Walter Elias Disney was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy Awards earned (22) and nominations (59) by an individual. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress and have also been named as some of the greatest films ever by the American Film Institute.
John Hench was an American artist, designer and director at The Walt Disney Company. For 65 years, he helped design and develop various Disney attractions and theme parks.
Jonas Lie was a Norwegian-born American painter and teacher.
A matte painting is a painted representation of a landscape, set, or distant location that allows filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that is not present at the filming location. Historically, matte painters and film technicians have used various techniques to combine a matte-painted image with live-action footage (compositing). At its best, depending on the skill levels of the artists and technicians, the effect is seamless and creates environments that would otherwise be impossible or expensive to film. In the scenes, the painting part is static while movements are integrated on it.
William York Wray is an American cartoonist, animator and landscape painter widely known for his contributions to Mad and The Ren & Stimpy Show, as well as his current focus on regional landscape painting—under the names Bill Wray for his animated work and William Wray for his paintings.
Frank Weston Benson, frequently referred to as Frank W. Benson, was an American artist from Salem, Massachusetts, known for his Realistic portraits, American Impressionist paintings, watercolors and etchings. He began his career painting portraits of distinguished families and murals for the Library of Congress. Some of his best known paintings depict his daughters outdoors at Benson's summer home, Wooster Farm, on the island of North Haven, Maine. He also produced numerous oil, wash and watercolor paintings and etchings of wildfowl and landscapes.
Albert J. Whitlock Jr. was a British-born motion picture matte artist best known for his work with Disney and Universal Studios.
A background artist or sometimes called a background stylist or background painter is one who is involved in the process of animation who establishes the color, style, and mood of a scene drawn by an animation layout artist. The methods used can either be through traditional painting or by digital media such as Adobe Photoshop. Traditional methods involved painting entire production scenes for a television program or film. Current methods may involve painting primarily background keys or the establishing shot while production background artists paint the corresponding background paintings.
Jules Engel was an American filmmaker, painter, sculptor, graphic artist, set designer, animator, film director, and teacher of Hungarian origin. He was the founding director of the experimental animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, where he taught until his death, serving as mentor to several generations of animators.
John Andrew Berton Jr. is an American computer graphics animator and visual effects supervisor. His most recent completed project is Bedtime Stories. He also worked in India, supervising effects on the film Krrish 3. In the fall of 2013, he joined the faculty of Drexel University in Philadelphia.
William Samuel Cook "Peter" Ellenshaw was an English matte designer and special effects creator who worked on many Disney features. Born in London, he moved to America in 1953.
Harrison Ellenshaw is an American matte painter, following his British father Peter Ellenshaw. He started his career at Walt Disney Studios. He later joined George Lucas's effects studio Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), where he produced many of the matte visual effects backgrounds for the films Star Wars (1977) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980). He then returned to Disney and worked on the 1979 film The Black Hole, for which he and his father were nominated for an Academy Award for their work. He also worked on The Watcher in the Woods (1980), and Tron (1982), for which he was Visual Effects Supervisor, and Dick Tracy (1990). He eventually headed Disney Studio's effects department, Buena Vista Visual Effects (BVVE).
William Stout is an American fantasy artist and illustrator with a specialization in paleontological art. His paintings have been shown in over seventy exhibitions, including twelve one-man shows. He has worked on over thirty feature films, doing everything from storyboard art to production design. He has designed theme parks and has worked in radio with the Firesign Theatre.
Henry Golden Dearth was a distinguished American painter who studied in Paris and continued to spend his summers in France painting in the Normandy region. He would return to New York in winter, and became known for his moody paintings of the Long Island area. Around 1912, Dearth changed his artistic style, and began to include portrait and still life pieces as well as his paintings of rock pools created mainly in Brittany. A winner of several career medals and the Webb prize in 1893, Dearth died suddenly in 1918 aged 53 and was survived by a wife and daughter.
Vincent Michael Brown is an English artist and portrait painter, composer and musician, and co-founder of Browns' Arts Centre, an art school and studio located at The Clock Tower Association in Warmley, Bristol.
Craig Barron is an American visual effects artist and creative director at Magnopus, a media company that produces visual development and virtual production services for motion pictures, television, museums and multimedia platforms.
William Brooke Thomas Trego was an American painter best known for his historical military subjects, in particular scenes of the American Revolution and Civil War.
Matte World Digital was a visual effects company based in Novato, California that specialized in realistic matte painting effects and digital environments for feature films, television, electronic games and IMAX large-format productions. The company closed in 2012 after 24 years of service in the entertainment industry.
Christopher Leith Evans, commonly credited as Christopher Evans or Chris Evans, is an American painter, matte artist, and visual effects art director for major motion pictures. Evans's paintings are characterized by a highly realistic representation of landscape, architecture, and the human figure. He has created more than 100 matte paintings for films such as E.T., Return of the Jedi, Star Trek II, III, and IV, as well as Titanic and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Evans was awarded a Primetime Emmy in 1985 for The Ewok Adventure and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1988 for Willow.
Joseph E. Temple Fund Gold Medal (defunct) was a prestigious art prize awarded by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts most years from 1883 to 1968. A Temple Medal recognized the best oil painting by an American artist shown in PAFA's annual exhibition. Recipients included James Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Robert Henri and Edward Hopper.
