierce was awarded co-custody with her son because, Ken O'Sullivan said, he would not have been able to raise his son on his own. Two years later, the Postal Service transferred Ken O'Sullivan to Las Vegas to join his family.

The O'Sullivans say the biggest hassle about being blind is that they can't drive.

"I've had to rely on friends, relatives and cabs," said Ken O'Sullivan, who owns his own home near his job. "You really cannot get around Las Vegas on public transportation if you are blind. It just takes too long."

Una O'Sullivan-Pierce said she has not minded driving her son and grandson around town.

"It has been difficult for me because I sometimes want to smother them with love, but you realize they will not allow you to do everything for them," she said. "However, driving them to where they need to go is one thing I can do."

She recalled how Ken, when he was 8, told her he wanted to experience riding a bicycle and ice skating.

"I was terrified for him, but I let him ride a bike on the street in front of our home when it was empty and I took him to a skating rink.

"It was hard for me to stand back and just watch, but I also learned from watching him that he had wonderful balance. If he could do that, I realized he could do other things."

Raising Dan O'Sullivan resulted in similar moments and additional problems.

He says he was picked on while attending Gibson Middle School because his eyes looked funny (one of his small bluish-brown irises drifts under his eyelid). But O'Sullivan said his Irish blood boiled and he fought back against the bullies despite not being able to get a good look at the target of his flying fists.

"I didn't take any guff back then," he said. "I still don't."

O'Sullivan later attended Durango High School, but left his senior year for Community College High School on Cheyenne Avenue, where he took college classes as well as high school courses.

Not knowing what he wanted to do for a career after he graduated, he got a job working for a boiler-room phone operation that targets people who are delinquent in repaying federal student loans.

"I had to listen to people yell and curse me out eight hours a day after I asked them to pay their debts," O'Sullivan said.

"The thing is, I didn't feel sorry for them. They got an education on the taxpayer's dime and many of them had jobs. They should have been repaying their loans. After a while, however, I realized that was not the type of work I wanted to do."

About that time O'Sullivan got an idea for a career as a result of a gift he received -- introductory computer software for creating three-dimensional animation.

"I liked it and started to think, 'How can I turn this into something I can make a living at?' " said O'Sullivan, who as a child enjoyed drawing pictures.

Multimedia animation is used today in architectural renderings, video game production, special effects, casino games, civil engineering and computer-generated animated Hollywood films.

O'Sullivan saw it as a wide-open frontier. But to get the education needed to crack that field, he had to take out a $50,000 student loan that he must pay back to avoid getting phone calls from people who now do what he used to do for a living.

O'Sullivan has distributed 18 demonstration discs and resumes. He says a few prospective employers have said they will call him in the coming weeks.

Nowhere on his resume does O'Sullivan mention he is disabled. He figures if potential employers are impressed with his work before they call him, then his disability should not be an issue at the in-person job interview.

"I want to be hired on my merits," he said. "I do not require special equipment, large print books or braille to do the job. The only concern that an employer who likes my work should have is whether I will show up for work every day and on time. I will."

Those who know O'Sullivan admire him for his charisma and unsinkable determination.

"Dan has a stubbornness that won't allow anything to stand in his way," said Janis Riceberg, who at Durango High was a teacher of visually impaired students, including O'Sullivan. "He is articulate, writes beautifully and is a very smart individual."

Riceberg, who retired from the Clark County School District after 20 years and today operates a teacher training and consulting business, said O'Sullivan "would look at sighted people as being the disabled ones if they could not understand what a visually impaired person could accomplish."

Felicia Miller, O'Sullivan's career adviser at the Art Institute, said he displayed "a great passion for the art."

"I was amazed at how he overcame his physical disability to earn his degree in three years," she said.

"And after watching him produce quality work that rivaled or superseded those with 20/20 vision I believe potential employers can be confident he can do the job."

As of last week, 913 students were enrolled at the institute, many seeking degrees in graphics design, culinary arts, interior design and drafting technology. Miller said blind and deaf students have earned degrees there.

As for O'Sullivan not wanting to get a job on anything but his ability, Miller said, "that attests to Daniel's character. He wants to be judged solely on what he creates, and he has a lot to offer any employer who can see beyond his impaired vision."

Such determination runs deep in his family's roots.

Una O'Sullivan-Pierce, who was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, immigrated to Canada with her son when he was a baby because in her homeland he would have been taken and raised in a boarding school for the blind, she said.

In Canada and later in the United States, she said she knew she would have more control over making her child -- and later grandchild -- better able to assimilate into the sighted world and, thus, carve out productive lives.

"I could not be prouder for my son for what he has accomplished," said Ken O'Sullivan, who like his son receives no government aid for his blindness. "He's my best friend, and we have a lot in common besides not being able to see."

Asked how he would advise other people with disabilities -- particularly blind people -- Dan O'Sullivan, who achieved a 3.1 overall grade point average at the Art Institute, said, "I can only say you have to challenge yourself and you have to be realistic and know what you can and cannot do.

"For example, I could not have gotten this degree if I were totally blind. But, if people tell you that you cannot accomplish something and you know you can do it, then you just need to go out and do it. Find your base of support, as I have with my family, and find that thing within yourself to do it."

O'Sullivan, who said he avoided getting into relationships the last few years to focus on his education, said his hopes and dreams are no different than those of anyone else. He plans to one day meet someone, marry her and have children.

But he also says he's in no rush.

"I just want a happy life," he said.

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