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…)

This picture of me “painting” the blue character is from my short film based on Joe Grant’s concept, LORENZO which came out in 2004 attached to a live action Disney film called Raising Helen. This must have been 2003 or maybe early ‘04. I made it while in room 3136 up on the third floor of the Mickey Hat bldg. I actually painted all the backgrounds and character set ups for the cg artists to match my style so although I am “faking” painting that Lorenzo image I actually did do all the analogue painting that was used in the film’s bgs, character pose set ups etc..—so in that way, it is not fake. That is a genuine authentic Disneyland Frontierland poster behind me that I have had for a long time. My blue paint splattered it’s frame but Lorenzo was a messy project—in certain ways. (more…)

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…)