By Zach Johnson

Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Once Upon a Studio is a tribute to the generations of fans who have loved the studio’s 100 years of characters and stories. Written and directed by Dan Abraham and Trent Correy, the short film finds a century’s worth of characters assembling for a group portrait. All of the animation in the short is new, and approximately 80 percent of the characters in the film are hand-drawn, with award-winning animator and director Eric Goldberg serving as the head of hand-drawn animation.

The hand-drawn animation team included revered veterans such as Randy Haycock, Mark Henn, Bert Klein, and Alex Kuperschmidt, among others. Five of Disney Animation’s most accomplished alumni—Ruben Aquino, Tony Bancroft, James Baxter, Will Finn, and Nik Ranieri—also did guest assignments for classic characters. In addition, a group of hand-drawn animation apprentices—chosen from over 2,000 applicants, representing the first new hand-drawn animator hires at Disney in over a decade—started as trainees in March 2022. After a four-month training program, the novices—Robert Cox, Courtney DiPaola, Ella Louise Khan, Tyler Pacana, and Austin Traylor—made their first major mark on the Studio.

“At Walt Disney Animation Studios, we truly consider it a privilege to be at the studio that started it all,” says Clark Spencer, President of Disney Animation. “And while daunting to think about how to celebrate 100 years of storytelling, Dan and Trent’s short, as well as our incredible upcoming feature film, Wish, celebrate this moment in time in such complimentary ways—by celebrating our legacy, our present, and our future.”

Who better to represent the future than the apprentices? And who better to teach them than the very people who first inspired them to become animators? Below, Goldberg, Pacana, and Traylor share their experiences of being part of the Once Upon a Studio magic.

Tyler and Austin, what inspired you to apply for a hand-drawn apprenticeship?
Austin Traylor: The first animated film I saw was The Lion King. At a certain point, after rewinding the VHS tape, I noticed there were behind-the-scenes features—and that’s when I learned that these characters were drawings! My mind was blown. I thought, ‘I’d love to do something like that.’ Years later, I studied animation, and I also worked in the theme parks for seven years. Through that process, I learned about the history of Disney and its characters, and just how important they are to people. That’s what inspired me to apply. This apprenticeship was like my final goal—really diving into the Disney legacy and story.

Tyler Pacana: The fact that this training program was being offered was mind-blowing. It seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I’d be kicking myself if I didn’t at least try. I was lucky enough to get in and to join all the other apprentices. We worked on one of the coolest projects I’ve ever encountered as a result.

How was it decided that the apprentices would contribute to Once Upon a Studio?
Eric Goldberg: When the apprentices came in, we decided to do their exercises on classic Disney characters—knowing full well in the back of our minds that Once Upon a Studio was looming! It was great training for them to be on this project. For example, Courtney animated a test with Merlin, and it was so good that I said, ‘Let’s have her do Merlin in the film!’ She did a fantastic job! Merlin feels like he came right out of The Sword and the Stone.

Traylor: During our training days, we were allowed to pick certain characters. Through our exercises, Eric picked up on our strengths and he noticed the characters we loved. During the production process, he would issue themes with most of the characters we were already comfortable working with, that really played off of our strengths. Tyler is amazing with moving camera shots and very technical, skillful animation; I just love his work. Ella was really great with the animal characters, and Courtney was amazing with the [Disney Legend] Milt Kahl-style characters like Merlin. It really helped us all shine and solidify us.

Pacana: Austin is also not mentioning himself as [Disney Legend] Fred Moore reincarnated! He very quickly became one of the go-to guys for Mickey and Minnie in the short, including in the first scene where they pop out of the picture frame. That was Austin.

Tyler, when you heard the apprentices were being given the opportunity to animate characters for this ambitious and expansive short film, what was your initial reaction?
Pacana: I tried not to think about it too hard, because if you do, it gets really daunting. Having the supervision and the support throughout the whole project made it a lot easier. Trent and Dan are amazing directors, and they’re very personable; you never feel nervous showing them work or getting feedback from them. And of course, it helped having Eric as our supervisor and getting advice from our other mentors, like Mark, Randy, and Bert, who are very experienced with this stuff. With them around, it was never as scary as you’d think.

Goldberg: Everybody really did a fantastic job. And one of the things that’s tough when you’re working on a short like this, is that normally when you’re working on a feature, you have ramp-up time; you’ve never drawn these characters before and you’ve never animated these characters before, so there’s a little bit of time for you to get comfortable. With a short film like this, where there are so many characters and the deadline is pretty tight, it would be like, “OK, you’re doing Gurgi. Bye!” And everybody had to hit the ground running.

What are some of the Once Upon a Studio characters the apprentices animated?
Pacana: I feel really lucky, because one of my favorite Disney films is Robin Hood, and I got to do the core scene where Robin Hood comes out of the picture and grabs Scrooge McDuck’s money. I also got to do this really fun tracking shot with Elliott from Pete’s Dragon and Cody from The Rescuers Down Under. That was a great way to explore films I wasn’t as familiar with and get into those characters. And then some characters were just simply really fun to draw, like Sebastian from The Little Mermaid and Cri-Kee from Mulan.

Goldberg: To the apprentices’ credit, we didn’t have to hold their hands. They did all the legwork by going back to the original films, pulling models, and basically making sure that their drawings and their animation felt just like the originals. They really did a bang up job.

What was the best advice the animators imparted during your apprenticeship?
Traylor: “Show early. Show often.” That’s something they instilled in us from the very beginning. If they can give us their input as soon as possible, it sets us up for success. That was the main goal. And everyone was so gracious with their time. You could go up to any one of them at any time and they would be willing to help you out with anything. I’m a perfectionist, but Eric was always very patient and willing to share his knowledge with me.

Goldberg: It’s great that so many young people want to continue doing this. We were lucky enough to be mentored by some of our heroes, and hopefully, we can pay it forward to younger people coming in the Studio who want to learn this stuff and really perfect it. It’s a great feeling when you see them succeed, when you see them doing such a great job on these characters that they have never drawn or animated before. It’s really heartwarming.

What surprised you most during your apprenticeship?
Pacana: I was surprised at just how involved the pipeline is! We worked really closely with Brandon Bloch, who carried this film. He was the head of scene planning; every single shot went through his hands to make sure that it was coherent and how the directors envisioned it. He was great to turn to when we were confused about how to make things work better for the artists downstream. That was really invaluable for navigating a technically complex short as were acclimating to the Disney Animation pipeline altogether. Having that hands-on experience made it more comfortable whenever we’d dive into things as green apprentices.

Tyler and Austin, you’re both full-time animators at Disney Animation now. How did your experiences as apprentices working on Once Upon a Studio set you up for success?
Traylor: It’s crazy. I feel like I’m still learning, you know? And that’s what’s so wonderful about this place. There’s so much camaraderie. Even with us being full-time animators, our mentors’ doors are still open. We can still go and seek mentorship. For example, we still do weekly masterclasses with Randy on animation and acting. I’m still on a journey to be the best that I can be, and I’m just so happy that I’m with people who are going to support me.

Pacana: Once Upon a Studio was really great, because when you’re there from the beginning to the end, you do impromptu networking. We met people from Effects, from the CG team, from Lighting; we were even around when they were doing Stereo stuff. It ran the gamut of the Studio, and it allowed us to meet so many different people. It was great that Once Upon a Studio had that reach. We know a lot more people around us, we know what they do, and we appreciate all that goes into the things we don’t necessarily touch directly.

What do you want people to know about the hand-drawn apprenticeship program?
Traylor: It brings to light that hand-drawn animation is still being done at the Studio, because many people outside of these walls are unaware of that. It’s really inspiring to go online and see people chatting about Once Upon a Studio, saying, “Maybe someday I could pursue traditional hand-drawn animation at Disney.” That’s really exciting, and it was nice to see the rest of the world get excited that Disney continues to embrace classic animation.

Pacana: My hope is that Once Upon a Studio will garner more excitement for hand-drawn and mixed medium pieces. This is a really cool example of what can be done, and it’s something that’s maybe more ambitious than people might think we could do. I hope that Once Upon a Studio leads to more projects like it and it becomes a self-perpetuating thing.

By Zach Johnson

Walt Disney Animation Studios’ short Once Upon a Studio features a newly recorded version of the classic Mary Poppins lullaby “Feed the Birds” by the late Academy Award-winning composer, songwriter, and Disney Legend Richard Sherman—who, at age 94 in 2022, returned to Walt Disney’s office to play piano for the new short.

“It’s hard to talk about without making ourselves cry,” director Dan Abraham says of Richard returning to the same place where he and his brother, the late Disney Legend Robert Sherman, would regularly perform the song for Walt on Friday afternoons. According to director Trent Correy, “Those sentimental moments can be really tough onscreen, and usually they need to get worked a lot. Dan pitched me the idea, and then he went off to board it. We both knew ‘Feed the Birds’ would be an important part of this.”

Correy continues, “We watched it play for the first time and it brought tears to our eyes. A couple of days later, we bumped into our head of music, Matt Walker, and he asked us, ‘Why don’t you just get Richard Sherman to play it for your short?’ We said, ‘Is that possible?’ Matt said, ‘Oh, yeah!’ Matt followed that up by suggesting, ‘Why don’t we do it in Walt’s office where he originally played it for Walt?’ We said, ‘OK… but don’t lie to us, Matt! This is a very big deal for us.'”

Walker wasn’t the only one who had a hand in bringing Richard onboard. Howard Green, Legacy Communications Executive for Disney Animation, had mentioned earlier to producers Yvett Merino and Bradford Simonsen that he would be having a birthday lunch with Richard. “Howard asked, ‘Would you would you guys want to show him the short?'” Simonsen recalls. “That was when it was in storyboards. So, we all went over and showed him that. It was an amazing experience and he asked great questions. At the end of that, he asked, ‘When are you guys done? I want to see it.’ Trent said, ‘We’ll be done in a year. We’ll show it to you for your birthday next year!'”

Richard was touched by what he saw, and with Walker’s help, filmmakers set up a time to rerecord “Feed the Birds.” On a Friday afternoon in August 2022, the directors put on their sport coats and joined the producers in Walt’s office. “It looks exactly like how Walt left it, including with the piano the Sherman Brothers played for him back in the day,” Abraham explains. “And there was Richard Sherman! He sat down and played ‘A Spoonful of Sugar,’ and he was just going to town on this piano. Then, when he went into ‘Feed the Birds,’ it was just… I can’t even talk about it without getting chills. I will never, ever forget that day.”

Merino echoes that sentiment, saying, “It was a magical day. It truly was a ‘pinch-me’ moment, because he just came in and sat down at the piano and was so natural. He started playing ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.’ It was a very special day.” Credit goes to the Walt Disney Archives staff for “tuning the piano,” Simonsen adds.

For Richard, getting involved with Once Upon a Studio represented a chance to celebrate 100 years of Walt Disney Animation Studios and Walt’s dream in a touching, magical way. “I think Walt had a very deep-rooted feeling about this song; he could understand what we were saying. It doesn’t take much to give love, to give kindness, to give thought to people,” Richard explains. “Giving a little something of yourself… it doesn’t take much to do that.”

By Zach Johnson

The all-new original short Once Upon a Studio takes place at the end of the work day at Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, California, just after the artists, technologists, and storytellers head home. Disney Legend Burny Mattinson—who worked at The Walt Disney Company for 70 years, longer than any other employee—is the last person to leave. When the coast is clear, Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse step out of a picture on the wall and ask their animated friends to take an official 100th anniversary portrait. Hand-drawn characters, such as Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Merlin, intermingle with CG characters, such as Baymax and Rapunzel, as they comically scramble to assemble for the group photo.

If that sounds like an ambitious endeavor… that’s because it is.

Once Upon a Studio is the brainchild of directors Dan Abraham and Trent Correy, who developed the pitch in secret for eight months before presenting it to Disney Animation Chief Creative Officer Jennifer Lee in late 2021. From its inception, they knew the short would be technically complicated—but they always saw the reward in the risk. “Because we built the pitch for so long, the short hasn’t actually changed much,” Correy says. “We changed characters out and tightened up the pacing, but structurally, it’s basically the same as the pitch. We got Bradford Simonsen and Yvett Merino on board as producers very quickly, and Dan and I were lucky enough to be able to write, storyboard, and direct it. So, we jumped into editorial and started making it.”

Their first step was to turn the storyboard panels into a rough cut to assess what they had. “I have a visual effects and live-action background, so I started mapping the milestones of when to line up and hire a crew to shoot the plates; we wanted to start attacking that at the same time we were getting the boards up,” Simonsen says. “And then Yvett and I were chatting every day about this massive cast and how we were going to bring them all back.”

“That alone was another logistical challenge, because we had over 40 of the original voices come back,” Merino explains. “We did everything from recording in-person to recording over Zoom when people were out of out of the state or out of the country. It was such a testament to their experiences with Disney Animation, because the pitch was literally, ‘We’re doing a short to celebrate 100 years. We have a line for you. Would you like to be involved?’ Everyone we reached out to said yes, and they did so without knowing anything.”

Inherently, a project such as Once Upon a Studio requires a skilled team of animators. The directors looked no further than venerated veteran animator and director Eric Goldberg as head of hand-drawn animation. His team included a handful of hand-drawn experts, including Mark Henn and Randy Haycock, in addition to CG animators who had hand-drawn experience; five apprentices specializing in traditional animation; and five returning animation greats who had helped to create some of the Studio’s most beloved characters. Much to Goldberg’s delight, the directors insisted that the hand-drawn animation be done with paper and pencil as much as possible, and that the characters be faithful to their roots. In the end, an estimated 80 percent of the characters featured in the short are hand-drawn.

“This is absolutely the film that had to be made to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Disney and Disney Animation,” Goldberg says. “I think it absolutely fits the bill. I was so excited to work on it and to work with so many of my friends and colleagues. We really tried to honor the past and bring it up to date in the modern day. It’s just been marvelous.”

Andrew Feliciano, a 10-year Disney veteran, was head of CG animation. In all, more than 100 CG characters appear in Once Upon a Studio, hailing from such feature films as Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph and shorts such as Feast and Us Again. Asha, the star of Disney Animation’s upcoming feature film Wish, also makes an early debut in the short film.

“We had the benefit of having people who are able to do both CG and hand-drawn animation,” Feliciano says. “In the scene with Moana and Flounder, for example, Mario Furmanczyk animated both characters. He started by animating Moana, so he had a very clear place to put Flounder. Our shot planning team printed out every single frame for him to put it on paper. Then, he put paper on top of it and he would ‘drop’ Flounder right there.” According to Goldberg, it was especially important to pay attention to eyelines in scenes such as this. “You have to make sure Moana’s eyeline is looking where she is depositing Flounder,” he says. “Another example: Trent animated a penguin with the plate of spaghetti walking past the Mad Hatter. You need him to see it to say, ‘Oh, waiter!’ You really have to make sure that all that timing and eye direction is correct to make it all appear believable.”

Animators from both teams were in constant communication, all in service of the story. And, due to technological advancements, CG character models from Chicken Little to Tangled had to be rebuilt so they would work in the current pipeline.

Making hand-drawn and CG characters look congruous in the same scene was also tricky. “Depending on the needs of a particular scene, we were very, very flexible in terms of what should come first and whatever is going to work best for each particular shot,” Goldberg explains. “When the hand-drawn characters and CG characters interact, there’s a lot of back and forth and coordinating to do—especially if they make contact with something.”

That can be intricate enough for a scene with a handful of characters—let alone 543 of them! Abraham sketched the original idea for the group shot at the end of Once Upon a Studio, which features characters from more than 85 feature films and shorts. Correy then created a “heat map” to determine each character’s placement, Goldberg says. “They both had a huge hand in working out what that shot was going to look like,” he adds. As if the sheer volume of characters wasn’t enough, there were other technical aspects to consider. “The camera’s pulling back, but it’s also rising, so the perspective is actually changing on the groundline as you’re watching the shot reveal,” Goldberg says. “You have to place all of the characters on what we call ‘cards’ so that they are in the right perspective points throughout the entire three-dimensional camera move.”

In the end, all that coordination and dedication paid off—and fans will get to see it for themselves when Once Upon a Studio debuts Sunday, October 15, at 8 p.m. ET/PT as part of ABC’s The Wonderful World of Disney: Disney’s 100th Anniversary Celebration!. “I had a fabulous time working alongside the CG animators whom I’ve been working with for years,” Feliciano says, “and I loved getting to spend time and work very closely with the hand-drawn animators like Eric, Randy, and Mark, as well as the apprentices. It was a really fun experience. The animation reviews and dailies were so much fun, because you never quite knew what you were going to see; it was always going to be a mix of different things. Like, you have Stromboli shaking the vending machines so perfectly and it’s just hysterical and joyful. This short was such a great way to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the Studio.”