Disney artwork part of Art Hop

Original artwork for some of Walt Disney's best feature films will be part of a triple-header of artistic creativity at the KVCC Center for New Media for the May 4 Art Hop in downtown Kalamazoo.

In addition to concept drawings that led to such superhits as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Pinocchio" in animation's breakthrough years, the exhibition will demonstrate the impact of the digital age on the medium through the work of comic-book artist Paul Sizer of Kalamazoo and showcase the foundational work of Center for New Media students who are the animators of the future.

The opening-night reception will be from 6 to 8 p.m. All three of the exhibitions will be in place through Sunday, May 20.

"Disney Animation Art, 1937 to 1988: Drawing from Imagination" is being made available as part of the 2007 Kalamazoo Animation Festival International that will be staged in downtown Kalamazoo May 17-20. The curator of the 55-piece display is Steve Stanchfield, an assistant professor of animation and digital media at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.

From the early 1930s through the 1950s, American animation, paced by Disney, Chuck Jones and Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes, Max Fleisher and Popeye, and the tandem of David Depatie and Fritz Freleng, "sparkled with beauty, creativity, technical innovation and humor," Stanchfield said.

Regarded as the first "Golden Age of Animation," the industry needed to almost re-invent itself with the coming of television as a medium of popular entertainment. Today, there is more animation, thanks to the emergence of computer technology, than ever before, but it comes from a different process and results in different forms.

When Disney launched his "Snow White" project, he was almost universally ridiculed for what was called "a folly" by so-called informed observers. However, Stanchfield said, "the result was a milestone in the history of animation as the highest grossing film of 1938. It proved that an audience would sit through a full-length 'Mickey Mouse' production and identify with the characters."

Yet, Disney's personal favorite was 1940's "Pinocchio" because of "its craftsmanship, attention to detail, and quality of the concept drawings," Stanchfield said. "Because of the onset of World War II, Disney's animators converted to war-time productions and the same level of detailed craftsmanship never returned."

"Drawing from Imagination" also includes the pen-and-ink drawings of other famous animators who created memorable characters on the screen with their film shorts and features.

Sizer's exhibition is titled "Looking for the Perfect Beat."

"As the medium of the graphic novel advances in subject matter and sophistication," said Sizer, whose characters and creations include "Little White Mouse" and "Moped Army," "so too does the requirement to advance the art as well."

He said these "new opportunities of technology" channeled him toward "B. P. M. (Beats Per Minute)" as a "combination of digital photography and traditional pen-and-ink work." His results will be shown on the plasma screens in the Center for New Media's Arcus Gallery. Sizer will also display digital work from his other "graphic novels" as well as the original pen-and-ink comic pages.

Among the KVCC artists showing their drawings in "Character Design & Animation: Center for New Media Student Work" are Rebecca Boensch and Pam Hoyt of Kalamazoo.

Boensch, who was raised in Saginaw, was a member of the Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University team that won the "Cartoon Challenge" competition at the 2005 KAFI. After earning her degree in fine arts, she was hired as an interactive designer by Biggs Gilmore Communications in Kalamazoo and is taking animation courses at KVCC's Center for New Media.

John Lasseter: Disney's new boss reimagines the Magic Kingdom

It wasn't the first time John Lasseter, the director of "Toy Story" and "Cars," had sat through the screening of a not-quite-ready animated film. But when he saw an early cut of Disney's "Meet the Robinsons" last March, he watched it with a new eye. He wasn't just a fellow director, and a founder of Pixar Animation Studios. This time he was the boss, the chief creative officer of animation for the Walt Disney Company, which had agreed to acquire Pixar two months before.

As he sat in a dark theater in Disney's animation studio here, something bothered him about the villain.

Almost all of Pixar's animated movies had an evil foil. In "Toy Story" Buzz Lightyear and Woody escaped a cruel neighborhood bully. In "A Bug's Life" an ant saved his colony from a menacing grasshopper and his thuggish crew. By contrast the lanky villain in "Robinsons," the story of an orphan who builds a time machine in order to find his mother, was neither threatening enough nor scary.

After the screening, Lasseter and his colleagues from Pixar and Disney met with the director, Stephen Anderson, and told him so. For six hours.

Ten months later, Lasseter was back in the screening room, watching Anderson's new version of "Meet the Robinsons," which is set for release March 30. Nearly 60 percent of the original film had been cut.

A diabolical sidekick had been added. And in one thrilling scene the orphan, Lewis, is chased by an oversize dinosaur. Later, when asked about the movie's ending, Lasseter's rubbery smile turned upside down and he pretended to cry.

"The audience is going to be sobbing," he said, dragging his index fingers down his cheeks. "It is really going to get them."

A Hollywood outsider whose independent shop popularized computer animation, Lasseter, 50, might seem an odd fit for a studio built on old-school cartoons and the mythology of Snow White and Cinderella.

But since Pixar was acquired, Lasseter has been heralded as a latter-day Walt Disney, a cultural arbiter who can rekindle the spirit of Disney's famous animation at its theme parks, on store shelves and in a theater near you.

Since the days of the 1928 Mickey Mouse classic "Steamboat Willie," animation was Disney's undisputed long suit. But after a recent decade-long parade of disappointments, most famously the 2002 bomb "Treasure Planet," the studio was desperate for a change of fortune. It abandoned its hand-drawn tradition in favor of computer-generated fare. In the process the keepers of the Magic Kingdom lost much of their cultural cachet.

Enter Lasseter who, along with a close team of handpicked animators had made Pixar this generation's premier storyteller with an unbroken string of hits including "Monsters, Inc.," "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles." The first filmmaker to run Disney's animation operations since Walt Disney died in 1966, he said he wants to reclaim the studio's golden era.

Since those early days, though, almost everything has changed. On the Disney campus, the creative culture is tattered still from years of cost-cutting and political infighting. And in the world at large audiences have moved on. The sweet wholesome tales of Mickey Mouse and friends don't have the same relevance for a generation raised on violent video games, distracted by 500 cable channels and preoccupied with Web diversions like MySpace.

"I'm not sure it's a trivial challenge," said Jim Morris, a Pixar producer who is working on the forthcoming "Wall- E." "As charismatic as John is, he can't do everything."

Longtime colleagues say the force that will guide the coming changes ? to the studio's offices, to the films at the multiplex, to toys and rides ? is Lasseter's own unique sensibility. He gets his inspiration from real life ? his own. "Cars," which lost the animated feature prize to "Happy Feet" at this year's Oscars, was the byproduct of a cross- country road trip he took with his wife and five sons. The idea for "Toy Story 2" was hatched when his children sought to play with toys he stored in boxes. And the die-cast collectibles he had issued for "Cars" were similar to the Hot Wheels he played with growing up in Whittier, California, in the 1960s.

That said, his greatest test may be getting Disney's battle-worn animators to embrace the new culture he is trying to create while at the same time churning out a movie a year. "John doesn't really change," said Andrew Stanton, the director of Pixar's "Finding Nemo," who is a close friend and frequent collaborator. "People change around him."

Lasseter rarely sits still. His hands dance and wave in the air in front of him as he rattles off ideas. Even during a lunch interview at Disney's studios after several days of being shuttled between hourly meetings and nightly screenings, he is alert and focused.

How then, he was asked, did he plan to restore Disney animation's cultural prominence?

He seemed almost dumbstruck by the question. "I don't know what to say," he uttered, sounding mildly annoyed.

"I don't think like that. I trust in my instincts. I'm a product of what this company has created. I do what I do because of Walt Disney. Goofy. Mickey Mouse. I never forgot how their films entertained me. I also love my toys. My Hot Wheels, my G.I. Joes."

But of course he has a plan.

Lasseter and Edwin Catmull, a Pixar founder who was named president of the combined animation groups of Disney and Pixar and who oversees operations, have designs for a new headquarters in nearby Glendale.

While the building will have Silicon Valley-style comfy couches, coffee stands and open spaces for animators to gather, it won't be a replica of Pixar's campus in Emeryville, California, where artists play afternoon badminton games and executives zip between in-house meetings on scooters. "We did not want to come here and turn it into Pixar," Lassater said.

Still, the cultural shift they are devising seems more like Pixar than not. For one thing, Lasseter and Catmull are encouraging animators to experiment more with their craft. For another, they hope to reintroduce hand-drawn movies. Simply put, the two do not want to see the art form lost. "One of the things I find distressing is that when money gets tight, the money for drawing dries up," Catmull said.

"When people draw, they are learning to see."

Black princess finally joins Disney's animation ranks

The damsel cast an image of striking beauty: mocha-colored skin, captivating eyes, coiffured hair, posing in a feathery dress and see-through veil. For a character that won't be in an animated movie for another two years, her arrival has been the subject of discussion for years - long before she was ever drawn.

Maddy, a 19-year-old heroine to be featured in the coming film "The Frog Princess," will be Disney animation's first black leading lady. That makes her the Sole Sister among a group of cartoon icons that bring out the inner princess in preteen girls worldwide - characters like Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel and Mulan.

Some say Maddy's debut is long overdue. Disney's characters have become firmly etched in American lore ever since the release of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," its first animated feature, in 1937.

In 1992, the animated version of "Aladdin" featured its first princess of color, Jasmine, of Arabian descent. Since then, Disney has had animated film hits featuring an American Indian princess, Pocahontas, in 1995 and an Asian heroine, Mulan, in 1998.

But even as real-life black actresses and actors have won major awards and helped dissolve barriers in the film industry in recent years, a divide remained for cartoon princesses on the big screen.

Black families have clamored for a Disney character crafted in their image, even circulating petitions. If that seems overly eager about a cartoon, it also underscores the power of fictional princesses to become role models for girls.

"It's always good to have positive stories and positive images, where the main character is of your background," said John Powell of Salisbury, Md., shopping with his wife and daughter near the Disney Store. "It lets you know that you have no limitations."

Like other Disney features, "The Frog Princess" is bound to resonate not only with black Americans, but with children of all backgrounds. Eight other "Disney Princess" characters generated more than $3 billion in retail sales last year. Five Disney Princess films rank among the entertainment conglomerate's top six video releases of all time.

Disney unveiled Maddy at its annual shareholders' meeting in March, even summoning Randy Newman's Dirty Dozen Brass Band for a performance. The award-winning Newman will write the music for the movie, which will be set in 1920s New Orleans and be hand-drawn rather than computer-generated.

But the announcement of the princess Maddy hasn't settled the issue. Information about "The Frog Princess," including a list of characters put forth in a voice-actor casting call, quickly spread across the Internet. It appears that the prince in the story is not black, which has raised dissatisfaction. There are also people criticizing the creation of yet another cartoon princess whose story, they contend, undermines a modern message of individual empowerment.

Disney risks having well-intended attempts backfire if the story doesn't resonate with, or offends, certain viewers. It's a problem the company has run into with previous films featuring characters of color. Disney officials have declined to comment on aspects of the film beyond the news release they issued in March when they announced the film at their meeting in New Orleans.

"We're very proud and excited about this," John Lasseter, chief creative officer of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios and director of "Toy Story" and "Cars," said at the time. "This is a fantastic story. This movie is going to be classic Disney, yet you've never seen one like it before."

To its credit, Disney has a reputation for being progressive in offering characters that appeal to people of all backgrounds, particularly on television.

However, on the big screen, Disney's depictions of people of color have occasionally raised objections. Even as Disney was introducing Maddy, it faced concerns over plans for the DVD release of its 1946 film "Song of the South," which has been criticized for its depiction of Southern plantation blacks.

And while Princess Jasmine got a favorable response from moviegoers, the film "Aladdin" itself was criticized as anti-Arab.

Entertainment Weekly ranked "Aladdin" 25th among its "25 Most Controversial Movies Ever," noting the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's protest over the lyrics in the film's first song, "Arabian Nights": "They cut off your ear if they don't like your face. It's barbaric, but, hey, it's home."

Disney changed the lyrics for the video release.

Still, no one's doubting that Maddy will be a huge influence on girls. After all, she's a princess.