Before the Animation Begins: The Art and Lives of Disney Inspirational Sketch Artists

For the first time ever, noted animation historian and animator John Canemaker documents the lives and works of Disney's "inspirational sketch artists" from the 1930s to the present. These are the people who visualize all the details surrounding each character in the initial creative period before the grueling labor of animation begins. "Through daydreams and doodles, they attempt to 'find' the film." The happy result of these flights of fancy are dancing ostriches and personality-rich broomsticks. Drawings and paintings of Disney characters leap right off the pages of this lush book, where you'll find pastels from Fantasia, faux wood-cuts of the Seven Dwarfs, paintings of Alice in Wonderland, and hundreds of other delightful, rarely seen images.

The stories of artists such as Ty Wong, who created Bambi, and Bianca Majolie, the first woman to join the story department at Walt Disney (in 1935), are as provocative as their art. Canemaker does a fine job of placing the artists' lives and interactions with Disney studios in the historical context of modern art. Before the Animation Begins is a beautiful book.