Animated Life

Introduction

I fell head over heels in love with animation when I was a kid. However, books on the subject of animation remained few and far between, so I made do with Robert Field's The Art of Walt Disney (Macmillan, 1942) and Preston Blair's wonderful How to Draw Animated Cartoons (Walter Foster, 1994). When I finally became an animation professional, I spoke to a number of animation veterans about writing a book that would catalog their experiences and things they learned while working for Walt. Some expressed interest, but few ever did anything. Even in retirement, authoring a book seemed a daunting task, I suppose. The exceptions were Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. These two Disney veterans left us with several great books on their years ...