Rowland Wilson in his Studio
John Culhane, author of many definitive books on Walt Disney animation, including Walt Disney’s Fantasia, Fantasia 2000 and Aladdin, The Making of Animated film, was a long-time friend of Rowland B. Wilson and sent this memoir to Rowland’s wife, Suzanne. (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…)
Animator and story man Mel Shaw has been called one of Disney’s “elder statesmen” of animation. Walt Disney, who personally recruited Mel to join his team, observed another side.
During his early polo playing days, Mel recalled first meeting Walt at the field, who announced, “You ride like a wild Indian!” And thus, the door opened for Mel to infuse his passion into Disney animation. (more…)
(Caricature by John Musker)
Words by Mike Gabriel for Heroes of Imagination:
Joe Grant taught me many, many things over the 15 years I worked with him, about life and about cartoons. Probably the greatest lesson was observing the way he lived his life, summed up by a little 4 by 3 calligraphic note he wrote and kept taped to the outside of his office door at Disney. It read simply “Get to work” And boy did he work. Right up until he was about a week away from turning 97 years of age. He really lived that note. Never allow yourself to turn fallow. You are an artist; therefore you must reflect then create. Compensated or not, you must never stop coming up with ideas andconcepts and thoughts that need to be captured in drawings and/or words. Stay in the game. Create. Get on the screen or the art pad, pick up that stylus pen, ink pen, grease pencil, water colors, or charcoal and get that brain working. (more…)