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Disney's second animated feature, Pinocchio is widely regarded as the best animated film ever made. It was also one of the most expensive. The use of the horizontal version of the multiplane camera was used extensively during the production of Pinocchio which contributed to the enormous cost of the film. This new camera could dolly into and out of a scene move successfully and had the advantage that the backgrounds could be twice as large as with the vertical multiplane camera.
Walt's insistence that scenes be reworked until they were flawless was not only rough on the animators but it was also hard on the accountants. One of the directing animators on the film, Bill (Vladimir) Tytla, recounted one of his encounters with this perfectionism of Walt's as he recalls, "I had to animate one sequence in Pinocchio and gave it everything I had". When Walt saw the sequence, his response was "That was a helluva scene, but… If anyone else had animated it I would have passed it. But I expected something different from Bill!"

The character of Pinocchio was voiced by a boy named Dickie Jones, aged 12, who had been discovered by Hoot Gibson in a Dallas radio station strumming a ukulele under the billing of a "cowboy rambler". It has been claimed that the gurgling effect of a person speaking underwater, as Pinocchio does, had never been achieved in the movies before. Jones maintains that he almost drowned during his early attempts to produce the effect.

People were so astonished by the realism of Pinocchio's movements that even Popular Mechanics included an article in their January 1940 edition addressing how the animators had coped with their task of making Pinocchio move like a living puppet rather that like a real boy. The article explained that the model department created the actual puppets for the animators who took lessons from a former puppeteer who showed them how to make Pinocchio perform a variety of antics. This training afforded the animators the ability to differentiate the bodily actions of a human child from the movements of a live, but wooden puppet.

Pinocchio was six months into development when Walt Disney scrapped all work on the project to that point. One of the key problems was the little puppet himself. The delinquent traits and physical characteristics of Collodi's' Pinocchio were both softened in the renewed work on the film.

Part of the initial problem in making Pinocchio sympathetic was the perspective of the artists working on him. Frank Thomas worked on redesigning Pinocchio's face to be more expressive and sympathetic. Ollie Johnston was given the Disney Legend Award in 1989. The Disney Legend Award was created by Michael Eisner and Roy E. Disney to honor individuals whose body of work has made a significant impact on the Disney entertainment legacy.

Pinocchio (1940), Disney's second animated feature, was inspired by the 1881 Carlo Collodi tale. In the original story, the cricket was an unnamed, sermonizing bug who annoys Pinocchio - and is promptly squashed by the delinquent puppet.

In designing Jiminy, "I started with a real cricket with toothed legs and antennae," Kimball recalls, "But Walt didn't like it. I did 12 or 14 versions and gradually cut out all the insect appendages and ended up with a little man, really, wearing spats and a tailcoat that suggests folded wings. The only thing that makes him a cricket is that we say he is."

Pocahontas

Pocahontas hosts an all-star cast of voice talent including David Ogden Stiers who provides the voice for the villain John Ratcliffe, Mel Gibson as the voice of Captain John Smith and Irene Bedard who provided the speaking voice of Pocahontas, while Judy Kuhn was the singing voice.
At various stages of the production, the creative team consulted with Native American historians and storytellers to incorporate authentic aspects of the Powhatan culture into the film.

Pocahontas is Disney's 33rd full-length animated feature film and the first to be inspired by a real-life historical figure. Combining historical fact with popular folklore and legend, the filmmakers have constructed a compelling and romanticized tale of the famous Native American heroine and her exciting encounters with famed British soldier, Captain John Smith.

Pocahontas brings together the musical genius of Academy Award winning composer Alan Menken and the lyrical magic of renowned Broadway veteran Stephen Schwartz. In their first major collaboration, the songwriting duo have created an integrated song score which "musicalizes" many of the film's most important dramatic and emotional moments.

Pocahontas' real name, which by custom was kept a secret, was Matoaca. Her father, Chief Powhattan, gave her the more familiar nickname Pocahontas, which means "little mischief".

The on-screen relationship between Pocahontas and Meeko succinctly represents a character development for which director Eric Goldberg was striving: "We knew we wanted her to be a very spiritual person, somebody who has a connection with nature all the time, whose thoughts run deeper than it might seem on the surface. But she also has a playful side, a mischievous side."

Although Pocahontas marks the first time an animated feature has been based on an actual historic figure, it is not the first time that Disney has presented historical characters in animation. The story of John Chapman, who actually traveled across the Ohio Valley planting apple trees, was told in the Johnny Appleseed segment of Melody Time (1948). Railroad man Casey Jones was the subject of the 1950 short The Brave Engineer. And founding fathers Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were animated in the 1953 featurette Ben and Me.

Animator Nik Ranieri based many of Meeko;s characteristics on … himself! "You just put yourself in that position, " Ranieri explains, "It sounds cliché, but you actually have to become the character. I just tried to use whatever acting skills I have."

Animator Glen Keane is proud of the sincerity he was able to achieve in the character of Pocahontas " When I first started, I thought animation was about a lot of moving drawings. I found out that that's not what it's all about. It's not about moving drawings - it's about drawings that move people."

Robin Hood

Everyone know the story of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Together they robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.
Their noble efforts have been brought to life in the 1973 animated feature "Robin Hood". Combined with the powerful love story between Robin Hood and Maid Marion, this makes for a true classic in animated films.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

The film Who Framed Roger Rabbit is based on the novel "Who Censored Roger Rabbit?" by Gary K. Wolf. In the book, the author makes a statement about dominant races and minorities, but cleverly blankets the message in satirical humor.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the winner of four Academy Awards, for its technical wizardry, has been hailed a milestone in the history of animation. It is viewed by many much in the same way Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was almost a half century earlier, as a fundamentally new approach to film making.

An international staff of more that 700 cast and crew worked for three years on the project. In the live-action film, human actors nimbly and convincingly played their roles opposite invisible cartoon co-stars who would be drawn later.

The animation portion of the project took approximately 14 months to complete.

Sleeping Beauty

In Sleeping beauty, the voice actors for Flora and Merryweather brought a wealth of experience to their roles. Before her role as Flora, Verna Felton had many memorable voice roles in Disney Pictures. She was Thumper's mother in Bambi, the matriarch elephant in Dumbo, the amusing fairy godmother in Cinderella, and raucous Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, to name a few. Barbara Luddy, who played Merryweather, also left her impression on previous Disney features. She was the voice of Lady on Lady and the Tramp and that of Kanga in both Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree and the Academy Award winning Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day.
Walt Disney challenged his artists to create a "moving illustration" in which every frame of film could exist independently as a beautiful picture. To enhance the film's illustrated look, Disney enlisted the talents of studio background artist and color stylist, Eyvind Earle. Earle fused Gothic French, Italian and Renaissance influences with his own abstract style of realism to create much of the formalized beauty and stylish design seen in Sleeping Beauty. Earle's influence was also felt in the character design which was strongly vertical and angular in contrast to the more familiar soft and round designs of previous animated films.

More so that any other animated film before it, Sleeping Beauty showed an audience how realistic animated characters could be rendered. As Walt said about the characters in the film, "I had only one general suggestion for our ancestors - make them as real as possible, near flesh and blood, and sympathetic - especially to younger picture fans. That is why we used living models more carefully than ever before in order to give the artists inspiration, to help them shape the anatomy of movement and expression of the cartoon figures." Disney himself called the perfected process "the art of painting in life-like motion."

Mary Costa, the speaking and singing voice of Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, began her musical career by singing her first Sunday School solo at the age of nine. While still in her teens, Mary auditioned for the part of Aurora mainly because she was very eager to meet Walt Disney. The day after her audition she was notified that she had the job, but every time she appeared at the studio to record and would ask about seeing Walt, she was given an excuse. Finally she learned that Disney preferred not to meet her until after the picture was completed so that he would not be influenced by her personality. Three years later they got together for lunch.

Of all the characters in Sleeping Beauty, the wicked fairy Maleficent is often the one that leaves the greatest impression and is therefore one of the most intriguing of all the Disney Villains. This is largely due to the animator, Marc Davis, who brought her and other famous Disney villains, like Cruella De Vil, to life. In fact, it was Marc who decided Maleficent needed a sidekick due to her fondness for dramatic soliloquies. The sidekick came in the form of a pet raven which listened and reacted to her various speeches. The raven turned out to be a rather important character as it discovered Briar Rose's hiding place, giving Maleficent the opportunity to strike.

Like the evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Ursula in the Little Mermaid, and Jafar in Aladdin, Maleficent transforms into something even more frightening that her wicked self; the dragon. Animated by Ken Anderson, who also animated a more friendly Disney dragon named Elliott, the terrifying dragon bears Maleficent's physical characteristics as well as her lust for destruction.

Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs

Production began in late 1934 and was completed in 1937. Actual animation did not begin until 1936, although story work had been proceeding for two years. More than 750 artists worked on the film, including 32 animators, 102 assistants, 107 in-betweeners, 20 layout men, 25 background artists, 65 special effects animators, and 158 inkers and painters. In all, at least two million sketches were created, of which over 250,000 drawings were used in the film. Studio chemists in the Disney paint laboratories ground their own pigments from special formulas and mixed 1,500 colors and shades for the characters and backgrounds.
It was obviously clear to everyone who worked on the film that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was to be a collaborative effort, whose ultimate goal was not the recognition for any specific animator, but the glorification of a creative endeavor. During production on the film there was so much in the way of revision, rehashing, scrapping and so on in order to get things just right, that the animators constantly advised Walt that the screen-time of the characters they were animating should be cut.

Doc is very much the acknowledged leader of the dwarfs. Except for an occasional "harumph" from Grumpy, the dwarfs respect Doc and let him direct them. Whether it's washing their faces or coming home from the mine, the other dwarfs follow Doc's lead. Although he obviously inspires loyalty, you wouldn't think it to hear the way he fumbles and stumbles over his sentences.

There are eight songs in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, all of which were composed by Frank Churchill and Larry Morey and have been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and eight other languages. The only Oscar nomination the film received was for Best Score. The Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs album was the first "original soundtrack" recording ever released. Prior to that time, film music had always been re-recorded for release on records.

With Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the backgrounds were painted in grayed-down transparent watercolors. This muted color palette not only achieved the overall subtlety that Walt Disney wanted, it was most suitable to the then-new Technicolor process, which was only capable of accurately capturing mid-range colors. The fairy tale was dramatized for the stage in 1912, with Marguerite Clark as Snow White. Clark reprised her role in a 1915 silent film version, which Walt Disney saw at a special screening for newsboys in Kansas City. According to Disney biographer Bob Thomas, "It had been his most vivid early memory of attending the movies."

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first animated feature, from it came the first original soundtrack album, and it also became the first film in history to be completely restored by digital technology. The final result of this 1994 restoration was screened for five surviving artists who worked on the picture (Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Ward Kimball, Marc Davis and Joe Grant) along with Disney Vice Chairman Roy E. Disney. It received their unanimous approval.

Snow White was the first realistically-animated human character ever attempted. Exhaustive study of anatomy was performed by Disney animators, and extensive reference footage of a live-action model named Marge Belcher helped animators render the character's realistic movements.

At the end of the production, Walt Disney noticed a flaw in the animation of the Prince as he bent to kiss Snow White. A Liberty magazine article reported that Walt supervised new animation for the Prince, and had the theaters that were running Snow White replace the flawed footage. A testament to the perfectionist in Disney, other minor adjustments were also incorporated into the film after it premiered.

In one scene the Prince lifts Bashful, Grumpy, Doc, Sneezy, Happy, and Dopey for a good-bye kiss. Why was Sleepy left out? According to animator Frank Thomas, the scene was one of the last to be animated, and deadlines were imminent. The timing and layout couldn't be adjusted to include Sleepy, and still finish the film in time for its premiere.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a worldwide sensation. The dwarfs got interesting names in other countries: Doc became Prof in French; Grumpy, Sleepy, and Dopey were renamed Butter, Trotter, and Toker in Swedish; Bashful was Romantico in Spanish; Sneezy was Apsik in Polish.

Although Walt himself was never quite sure how he came to settle on the tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as told by the Brothers' Grimm in Kinder- und Hausmarchen (1812-15), in 1938 he offered a tentative explanation: "I saw Marguerite Clark in [a movie of] Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when I was delivering papers in Kansas City,, and the film made such an impression on me I'm sure it influenced my decision to use the Grimm fairy tale when I decided to make an animated film.

During the course of the production, live models were photographed for the animators to study so they might achieve realistic actions. Marjorie Belcher (who later became Marge Champion of the famous Marge and Gower Championship dance team) pantomimed the actions of Snow White and Louis Hightower stood in for the prince. Layout man Ken O'Connor was given the burdensome task of tracing the live action directly off the moviola. These tracings were then used as a loose guide by the animators. Proportions of figures and live action timing were altered to avoid the stilted, unreal look that direct copying would have created.

The scene depicted in "Let Me See Your Hands!" was animated by Frank Thomas, legendary Disney animator and one of Walt Disney's "Nine Old Men." Frank worked at Disney from 1935 until his retirement in 1978. With Ollie Johnston, Frank has written several incisive volumes on Disney Animation, including Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life, Too Funny for Words, Bambi, The Story and the Film, and The Disney Villain. The names and personalities of the dwarfs went through a lengthy period of development over the production of Snow White. Among the names suggested were Jumpy, Baldy, Wheezy, Gabby, Shorty, and Burpy. The strongest characters were decided early in production: Grumpy, Dopey, Sleepy, Doc, Happy, Bashful and Deafy. Deafy was replaced by Sneezy (Walt didn't want to play on physical handicaps for comedy), but the basic characters were established, which allowed the creative team to concentrate on the subtleties of personality.

The seven dwarfs were so popular that Disney was besieged with requests for a sequel to Snow White. Although no sequel was made, the dwarfs were seen again in four short films, The Standard Parade (1939), The Seven Wise Dwarfs (1941), All Together (1942), and the Winged Scourge (1943).

It is rumored that Walt Disney was lobbied by many of his staff to use Dopey in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment of Fantasia (1940), instead of Mickey Mouse.

Tarzan

Based on the classic film by the same name, Tarzan recreates the story of a young boy raised in the jungle by wild animals. Disney's version of Tarzan, made in 1999, shows us the complete story of how the jungle boy grows into a man.
Together Tarzan and Jane find love and happiness with each other and their surroundings.

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Pinocchio