August 7th, 2019 
Jackson Murphy 
Mouse House legends recently gathered for a San Diego Comic-Con panel celebrating banner anniversaries of some all-time Disney animated classics. Moderator Leslie Combemale of ASIFA-Hollywood welcomed five animators who created some of the most popular characters in animation history. They told fascinating stories about crafting their beloved animated films.
Before Floyd Norman worked on 1959’s Sleeping Beauty, he was an inbetweener. “It was the beginning. An inbetweener is a grunt job. It’s a very tedious job. But it’s critical to animation. We learn this business from the ground up… and then we got the chance to be beat up by… Disney legends [including some of the famous “Nine Old Men”]. It was like going to boot camp. We went through this rigorous training. If you could make it at Disney, you knew you could work at any studio in town.”
Left to Right: Panel Moderator Leslie Combemale, Nik Ranieri, Kathy Zielinsky, Floyd Norman, Jane Baer and Dave Bossert.
As for “Sleeping Beauty”, Norman drew the three fairies, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, for two and a half years. It took 600 artists nearly 6 years to put that film together. Norman recalled that afterwards, Roy Disney said, “No more extravagant feature films.” According to Norman, that’s why the studio’s next feature, “101 Dalmatians”, was done “on the cheap – half the time for half the money.”
Jane Baer, who went to art school with Norman, also worked on “Sleeping Beauty” and remembers how lovely it was to draw Aurora. “Every element of her design was perfect for the film”. The backgrounds and layouts complemented her. Her hair flowed, and as for the eyes, “we spent so much time making those little bitty eyes perfect.”
60 years later, Baer still studies new animated content. “I’m a perfectionist. When I see animation today, I’m overly critical.”
Nik Ranieri was a core part of “The Little Mermaid”, which opened 30 years ago. At first, he was assigned to Ariel, but he couldn’t get her face right. “She had sad lines. She looks like she’s about 102.” Co-director John Musker said to him, “How about we put you on Ursula?” Ranieri said that Ursula has many more connective points. “Everything sort of connects.”
And he remembers his reaction to hearing the songs in “Little Mermaid” around ‘89: “It was the first time where I actually liked the music in an animated movie. I was like, This is gonna be a big hit.”
Kathy Zielinski was on “Little Mermaid” “from the very beginning.” Her specialty has been evil characters, including Gidget from “The Great Mouse Detective”. Zielinski’s major contribution to “LM” was the end of the “Poor Unfortunate Souls” sequence. She also revealed to the Comic-Con crowd something that very few know: that scene was originally supposed to be longer, with Ariel and Ursula doing the tango.
And rounding out the panel was Dave Bossert of “The Lion King”, which turns 25 as its photo-realism re-do is released around the world. As for his thoughts on the original, “The wildebeest stampede sequence really stands out. That was actually a lot of CG work. It was the 5th or 6th picture where we were staring to integrate computer generated elements into the hand-drawn animation. It was a complex piece of animation to do.”
An audience member asked the panel members if they think Disney will do a fully 2D animated film in the future. Ranieri remarked that “The Princess and the Frog” (which he also worked on, and is nearly 10 years old) was not a major financial hit. Neither was the 2011 “Winnie the Pooh”.
But Bossert believes that through online shorts and videos, and methods and guides still used on CG feature films, 2D isn’t done. “It is an art form. It’s not gonna go away.”
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