“Drawn to Life” handouts will give artists & animators a hand-up in their careers

Jim Hill

16 years ago

We’re just weeks away from when high schools & colleges around the country hold their graduations. Which means that it’s time once again to begin searching for that perfect graduation gift.

Which can sometimes be quite frustrating, especially if you’ve got a budding artist or animator in the family. So what can you give to someone like that in order to help them acquire all of the skills that they’ll actually need to make it in that field?

Well, thanks to Don Hahn, the answer to that question is now simple. You just hand them both volumes of “Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes” (Focal Press, April 2009). And then let the wisdom of Walt Stanchfield wash over them.

Walt Stanchfield

“And who’s Walt Stanchfield?,” you ask. That name may not mean much to the general public (not yet, anyway. But just wait …). But Mr. Stanchfield was revered within the animation community. Especially by those folks who were laboring at Walt Disney Studios in the 1980s & 1990s to bring about the second golden age of feature animation.

And Walt … Well, he had worked in animation & clean-up at the Studio since 1948. Contributing to every animated feature that Disney made from “The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad” right through to “The Great Mouse Detective.” And somewhere along the way, Stanchfield began teaching. At least once a month, he’d gather together a group of young animators for a master class in drawing.

Mind you, these weren’t like any drawing classes that these animators had had at art school. Walt actually insisted that the people in his class forget all about what they learned in anatomy. “You work at Disney,” Stanchfield once famously said. “Which means that you don’t have to draw well.” But — that said — what was always important was the storytelling. Did the pose that you chose actually get across the core emotion of that moment?

And for each of these classes, Walt would prepare a few pages of notes. Which would then be xeroxed and handed out to the people who actually attended Stanchfield’s class. Or sometimes they’d be reprinted in Disney Feature Animation’s in-house newsletter, the Twilight Bark.

But for years now, those handouts from Walt’s drawing classes … They’ve been copied time and time again. Passed around the animation community almost as though they were some sort of holy text. Though no one animator or artist seemed to have a complete set of Stanchfield’s handouts … ’til now, anyway.

Working with Walt’s widow, Dee, Don Hahn took over 800 pages of Stanchfield’s notes and then winnowed them down to two incredibly thick paperbacks. The first of which deals with basic gesture drawing,
while the second details how to ‘push’ the action
and create
distinct personalities through quick sketches.

Walt & Dee Stanchfield

Perhaps the greatest compliment that one can pay Walt Stanchfield is that — as you page through “20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes” and look at all of these terrific examples of sketches that, with just a few simple lines, map out an entire character, a specific feeling or emotion — you may find yourself reaching for a pencil. Seeing if it really is as easy as Walt appears to make it look.

That (to me, anyway) is the sign of a truly fine teacher. That their passion for a particular topic then becomes contagious. Which is why I think that it’s terrific that “The Walt Stanchfield Lectures” are now finally available to the public. So it’s not just Disney artists and animation insiders who can benefit from this man’s wisdom, his passion for life. But now the general public can get to know the man who had such a huge impact the lives & careers of many of the master animators of our age.

Trust me, folks. There’s lessons in these two books that even the most experienced pros don’t know. Tips on how to bring real clarity, power and entertainment to your drawings with just a few quick lines.

So if you want to give an artist or animator that you know a real hand-up in their career, share the wisdom of Walt Stanchfield’s handouts by gifting them one or more of the “Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes” volumes.

Your thoughts?