Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes

Don Hahn produced some of the most successful animated films of all time, including Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, the first animated film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar®. Three of his films, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King are now on the Library of Congress collection as culturally, historically and esthetically significant.Don’s films include Disney’s Maleficent, Frankenweenie, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Atlantis, and Emperor’s New Groove. He was a founder and executive producer of the acclaimed Disneynature Films, executive produced the PBS American Masters documentary Tyrus about Disney Legend Tyrus Wong, and has directed the acclaimed documentaries Waking Sleeping Beauty and Howard featured on Disney+.He has authored many books on animation, guest lectures at Microsoft, Deloitte, Apple, and is on the advisory board of the Walt Disney Family Museum and a former trustee of PBS SoCal. He holds two Academy Award nominations, two Emmy nominations, two Golden Globes for Best Picture, two Honorary Doctorate degrees, and in 2022 he was named a Disney Legend for his extraordinary contributions to The Walt Disney Company.

For nearly thirty years, the artists that passed through the gates of Disney Animation, and even non-artists like myself, were influenced by the craft, skill, wisdom, writings and sketches of Walt Stanchfield.— Roy DisneyWalt was a kind of Mark Twain for us at Disney. He always taught with humor and skill. You learned to see the world through his eyes. I remember him one day encouraging us to leap into our drawings with boldness and confidence, " Don’t be afraid to make a mistake. We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us so the sooner you get them out the better! " Sitting in Walt’s class was as much a psychology course as it was a drawing class. One couldn’t help walk away with your mind and soul a little more open than when you entered.— Glen Keane, Walt Disney Animation StudiosWalt Stanchfield’s classes and writings were little distillations of the man: quirky, strongly stated in a genial voice, and brimming with a lifetime of sharp observations about story telling and graphic communication. Whether he drew with a ball point pen or painted with a brush dipped in his coffee cup, he got to the essence of things and was eager to share what he learned with his eager disciples, myself among them. He was grizzled and he was great and proof that there was more than one Walt at the Disney Studio that could inspire a legion of artists.— John Musker, Walt Disney Animation StudiosWalt Stanchfield was one of Disney Animation’s national treasures. His classes and notes have inspired countless animation artists, and his approach to drawing of caricature over reality, feeling over rote accuracy, and communication over photographic reproduction gets to the heart of what great animation is all about. Huzzah to Don Hahn for putting it all together for us!— Eric Goldberg, Walt Disney Animation StudiosDuring the Animation Renaissance of the 1990s, one of the Walt Disney Studio’s best kept secrets was Walt Stanchfield. Once a week after work, this aged but agile figure jumped from drawing board to drawing board, patiently teaching us the principles behind the high baroque style of Walt Disney Animation drawing. Being in a room with Walt made you feel what it must have been like to have been taught by Don Graham. Having one of your life drawings be good enough to be reproduced in one of his little homemade weekly bulletins was akin to getting a Distinguished Service medal! Senior animators vied with trainees for that distinction.— Tom Sito, Animator/Filmmaker/Author of Drawing The Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart SimpsonThis exciting collection of master classes by the great teacher Walt Stanchfield is destined to become a classic on the order of Kimon Nicolaides ’ exploration of the drawing process. Stanchfield (1919 – 2000) inspired several generations of Disney animators and those of us outside the studio fortunate enough to happen upon dog-eared copies of his conversational notes, which we passed around like Leonardo’s Codex Leicester. Stanchfield beautifully communicates the essence and joy of expressing ideas through the graphic line and accumulating a visual vocabulary. Drawn to Life is a treasure trove of cogent, valuable information for students, teachers and anyone who loves to draw.— John Canemaker, NYU professor and Academy Award ® -winning animation filmmakerWalt Stanchfield, in his own unique way, taught so many of us about drawing, caricature, motion, acting, and animation. Most important to me was how Walt made you apply what you had observed in his life drawing class to your animation. Disney Animation is based on real life, and in that regard Walt Stanchfield’s philosophy echoed Walt Disney’s: " We cannot caricature and animate anything convincingly until we study the real thing first. "— Andreas Deja, Walt Disney Animation StudiosWalt Stanchfield’s renewed emphasis on draftsmanship at the Disney Studios transformed the seemingly moribund art of animation. His students were part of a renaissance with The Little Mermaid and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a renaissance that continues with films ranging from The Iron Giant to Lilo and Stitch to Wall-E.— Charles Solomon, Animation Historian

• Foreword Acknowledgements Innovation 1. Review and New Approach 2. Artist/Actor 3. Don’t Be Ordinary 4. Sketcher 5. Plus or Minus 6. Mood Symbols 7. Breaking the Constraint Barrier 8. The Agony and the Ecstasy 9. Making All Parts Work Together to Shape a Gesture 10. Forces (Energy, Animation, Power, Vim, Vigor, and Vitality) 11. Pure Performance 12. Different Concepts 13. A Time for This and a Time for That 14. Look to This Day 15. Entertainment 16. Follow-Up Department 17. Entertainment II 18. Playing to the Balcony Drawing 19. A Sack of Flour 20. Pantomime (Drawing) Preparation 21. That Darned Neck 22. Crayolas? 23. Hands (Those Darned?) 24. Plight of a Gesture 25. Concepts for Drawing 26. Drawing Appropriate Gestures for Your Characters 27. Drawings Ain’t Just Drawing 28. The Importance of Sketching 29. Getting Emotionally Involved 30. Gesture Further Pursued 31. Caricature 32. Perspective 33. Have Something to Say and Keep It Simple 34. Keeping Flexibility in Your Drawing 35. Seeing and Drawing the Figure in Space 36. Don’t Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Drawing37. Hey, Look at Me … Look at Me! 38. Learn From the Mistakes of Others 39. Quest and Fulfillment 40. Getting Adjusted to New Production 41. More Animal Talk 42. In Further Praise of Quick Sketching 43. Impression – Expression = Depression Expression 44. Drawing a Clear Portrayal of Your Idea 45. Think Caricature 46. Going Into That World! 47. Understanding What You See 48. An Inspirational Journey 49. Comic Relief 50. If It Needs to Lean, Then Lean It 51. Don’t Tell, But Show! 52. Mainly Mental 53. The Shape of a Gesture 54. Dreams Impossible to Resist 55. Short Book on Drawing 56. Encompassing Reality with All Your Senses 57. Gestures, Moons, and Tangents 58. Include Your Audience 59. The Wonders of the Right and Left Hemispheres 60. Making the Rules of Perspective Come to Life 61. In Further Praise of the Rules of Perspective 62. There Is No End to Thinking Overlap 63. Space is Created 64. Words and Experience 65. Look, This Is What I Saw 66. Breaking Away 67. The Shape of the Gesture II 68. A Tribute Afterword/Bonus MaterialCredits