“If you can Dream it you can do it”

“I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing that it all started by a mouse”

Mickey mouse also has a long lost Brother! Oswald the Lucky rabbit

Walt Disney studios started their journey in 1923 in the rear of a small office building in Los Angeles. It was here that Walter and his Brother Roy would produce a short live action /animated films collectively called ‘The Alice Comedies’, And Within four months they developed to larger facilities which above the door read ‘Disney Bros.studio’ 14 years later many changes had taken place at the Disney studio. The biggest being the birth of Mickey Mouse in 1928 who was soon followed by his trusty dog Pluto and pals Donald & Goofy and gradually the rest of the Disney family.

“Get a Good Idea and stay with it. Dog it and work at it until it’s done and done right”

Can you place the movies in order of release date?

1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

“Whistle while you work”

Snow white was referred to “Disney’s Folly”. They changed their tune when it became a huge success

Walt Disney brought Snow white and the seven dwarves to the world in 1937. It was his first ever full length feature film. The film produced at the unheard cost of $1,499,000 and though his Brother Roy and Wife Lillian tried to persuade him not to, Walt felt it as his passion to create snow white and the seven dwarves.

List of Short animations

1921 – Newman Laugh-o-grams – Cleaning up 20th march – Director Walt Disney

1922- Little Red Ridding hood – July 29th –tales laugh-o-grams first of seven fairy tales – Director Walt Disney

1924- Alice Comedies - Alice’s day at sea – March 1st -first produced by Walt Disney studio – Director Walt Disney

1927- The adventures Oswald the Lucky Rabbit- Trolley troubles – September 5th – Director Walt Disney

1929- Mickey Mouse – March 14th

1938- Donald & Goofy – The Fox hunt- July 29th – Director Ben Sharpsteen

1952- Chip n’ Dale- March 21st – Director Jack Hannah

1966- Winnie the Pooh and the Honey tree- February 4 th

1997 – Redux Ridding Hood – August 5th

2004- One by One – August 31st – direct to Disney DVD short

2009- Prep and Landing – December 8th – ABC television special

2012- Tangled ever After- January 13th – in theatres of Beauty and the Beast 3D

The Disney shorts started in 1921, it’s first documented was Newman’s Laugh-O-grams ‘Cleaning Up?!’ since then the Walt Disney company has produced over 500 shorts since 1921 to 2012. Each of the shorts have been created by the most famous animation styles from Disney it’s hand drawn animation which started from ‘cleaning Up?!’ Up to Paperman (2012) the only short which along with it’s film was CGI was Tangled ever After a spin off of the film.

“They say if you dream a thing more than once, it’s sure to come true”

Snow White : 1937 Cinderella : 1950Sleeping beauty: 1959

The little Mermaid: 1989Beauty and the Beast:1991 Aladdin: 1992

Pocahontas: 1995Princess and the Frog: 2009

All of the Disney princesses apart from one were created with hand drawn animation. This process involves drawing the character first with pencil and paper. The way in which the artists drew the detail of the princesses was by the beauty models that they use to play out the scene of the princess to get her initial style, look and how she moves.

Since Pocahontas Disney studios had not released a princess film until 2009. The Princess and the frog was the turning point for hand drawn animation as it had not been used since ‘Home on the range’ in 2004.

Before their first Disney movie The Little Mermaid ,Music Composers Howard Ashman and Alan Menken where composing for the musical little shop of horrors

“Everything is connected in the great circle of life”

At the Disney studio’s there was a constant ‘house style’ designed by it’s producer Walt Disney himself, even now the Majority of the Disney films do not only use the same animation technique but also the same character appearance style. The fact that they use a constant style gives the impression that the characters are all apart of the same universe and are all part of the same ‘Family’.

During the song ‘Out there’ in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Bell from beauty & the beast can be seen walking through the market place reading her book

“I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters to make them personalities”

Hercules – 1997Has a slightly different style towards it’s animation. Animators used a special style when creating this film by giving it a more Greek realistic feel. By the way that the characters are created they look slightly different when compared to Hercules Especially the ears

Mulan- 1998Animators created a new style for Mulan, Like Hercules it has that cultural feel to the animation. In ways of characters and scenery. They tend to use swirls and curls within the animation. Next time you watch it took at the explosion clouds.

The Emperors new groove- 2000As soon as you start watching you can tell there is a slight Animation difference from this film to others such as Peter pan and Snow white. This animation seems to be more sharper with the shapes that it uses within the film.

Atlantis – 2001 Like the Emperors new groove, Atlantis too has a sharper look about it’s animation, when you look at the faces of the characters you can notice it more, though Atlantis animation seems to have a softer touch about it though it is a clean cut animation. It certainly has a different style than the rest.

Lilo and Stitch- 2002The style of this movie is that they tend to use more rounder animation giving the characters and settings a smooth like finish about them. The characters heads especially seem to be more round taking the shape of either Circle or Oval the same with the human noses.

Brother Bear- 2003Similar to Lilo and Stitch Brother bear also uses round animation to create it’s characters giving their appearance a smooth cut, enough to show the difference when compared to the ‘Similar Animations’.

The Spots on Shang’s horse in ‘Mulan’ are shaped like Mickey mouse heads

“Around here we don’t look backwards for very long , we keep moving forward opening up new doors and doing more things because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths”Meet the Robinsons 2007-

The theme of Meet The Robinsons (opening March 30) aptly ties directly to Walt Disney's own philosophy: "… We keep moving forward”. Director Steve Anderson had to find the balance between a realistic and a cartoony kind of human. He realized that the trick was to make choices that would never pull the audience out of the movie and distance them from the characters.  ”We had skin texture we had to work out, we had to grow hair off of characters' heads and we had to find an animation style that was still fun and loose and had some caricature to it, but could portray humans in a believable way” Meet the Robinsons was marked the first time WDFA tackled CG humans.  

Tangled 2010 –

Glen Keane was the top animator for the first CGI Princess, a change for him considering he has become famous from his designs of the other princesses such as The little Mermaid and Pocahontas. “But the dream was someday to do computer animated characters that had all of the same organic feel as hand drawn. That is the story of this film”On a previous Pixar film ‘The Incredible’s’ Animators had difficulty when creating the hair of their CGI characters to fall properly and naturally especially the young woman. Now from the film Tangled we can see just how far they have come.

Bolt 2008-

The look of the film was inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper and the cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond. New technology in non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) was used to give it a special visual appearance. Bolt's characteristics are based on an amalgam of breeds, although the designers started with the American White Shepherd. Joe Moshier, lead character designer, said, "the American White Shepherds have really long ears, a trait that I tried to caricature in order to allow the animators to emphasize Bolt's expressiveness."

“I don’t like to repeat success, I like to go on to other things”

The Story of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ from the perspective of the evil Sorceress Maleficent -Angelina Jolie stars 14th March 2013

A stage musician is thrown into a fantasy world where he must use his wits to stay ahead of 3 enchantresses .March 8th 2013

loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen,  Anna must race against time, conquer the elements and battle an army of frozen warriors if she ever hopes to melt her frozen heart.November 27th 2013