Who Was Walt Disney

Walt Disney is an internationally recognized name, and Disney productions remain dominant in the film and television industry to this day. Most children have seen or heard of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, or The Jungle Book. Younger generations might even know the songs of Frozen or Moana by heart. To understand how Walt created the modern entertainment empire that is Walt Disney Studios, it is important to explore how he pioneered some of the greatest technical advances in the field, leading to the golden age of the American animation industry.

Traditional animation techniques already existed prior to Walt’s career. In fact, he learned many of these techniques while working at the Kansas City Slide Company. He and other illustrators challenged each other to find ways to perfect their craft, making moving pictures look ever more pleasing or realistic.

Movies were originally in black and white and silent. Only in the late 1920s did people develop ways to add sound to accompany images in movies with real actors. The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first movie to include sound, and Walt wanted to be the first to do the same for cartoons. The third installment in Mickey Mouse’s adventures, Steamboat Willie, features sound and came out in 1928. Though the sound is minimal—Mickey whistles, and Minnie says “yoo-hoo”—it was so novel that it captivated the audience. This marked the start of the golden age of American animation, and many other studios would hurry to follow in Walt Disney Studios’ footsteps.

Walt pioneered another advancement in animation techniques when he adopted the use of colors. Instead of only black-and-white drawings, he could now animate with colors, making the visual quality even more stunning. Flowers and Trees came out in 1932 and was the first released animated short to be fully colorized. Walt was particularly excited at the prospect of showing audiences a rainbow that featured every color from red to purple. This production won an Academy Award, and the technology it used was ahead of its time.

Walt’s final contribution to animation was in introducing greater narrative and emotional depth. Up until the 1930s, cartoons were short because it took tremendous work to illustrate them. As a result, they could not have complex plots or tell deep stories. Walt wanted to be the first to make a long cartoon with a dramatic and romantic story, one that would rival the length of movies with real actors. To achieve this, he took huge creative and financial risks, using new technology like the multiplane camera for depth, Technicolor for vivid color, and synchronized sound for a richer experience. He also trained his animators to study real movement and emotion, creating lifelike characters and a compelling story. The result was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which ran 86 minutes and amazed even Hollywood stars. To this day, it remains of the highest-grossing animated films of all time.

This period marked the golden age of American animation, with studios scrambling to make long movies with memorable stories. Since Walt’s time, the animation industry has undergone several new developments. For example, studios have largely moved from traditional animation techniques—which require drawing by hand on transparent celluloid sheets—to digital animation, where drawings are entirely done on the computer. They have also developed techniques to incorporate 3D models and computer-generated imagery to enhance the visual effects of the product. However, much of Walt’s pioneering work remains: Sound, color, and stories remain core parts of every successful modern animated work.