where ideas go to die

And Then There Were None…

Posted by Paul on Apr 15th, 2008 in Cartoons & Animation | 1 comment

Today the last of Walt Disney’s great “Nine Old Men” shuffled off this mortal coil. Ollie Johnston joined the studio in the 1930s and worked on every single animated feature from 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on up through The Fox and the Hound in 1981. With his fellow animators (and most especially his long-time partner in crime Frank Thomas), Johnston helped invent character animation as we know it today. Think about this for a moment: Johnston and company did work which most of the world’s population have seen at one time or another. The golden age of Disney animation is enormous in its cultural impact, and Ollie was right there in the thick of it.

Ollie’s other contribution to the field — co-authoring a book called Disney Animation: the Illusion of Life — is, in some ways, more significant than the scenes he did in all of those classic films. “Illusion” has, in the 25 or so years since its publication, gone on to become the defacto bible for animators young and old alike. I own a copy myself and, despite the fact I’ve read it several times, I always get something new out of it each time I pick it up. It truly is a landmark piece of work.

Animation lost a giant today. Ollie Johnston was 95.