The Walt Disney Animation Studios—The Archive Series made its debut in November with the publication of Story (Disney Editions, $50), a handsome 272-page hardcover collection of story art created for Disney films over nearly 80 years.
Wendy Lefkon, v-p and editorial director of the Disney Global Book Group, explained that “the series came about when shortly after taking the reins at Walt Disney Animation Studios, John Lasseter spent some time at the Animation Research Library in Glendale and suggested we showcase the amazing artwork in beautiful books.”
Lasseter rose to fame as the director of Pixar’s animated films Toy Story (1995) and Cars (2006), and co-director of A Bug’s Life (1998) and Toy Story 2 (1999). After Disney bought Pixar, Lasseter became chief creative officer of both the Disney and Pixar animation studios.
As Lasseter says in his introduction to Story, the first time he visited the Disney Studios was many years before, “to work in the animation archive—‘the morgue’—pulling animation drawings for use in the brand-new Character Animation program at CalArts.”
In 1989 the “morgue” was replaced by the present-day Animation Research Library, which Lefkon describes as “an internal company archive that is humidity and temperature controlled, where artworks created for Disney films are lovingly stored and cared for. It houses approximately 65 million pieces of art going back to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit,” the series that Walt Disney produced in the 1920s just before the creation of Mickey Mouse.
On returning to Disney in 2006, Lasseter was given a tour of the Animation Research Library. He writes in his introduction that “my very first thought was, I want everyone to be able to see and share in the unbelievable art they have here.”
There was no question as to how to begin the Archives series. “We started with Story because all films start with a good story,” Lefkon says. But instead of typed scripts, Story showcases drawings made for the storyboards for animated films.
In other words, a storyboard consists of a series of pictures, often with dialogue or a description inscribed on the bottom of each drawing, that tells the story of the film. A storyboard is therefore a form of sequential art: it is comics.
The Disney Studio pioneered the creation and use of the storyboard in the form in which it is best known today. As Lefkon explains, “Storyboards were invented at the Walt Disney Studios in the early 1930s when the filmmakers found that a film’s visual and narrative flow could be easily discerned, and developed, by simply pinning a series of sketches on corkboard.” In his introduction Lasseter notes, “Walt Disney’s reputation as an unparalleled storyteller was cemented in front of such boards, as he analyzed sequences, suggested changes, acted out key moments, concocted gags, and tweaked character shadings.” The use of storyboards spread from animation into live action filmmaking by directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, and nowadays even into Web site design.
The book ranges widely through Disney history, starting with story sketches for the first Mickey Mouse cartoon to be released, Steamboat Willie (1928), and running through short subjects and major features up to the last animated feature that Walt Disney himself supervised, The Jungle Book (1967). Then the book jumps first to the powerful early work of master animator Glen Keane on The Fox and the Hound (1982) and then to the start of the Disney animation renaissance with The Little Mermaid (1989), concluding with storyboard pictures for the last hand-drawn Disney animated hit, Lilo and Stitch (2002).
The book puts its emphasis wholly on the storyboard art; brief notes describing the individual films and identifying the storyboard artists, if known, are confined to the back. But those notes should be of interest to serious Disney aficionados. For example, the story sketches for the Donald Duck short Sea Scouts (1939) turn out to be by Carl Barks, whose later work on Donald’s comic books would prove him one of the medium’s great masters.
Surprisingly, the storyboards in this book range widely in style and format.
For Steamboat Willie each scene is represented by a single drawing by animator Ub Iwerks along with a lengthy typed description. But in the next pages each step of the action in a Mickey short Fishin’ Around (1931) gets its own sketch. Some story sketches feature multiple images if the same character to indicate movement. Some storyboards, like some of Bill Peet’s and Joe Ranft’s, are very simply, sketchily drawn, serving primarily to convey the structure of the action. Other story drawings are detailed, colored pieces, like the map for Music Land (1935). In a few cases the characters look different than they do in the finished film, notably with David Hall’s Alice in Wonderland (1951) drawings, far closer to Sir John Tenniel than to Disney; on the other hand, the figures in Eric Goldberg’s storyboard for “Rhapsody in Blue” in Fantasia 2000 have already been fully realized. Then there are some full-color storyboards that convey both the mood and the dramatic impact the film sequences will have, like the remarkable work by Gaetan and Paul Grizzi for the “Firebird Suite” in Fantasia 2000 and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996).
Disney plans to publish a new volume in the Archives series each year. Lefkon says, “The next book will focus on animation and will be out in October 2009. We have plans as well for two other titles: one will focus on layouts and backgrounds and the other will focus on concept art.”
Apart from the Archives series, Disney continues to publish other books about its animation heritage. In October Disney Editions came out with Don Hahn’s The Alchemy of Animation: Making an Animated Film in the Modern Age. Also, animation historian John Canemaker is writing a new book called Two Guys Named Joe about animation story men Joe Grant and Joe Ranft, both recently deceased. Grant worked at Disney in the 1930s and 1940s, co-writing Dumbo (1941), and returned in 1989, making him the only artist to work on both the original Fantasia (1940) and Fantasia 2000. Joe Ranft was a story writer/artist first at Disney (Story includes some of his storyboard work on The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and The Nightmare before Christmas) and then at Pixar on all the features from Toy Story to Cars. This book is scheduled to be published in 2010.
