ABSTRACT
In 1935, Walt Disney Studio was in the heat of production for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Walt and his animators were transitioning animation away from the commercially popular style of Mickey Mouse and the Silly Symphony cartoons and into the more emotionally nuanced world of feature-length films. In a nutshell, the kind of program Walt had in mind for new-hire animators was comprised of baseline classes that would be overseen by Don Graham. The most glaring deficiency among new animators is weak storytelling skills, something Walt barely touched on in his memo. Walt Disney personally studied live-action filmmaking, from both a directorial and acting perspective, and then he applied what he learned to animation. Walt was making an astute observation that has since been proven in real-world education applications. All of art is a factor of how an artist is seeing and interpreting reality.
