Here for a 3rd go-around are another batch of recollections from a period at Disney Feature Animation that many of you and I all shared, circa 1987 to 2007 (my tenure with that Studio). Look at it this way, it’s kinda fun to remember the happier times of our lives shared with so many at such a growth time…and, let’s face it, I don’t know about YOU, but best to grab what my ole brain still retains at the age of 77, as no telling how long this can last

Bill Matthews interviewing a student, later Disney Assistant Animator at Kansas City Art Institute.

There were so many talented people that connected with my life as a result of my job responsibilities then, so many special occasions we all participated in, that at times it hardly seems easy to know where to start. So let me begin, with paying a special tribute to a great artist, a dear friend not only to me but to everyone in that Studio from top to bottom, and who gave so much of himself to training and inspiring most of you, not to mention thenew youngsters entering our world for the first time…I speak of the one and only Master, Walt Stanchfield! (more…)

Caricature by Animation Director John Musker

Well, hello again! I scratched my gray old noggin and dug way in to my past at Disney Feature Animation for a few more reminscences, which might trigger memories for you if you were on production around the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. As mentioned in my previous piece, I began my last decade of professional life hired by Peter Schneider in ‘86 to set up training and recruitment services for all of you. I got tremendous inputs from so many of you “vets” then about what the folks in the trenches were thinking might pick up spirits (that got lowered after Animation got moved off lot into a series of warehouse buildings in a Glendale Industrial Park, aka “Flower Street”! Anyway, for what it’s worth let’s look back. (more…)

Ahh, yes, it was truly a magical time at Disney Feature Animation…what most of us “old timers” like to remember as Disney’s 2d Golden Age of animated features. New, young “stars” creating (but not yet knowing it) legends of themselves with each production, a new spirit of carrying on the Disney Magic through features, which, oddly enough, are themselves, only a decade or so later, considered “classics”, and a spirit of the future as unlimited…a sense which, I’m happy to report, still instills the current generation of new techno-savvy artists! I identify with that 2d Golden Age roughly from 1986 (with John Musker and Ron Clements memorable “The Great Mouse Detective”) to around when I departed into semi-retirement during, if memory serves me, around the making of “Tarzan”. (I’m still, if you can believe it, still under contract to Feature Animation as a “consultant”, doing once-a-month lectures on our history for the new stars in the firmament!) (more…)