After all of those chats, one message came through pretty clear: if you’re a creative thinker, you can go far at Disney.
“When you see that somebody has these really great ideas for a shot, that they bring something to the characters that makes them unique (…) Once we see that in somebody, it’s like ‘Oh, we need that person,’” said Jackie Koehler, a Canadian animation supervisor on Wish. “Even if their animation is maybe a little rough around the edges at first, we can teach that stuff,” she said. “It’s harder to teach that thought process, so we try to go after those people as much as possible.”
Koehler herself was born in Calgary and educated at BC’s Emily Carr University of Art + Design, though she later moved to the U.S. to pursue an animation career. She broke into animation as an intern and worked for Sony before landing at Disney through their animator apprentice program in 2015.
“My first film was Zootopia,” she said. “I was a trainee for a little bit and then I graduated to apprentice, and then animator and here I am.”
Koehler went on to work on hit films such as Frozen 2, Encanto, Moana, Ralph Breaks The Internet and Raya And The Last Dragon.
Her latest role at Disney was as an animation supervisor on Wish, which involved overseeing all the work on crowd scenes from the film. That meant bringing plenty of attention to detail to the job, such as making sure that the faces in the crowd are consistent and interesting without taking away from main characters like Asha or Magnifico. She says she was particularly crowd of a musical moment in the film featuring Valentino the goat and a bunch of chickens.
"I have a special place in my heart for the chickens," she said.
Of course, any job becomes just a job after a time, although Koehler says there’s one reason she’s stayed with Disney for over eight years.
“It’s the people for sure,” she said. “I can’t imagine working with another crew.”
But while Koehler’s Canadian art education ultimately led her to Los Angeles and Disney, that’s not the only path to animation success. Just ask Daniel Lund, a longtime effects animator who’s been working at Disney since Beauty And The Beast.
Lund told Narcity that he went to school for live-action film and had no animation experience when he arrived at Disney as a production assistant a few decades ago. However, he basically learned through osmosis and has since worked on dozens of animated projects over the last three decades.
"Even as a kid, I liked cartoons like everyone else, but I liked Disney cartoons because they were movies," Lund said. He added that he's also worked on projects outside of Disney and found they're typically more compartmentalized, whereas Disney is more open and collaborative.
"From Day One, we're all in the room making the movie together," he said.
Narcity also got a chance to see how actual animation gets done at Disney, and in many cases there are no paper or pens involved at all. Instead, many artists work with a stylus and a screen to draw directly into a digital program called Toon Boom, although there are still plenty of paper-and pencil sketches to be found around the Walt Disney Animation Studios office.
@joshelliott111Just trying to keep up with a #Disney animator. I should probably #Wish for some talent
The artists also have access to the full Disney animation archives, where they can pull sketches and concept art from past films for inspiration. With Wish, for instance, the team drew inspiration from Maleficent's green magic in Sleeping Beauty when they were designing the villain's magic in the new film.
Who directed Disney's Wish?
Perhaps one of the most inspiring members of the Wish crew is Fawn Veerasunthorn, who spent the last 10 years climbing the ranks at Disney before landing her first directing gig on this film. She worked on The Lorax and a few Despicable Me/Minions projects as a story artist before she joined Disney as a storyboard artist on Frozen. She built up her animation skills on films such as Moana and Zootopia before levelling up to become head of story on Raya And The Last Dragon (2021). Two years later, Frozen director Chris Buck asked her to be his co-director on Wish.
"These many years, I learned so much about the process of Disney storytelling and the heart that is in every movie," Veerasunthorn told Narcity.
Buck added that while two directors might seem like a recipe for conflict, it's actually something that Disney does often. Buck himself started as co-director on Tarzan in 1999, and he later directed Frozen with Disney's Jennifer Lee.
With Veerasunthorn, he says her strength is with story whereas his focus is on hand-drawn animation.
"It was a nice yin and yang. We really complement each other," he said. Buck added that whenever disagreements come up, it's best to let the more passionate person try their idea to see if it works.
"Usually it works because the passion is there," he said.
But what if you're more of a big-picture thinker? That's where the producers come in.
"We're there from the very beginning, from inception to its final release in theatre and beyond," said Peter Del Vecho, the Oscar-winning producer behind Wish, Frozen and many other Disney Animation projects. "It's our job to understand what the vision is of the directors and help them get it up on screen. And that means, yes, we have schedules, we have budgets and we have time to deliver the movie. That's important. But more than that, we take obstacles out of the way for the directors so they can concentrate on doing what they do best."
Del Vecho adds that technology has changed a lot since he started at Disney with Lion King back in the early 1990s, but the one factor that hasn't changed is a focus on characters and story.
That emphasis trickles down to everyone on a project, according to Jennifer Lee, the chief creative officer at Walt Disney Animation Studios and one of the writers on Wish.
She says this latest film was written as a straightforward fairytale first, but then she opened the door for the whole crew to share their ideas for adding little winks and nods to the last 100 years of Disney movies. The results were small references to Snow White & The Seven Dwarves, Peter Pan, Mary Poppins and even a cameo from Bambi, just to name a few.
"You'd be in the story room and the board artists would add a little something that made you laugh, and you'd say 'Why not?' And if it pulled you out (...) we would say 'Let's not do it,'" she told Narcity. "We tried to make sure we weren't taking it too seriously, and let ourselves play a bit too."
Disney animation jobs
If you're interested in getting your foot in the door at Disney, there are a few options available.
You could apply for the Disney Apprenticeship program, just as Koehler did. The program considers candidates with less than 3 years of animation experience, as well as recent graduates with a degree or equivalent experience. You could also apply for an animation internship at the the studio if that's more your speed.
If you've got some experience under your belt, you can visit the Disney job boards where Walt Disney Animation Studios often has open roles for artists in both Los Angeles and Vancouver.
Pay, benefits and hours will vary depending on the role, although you can get an idea from some of the postings available online. For instance, a production coordinator in Canada can expect to earn between $53,000-$69,000 a year, whereas artist roles start around $85,000 and can get up into the mid-six figures.
Who knows? Maybe one day you'll be designing a princess or animal sidekick for the next big Disney film!
Josh Elliott | Narcity
Off-brand artist sketches on the wall inside Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, California.
Josh Elliott | Narcity
Josh Elliott | Narcity
Josh Elliott | Narcity
Josh Elliott | Narcity
Josh Elliott | Narcity
Josh Elliott | Narcity
Josh Elliott | Narcity
Josh Elliott | Narcity