Ollie Johnston’s life and career have been well documented. FLIP presents some anecdotes from the next generation of animators whom he so greatly inspired.

Article Care of Steve Moore at Flip Magazine

Randy Cartwright
I was in-betweening for Ollie on The Rescuers. One day he showed me a pencil test loop of Penny. She was holding up her lantern, causing sparkles to appear on the wet wall. It was a slow, not particularly impressive scene.

Ollie pointed and said, “See that? What do you think?”

I replied, hesitantly, “Well, that’s….that’s nice.” (more…..)

Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston
Together Again

After the announcement of Ollie’s passing on April 14th, 2008.
Words By Nancy Beiman:

It’s been a sad week for animators. First we lose animator/producer Andy Knight on April 11 (he died of a stroke at the age of 46). Now news has come that Ollie Johnston (the last of the famous “Nine Old Men”) died on April 14 after a long illness. Ollie was 95 years old.

I first met him when I was in my freshman year at Cal Arts. I’d gotten the idea of animating an albatross–a gooney bird. I was pretty sure that this amusing creature, which crashes on landing, had never been animated before.

“I hate to disillusion you,” Brad Bird said one day as I was happily working away on a walk on the ‘other’ bird, “but they’re animating an albatross in THE RESCUERS, the new Disney feature. Ollie Johnston is animating it, and he is one of the artists coming to our show this spring to see our pencil tests.” (more…)

Walt Stanchfield started at the Charles Mintz Animation Studio in 1937. He also worked for 2 years at the Walter Lantz Animation Studio. In 1948, he went to work for the Walt Disney Animation Studio and with the exception of 4 short retirements, has worked there ever since.

Walt worked on every full-length cartoon feature between The Adventures of Ichabod Crane and Mr. Toad (1949) and The Great Mouse Detective (1986). About half of that time was spent as a Clean-up artist and half as an Animator. From then until the present, he has been active in a teaching capacity, including 3 trips to the Walt Disney Feature Animation studio in Florida, to teach some drawing classes and 1 trip to London to help on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as a hands-on animation consultant and a conductor of drawing classes.

When not involved in studio matters, Walt is a painter of landscapes, seascapes, still-lifes, and people. He writes poetry and spends an inordinate amount of time at the piano–that is, between caring for his vegetable garden and playing tennis.

Was this a life, or what?! (more…)

Bert Klein
I worked as an animator at Walt Disney Feature Animation from 1993 to 2002. I have lots of memories from that period, but the one I would like to recount is the unforgettable (although very brief) time that I spent as an intern in the CGI department with Tina Price. I can’t remember whether it was for one or 2 weeks, but it was definitely during a school break. Here is what I remember in no particular order… (more…)