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With an uncertain future, will Disney pull off yet another magic trick?
As Walt Disney Studios turns 100, investors worry it's beginning to show its age. The share price dropped to its lowest level in nearly nine years as the company stumbles in the age of streaming.
But adapting to the times is not a new challenge for Disney, rather it’s been a point of survival throughout the company’s history.
A century ago when “Disney” was a single person, not a global company worth over $150 billion, emerging sound and color technologies rattled the silent film industry.
Illustration of Walt Disney standing on a stage with both hands on his hips. “But Walt Disney had a strong motivation for embracing these new tools…”
“He wanted his animation to be believable, he wanted it to transcend what we typically think of as animation,” said Chris Pallant, professor of animation and screen studies at Canterbury Christ Church University in the United Kingdom.
Disney Studios opened in Hollywood in 1923 – geographically and conceptually distant from the animation powerhouses in New York. Disney envisioned a future in which animated features would garner the same respect as the live-action films being shot down the street.
He obsessed over quality and poured money into producing cartoons that would resonate with his audience. He wrote that observing the real world was key and animation must have, “a foundation of fact, in order that it may more richly possess sincerity.”
The studio formalized 12 principles of animation which transformed static sketches into lively characters on a screen. Veteran animators taught the principles to each of the new artists who joined the studio to ensure consistency.
Twelve principles of animation
An illustration of Walt Disney jumping, where he slightly compresses when he lands and stretches out when he bounces up.
Squash and stretch
An illustration of Walt Disney throwing a ball which eventually comes back around behind and hits him in the back of the head.
Anticipation
An illustration of Walt Disney standing on top of a mountain, mightily holding a pencil while wearing a flowing cape.
Staging
An illustration of Walt Disney dancing through three predetermined poses.
Straight-ahead action and pose-to-pose
An illustration of Walt Disney flying a plane that skids and breaks apart.
Follow through and overlapping action
An illustration of Walt Disney slowly pulling a rope back only to fling himself forward into a tree which he slowly slides down.
Slow in and slow out
An illustration of Walt Disney swinging back and forth on a rope.
Arcs
An illustration of Walt Disney walking with a bird following behind him.
Secondary action
An illustration of Walt Disney driving a tractor that slowly chugs along across the road.
Timing
An illustration of Walt Disney eating a comically large hamburger in one giant gulp.
Exaggeration
An illustration of Walt Disney painting thoughtfully on an upright canvas.
Solid drawing
An illustration of Walt Disney wearing large Mickey Mouse ears and shrugging.
Appeal
Walt Disney entered the animation scene as a young businessman, well positioned to capitalize on existing techniques and embrace new tools. He and his studio harnessed sound, color and 3D camera technology with an organized and scalable approach, which was not necessarily cost-effective but produced high-quality animations.
Seemingly each time Disney’s projects were financially successful, he would use the money to double his aspirations for the next film. “In a way,” Pallant said, “Disney survives his own ambition.”
The illustration shows an imagined animation studio. A director of animation sits next to a piano where the musical composer sits playing one of the piano keys. Sheets of music and a sketch of an animation scene are leaned up against the piano. The two men have musical notes and tiny cartoon characters floating above their heads as if they’re collaborating on music and animation action.
Sound
Disney was not the first to introduce sound to animation, but his sound debut “Steamboat Willie” was widely considered the first cartoon to blend sound and screen meaningfully. The Studio understood music’s ability to communicate emotion and wove it into the production process.Reference material
Real-world observations were essential to Disney’s fantastical stories. He wrote that studying the real world gave animators “a basis upon which to go into the fantastic, the unreal, the imaginative.”Custom color
Women were given a narrow role in the creative process under Walt Disney. Despite being limited to the Ink and Paint department, they made significant innovations to save the company money and bring the drawings to life with color.Depth
Even with sound effects, entertaining characters and color breathing life into animations like never before, the scenes still lacked the third dimension of the real world. Disney was not the only studio to identify this missing piece, but it was the first to find a scalable solution.In 1937 Disney implemented the multiplane camera which captured scenes that appeared more similar to live-action film, with the scene’s background moving at a different pace from the foreground. The multiplane filmed not one cell but multiple cells stacked on top of one another. Together, the stacked cells formed one illustration in which the background, foreground and every layer in between could move independently of one another.
Disney Studios managed to lead the Western animation industry for decades through its innovations and dedication to captivating stories. But its reign would not last as a new technology arrived and Disney was late to greet it.
By the turn of the century, Pixar’s progress in computer-generated animations had eclipsed Disney’s traditional hand-drawn style, namely with the first totally computer-generated animation “Toy Story”. But Disney didn’t need to innovate its way out of its problems this time. It could rely on a new tool: money. Merchandise, theme parks and cable TV had filled the company’s pockets for decades. Disney bought Pixar in 2006 for $7.4 billion, and with it, Pixar’s ability to enchant audiences with pixels.
As a hand-drawn studio, Disney’s eventual recognition of computer animation is an important moment, said Pallant who is also the president for the Society for Animation Studies. “I think that is an echo back to an earlier life,” Pallant said. “They were not afraid to move with the times. That shows you the willingness to reinvent themselves as a 75- or 80-year-old company.”
Bar chart showing Disney’s quarterly operating losses of its streaming business from the first quarter of 2020 to the third quarter of 2023.
Now at the 100-year mark, streaming poses yet another challenge. Disney’s early gambles in new technology produced quality films that distinguished the studio from its competitors. Later, embracing computers preserved the studio as a major player in animation. Now, stockholders are closely watching what Disney will do as it moves into its next century.
Sources
Demystifying Disney: A history of Disney Feature Animation; The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation; Wild Minds: The artists and rivalries that inspired the Golden Age of animation; Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the animation revolution
Additional reporting by
Prinz Magtulis
Edited by
Julia Wolfe, Lisa Shumaker