Sep 05 2026
Born on September 5, 1924, Frank Armitage followed an artistic path that was anything but ordinary. Over the course of his long career, the Australian-born artist moved from studying the monumental murals of Mexico to painting backgrounds for some of Walt Disney’s most famous animated films, creating imagery for the science-fiction classic Fantastic Voyage, designing …
May 28 2026
On May 28, 1966, Disneyland opened one of the most recognizable attractions ever created: “it’s a small world.” Guests boarded small boats and sailed through an impossibly colorful world populated by singing children, spinning flowers, playful animals, geometric buildings, and hundreds of tiny details set to a melody almost guaranteed to remain in their heads …
Apr 26 2026
Towering trees stretch toward impossibly high skies. Hills roll across the horizon in carefully layered bands of color. Castles seem carved from illuminated manuscripts, while forests are filled with sharp vertical lines, intricate patterns, and a sense that something magical might be waiting just beyond the next tree. Even without seeing his name, an Eyvind …
Mar 22 2026
Born March 22, 1909, in San Francisco, Milt Kahl became one of the most influential artists in the history of American animation. During a career at Walt Disney Studios that stretched across more than four decades, Kahl helped shape characters ranging from Pinocchio and Bambi to Peter Pan, Shere Khan, and Madame Medusa. He was …
Nov 17 2025
Walter Peregoy did not seem particularly interested in making animation look safe. His backgrounds could be rough, angular, brilliantly colored, and deliberately incomplete. A building did not need every brick carefully rendered. A tree could become a collision of shapes and lines. Colors did not have to remain neatly contained within outlines, and the painted …
Apr 18 2025
Born in London on April 18, 1946, Hayley Mills became one of the most recognizable young movie stars of the 1960s. With her bright, natural screen presence and an ability to move easily between comedy, adventure, and drama, she became closely associated with a remarkable run of Walt Disney live-action films while also building a …
Mar 30 2025
Marc Davis could draw a deer convincingly enough to make audiences believe it was alive, give Tinker Bell an entire personality without a line of dialogue, turn Cruella de Vil into one of animation’s most unforgettable villains, and then leave feature animation behind to help design pirates, ghosts, jungle explorers, singing bears, and some of …
Mar 17 2025
Ken Anderson was difficult to fit into a single job description. He was trained as an architect, became an art director on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, helped shape the worlds of Pinocchio and Fantasia, experimented with new approaches to animated design, contributed to Disneyland, designed characters ranging from Shere Khan to Elliott the …
Feb 27 2025
Rolly Crump belonged to a generation of Disney artists who were asked to do something almost unprecedented: take the visual imagination developed inside animation studios and turn it into physical places people could walk through. In Crump’s hands, that challenge produced spinning kinetic sculptures, strange clocks, talking tikis, haunted contraptions, psychedelic patterns, theatrical shops, enchanted …
Feb 05 2025
“There it is, Wendy! Second star to the right and straight on ’til morning.” Peter Pan On February 5, 1953, audiences were invited to leave London behind, think happy thoughts, and fly toward the second star to the right. Walt Disney’s Peter Pan transformed J. M. Barrie’s enduring story of the boy who refused to …
