Frank and Ollie

Frank and Ollie

Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston were 2 key member of the team Walt Disney named “the 9 old men.”  They were the original Disney animators.  Frank and Ollie met in college and both pursued art and animation.  One of the things that made them both incredible animators is that they were both also amazing character actors, which helped them to plot out how they would animate a scene.  Both of them considered the pathos to be one of the most important parts about character animation.  The pathos is the character’s ability to show and arouse emotion.  Cartoons that could show sadness, curiosity, happiness, etc. were pretty rare in the beginning, but Frank and Ollie paved the way to making cartoons come to life.  They had very different styles when it came to animating.  Ollie was more intuitive and introverted.  He wanted to know what the character was thinking and why he or she was thinking that.  Frank was more methodical and planned out his scenes to the max, trying to figure out the perfect way to portray an emotion.  Both believed however that to be a good animator, you have to be sincere.  Together they worked on the first feature length animation and moved on to do 22 others with Disney studios.  They remained best friends through out their lives and are considered some of the best personality animators of all time.