Walter Crawford Kelly Jr., commonly known as Walt Kelly, was an American animator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip Pogo. He began his animation career in 1936 at Walt Disney Studios, contributing to Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo. In 1941, at the age of 28, Kelly transferred to work at Dell Comics, where he created Pogo, which eventually became his platform for political and philosophical commentary.
The Jungle Book is a 1967 American animated musical comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Distribution. Based very loosely on the "Mowgli" stories from Rudyard Kipling's 1894 book of the same title, it is the final animated feature film to be produced by Walt Disney, who died during its production. It was directed by Wolfgang Reitherman and written by Larry Clemmons, Ralph Wright, Ken Anderson, and Vance Gerry. Featuring the voices of Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot, Louis Prima, George Sanders, Sterling Holloway, J. Pat O'Malley, and Bruce Reitherman, the film's plot follows Mowgli, a feral child raised in the Indian jungle by wolves, as his friends, Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear, try to convince him to leave the jungle before the ruthless tiger Shere Khan arrives.
Phillip Bradley Bird is an American writer, director and producer. He has had a career spanning forty years in both animation and live-action.
John Alan Lasseter is an American film director, producer, and animator. He has served as the Head of Animation at Skydance Animation since 2019. Previously, he acted as the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disneytoon Studios, as well as the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.
Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS), sometimes shortened to Disney Animation, is an American animation studio that creates animated features and short films for The Walt Disney Company. The studio's current production logo features a scene from its first synchronized sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie (1928). Founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney, it is the oldest-running animation studio in the world. It is currently organized as a division of Walt Disney Studios and is headquartered at the Roy E. Disney Animation Building at the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California. Since its foundation, the studio has produced 62 feature films, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to Wish (2023), and hundreds of short films.
Andreas Deja is a Polish-born German-American character animator most noted for his work at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Deja's work includes serving as supervising animator on characters in several Disney animated films, including the Disney villains Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, Jafar in Aladdin, and Scar in The Lion King, the titular character in Hercules, and Lilo Pelekai in Lilo & Stitch.
Peter Hans Docter is an American filmmaker and animator. He was credited as the director for the Pixar animated feature films Monsters, Inc. (2001), Up (2009), Inside Out (2015), and Soul (2020), and has served as company's chief creative officer (CCO) since 2018. From his nine Academy Award nominations, he is a record-three time recipient of Best Animated Feature for Up, Inside Out and Soul. Docter has also won six Annie Awards from nine nominations, a BAFTA Children's Film Award and a Hochi Film Award. He describes himself as a "geeky kid from Minnesota who likes to draw cartoons".
Wolfgang Reitherman, also known and sometimes credited as Woolie Reitherman, was a German–American animator, director and producer and one of the "Nine Old Men" of core animators at Walt Disney Productions. He emerged as a key figure at Disney during the 1960s and 1970s, a transitionary period which saw the death of Walt Disney in 1966, with him serving as director and/or producer on eight consecutive Disney animated feature films from One Hundred and One Dalmatians through The Fox and the Hound.
Manuel Gonzales was a Spanish-American Disney comics artist. He worked on the Mickey Mouse comic strip from 1940 to 1981.
Joseph Henry Ranft was an American animator, screenwriter, and voice actor. He worked for Pixar Animation Studios and Disney at Walt Disney Animation Studios and Disney Television Animation. His younger brother Jerome Ranft is a sculptor who also worked on several Pixar films.
Donald Paul Hahn is an American film producer who is credited with producing some of the most successful animated films in recent history, including Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.
Peter J. Alvarado Jr. was an American animation and comic book artist. Alvarado's animation career spanned almost 60 years. He was also a prolific contributor to Western Publishing's line of comic books.
D23: The Official Disney Fan Club, also known as Disney D23 or simply D23, is the official fan club for The Walt Disney Company. Founded in 2009, the organization is known mainly for its biennial exposition event, the D23 Expo. The name D23 refers to D for Disney and 23 for 1923, which is the year Walt Disney founded the company.
Tom Sito is an American animator, animation historian and teacher. He is currently a Professor at USC's School of Cinematic Arts in the Animation Division. In 1998, Sito was included by Animation Magazine in their list of the One Hundred Most Important People in Animation.
Disney's Nine Old Men were a group of Walt Disney Productions' core animators, who worked at the studio from the 1920s to the 1980s. Some of the Nine Old Men also worked as directors, creating some of Disney's most popular animated movies from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to The Rescuers. The group was named by Walt Disney himself, and they worked in both short and feature films. Disney delegated more and more tasks to them in the animation department in the 1950s when their interests expanded, and diversified their scope. Eric Larson was the last to retire from Disney, after his role as animation consultant on The Great Mouse Detective in 1986. All nine members of the group were acknowledged as Disney Legends in 1989 and all would receive the Winsor McCay Award for their lifetime or career contributions to the art of animation.
Angus MacLane is an American animator, filmmaker and voice actor, best known for his work at Pixar Animation Studios. He co-directed the film Finding Dory (2016) and made his solo feature directorial debut with the Toy Story spin-off film Lightyear (2022). MacLane is also a Lego enthusiast and created the CubeDudes building format and designed a LEGO WALL-E that has become an official set from The Lego Group.
Jared Bush is an American screenwriter, producer and director. He is best known for co-writing and co-directing the Walt Disney Animation Studios film Zootopia (2016), writing the film Moana (2016), and writing, directing, and winning an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for the film Encanto (2021), besides co-creating and executive producing the Disney XD animated series Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero.
Michael Arthur Peraza Jr. is a Cuban-American animator, art director, conceptual artist and historian of animation, who has worked for The Walt Disney Company, Fox Feature Animation, and Warner Bros. As a Disney Master Artist, he speaks at special events as a panelist with his wife and fellow Disney Master Artist, Patty Peraza, about experiences in the entertainment field. He received the Friz Freleng Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Family Film Festival in 2014, and the Disneyana Fan Club Legend Award in 2018. Currently, he continues his work with Warner Bros and Disney Television Animation.
Willie Ito is an American animator. He worked for Walt Disney Animation Studios in the 1950s, moved to Warner Bros. Cartoons and Hanna-Barbera Productions as a character designer, and later returned to Disney.
