Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life

Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life (576 p.) is a book by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, two of the animation masters at Disney's during the Golden Age of animation, referred by Walt Disney as his "Nine Old Men". Topping the list of "best animation books of all time" in a poll at AWN, it is still used as reference on and source of inspiration for character animation.

Contents

The book gives a history of Disney animation and explains the processes involved in clear, non-technical terms. The philosophy of the Disney animators is expressed in the so-called 12 basic principles of animation. It contains 489 plates in full color, and thousands of black and white illustrations ranging from storyboard sketches to entire animation sequences.

Editions

The 1981 edition published by Abbeville Press (ISBN 0896592332) used better quality paper and subsequently image quality than the 1988 edition and revised one from 1995 (ISBN 0-7868-6070-7) published by Disney's Hyperion with the inverted title The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation .

The Walt Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney, is an American diversifiedmultinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. It is the world's second largest media conglomerate in terms of revenue, after Comcast. Disney was founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, and established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into live-action film production, television, and theme parks. The company also operated under the names The Walt Disney Studio, then Walt Disney Productions. Taking on its current name in 1986, it expanded its existing operations and also started divisions focused upon theater, radio, music, publishing, and online media.

In addition, Disney has since created corporate divisions in order to market more mature content than is typically associated with its flagship family-oriented brands. The company is best known for the products of its film studio, The Walt Disney Studios, which is today one of the largest and best-known studios in American cinema. Disney also owns and operates the ABC broadcast television network; cable television networks such as Disney Channel, ESPN, A+E Networks, and ABC Family; publishing, merchandising, music, and theatre divisions; and owns and licenses 14 theme parks around the world. The company has been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since May 6, 1991. An early and well-known cartoon creation of the company, Mickey Mouse, is a primary symbol of The Walt Disney Company.

Walt Disney

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney (/ˈdɪzni/; December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American entrepreneur, cartoonist, animator, voice actor, and film producer. He was a prominent figure within the American animation industry and throughout the world, and is regarded as a cultural icon, known for his influence and contributions to entertainment during the 20th century. As a Hollywood business mogul, he and his brother Roy O. Disney co-founded The Walt Disney Company.

As an animator and entrepreneur, Disney was particularly noted as a filmmaker and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He and his staff created numerous famous fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy. Disney himself was the original voice for Mickey. During his lifetime, he won 22 Academy Awards and received four honorary Academy Awards from a total of 59 nominations, including a record of four in one year, giving him more Oscar awards and nominations than any other individual in history. Disney also won seven Emmy Awards and gave his name to the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the U.S., as well as the international resorts Tokyo Disney Resort, Disneyland Paris, Hong Kong Disneyland, and Shanghai Disney Resort.

Animation

Animation is the process of making the illusion of motion and change by means of the rapid display of a sequence of static images that minimally differ from each other. The illusion—as in motion pictures in general—is thought to rely on the phi phenomenon. Animators are artists who specialize in the creation of animation.

Animation can be recorded with either analogue media, a flip book, motion picture film, video tape, digital media, including formats with animated GIF, Flash animation and digital video. To display animation, a digital camera, computer, or projector are used along with new technologies that are produced.

Animation creation methods include the traditional animation creation method and those involving stop motion animation of two and three-dimensional objects, paper cutouts, puppets and clay figures. Images are displayed in a rapid succession, usually 24, 25, 30, or 60 frames per second.

History

Early examples of attempts to capture the phenomenon of motion into a still drawing can be found in paleolithic cave paintings, where animals are often depicted with multiple legs in superimposed positions, clearly attempting to convey the perception of motion.

Pixar

Pixar Animation Studios, or simply Pixar (/ˈpɪksɑːr/), is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio is best known for its Stop Motion as well as CGI-animated feature films created with RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface used to generate high-quality images. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the computer division of Lucasfilm before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986 with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became its majority shareholder.The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time. Luxo Jr., a character from a 1986 Pixar short film of the same name, is the mascot for the studio.

Pixar has produced 16 feature films, beginning with Toy Story (1995), and its most recent being The Good Dinosaur (2015). Toy Story was the first-ever computer-animated feature film. All 16 films have debuted with CinemaScore ratings of at least "A−," indicating positive receptions with audiences. The studio has also produced several short films. As of December 2015, its feature films have made over $9.5 billion worldwide, with an average worldwide gross of $593 million per film. Three of Pixar's films—Finding Nemo (2003), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Inside Out (2015)—are among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, with Toy Story 3 being the third all-time highest animated film with a gross of $1.063 billion, behind Walt Disney Animation Studios' Frozen (2013) and Illumination Entertainment's Minions (2015), which grossed $1.276 billion and $1.157 billion in their initial releases as of 2015. Thirteen of Pixar's films are among the 50 highest-grossing animated films.