Walt Disney

The Walt Disney company is one of the worlds most popular and known brands, with its iconic logos; the Disney castle and one of the most famous cartoon characters to ever be created, Mickey Mouse.

Disney has been around for many years, and is loved by men, women and children. Walt Disney and his creations have been and always will be an inspiration to animators, film makers and it's audiences. Disney will forever make 'feel good' movies. As soon as the opening sequence of a Disney movie appears, with its castle logo, you can feel the exitment build up as you know that this is the begining, and there's a whole lot yet to come. All of the variations of this short scene, along with the emotion filled music themes, are drowning in nostalgia. Constantly bringing back care-free childhood memories, and even creating new ones.

Walt Disney Studios was founded on October 16th 1923, by Walt Disney and his brother Roy O. Disney. The studio creates animated feature films, short films and television specials for the Walt Disney Company. They got their start producing a series of silent films, "Alice Comedies", short films featuring a live-action child actress in an animated world, 1923, distributed by Winkler Pictures.

Disneys' 2nd short series subject: "Oswald the lucky rabbit", 1927. An all animated Universal Pictures original. Disney left Winkler Pictures in mid-1928, however Disney could not make or show and "Oswald" episodes as Universal owned the rights, and so Charles Mintz (owner of Winkler Pictures) set up his own studio to produce more "Oswald" cartoons.

Meanwhile, Disney and Ub Iwerks (head animator) led a small group of staffers in producing cartoons with a new character; "Mickey Mouse". His first two cartoons, "Plane Crazy" and "The Galloping Gaucho", were viewed in limited arrangments in the summer of 1928.

"Steamboat Willie", 1928, became Disneys', and Mickey Mouses, first cartoon with synchronized sound. The soundtrack for Mickey Mouses third cartoon was made by Disney collaberating with Carl Stalling, a musician, and Pat Powers, a businessman, who provided his 'Cinephone' sound-on-film process.

In 1932, Disney signed a deal with Technicolour, to use its 3-strip colour film process, which resulted in "Silly Symphonies: Flowers and trees". In the early 1930's, Disney found success in telling emotionally gripping stories. 1933, "Three little pigs".

1938, the first animated full-length feature film in English and Technicolour, "Snow White and the seven dwarfs". After the release of this film, Disneys' studio began to rapidly expand with animators, artists and recent college graduates joining.

Mickey Mouse was first shown in Technicolour in 1935, as well as having added characters such as Donald Duck, Pluto and Goofy. who would all have their own series by 1940.

Pinocchio was released in February 1940, not initially a box office success, however a critical success. It won Academy awards for Best original song and Best original score. Fantasia, November 1940, also a financial failure, however, it also won two Academy Honary awards, one for the development of the innovative Fantasound system used to create the films stereoscopic soundtrack and the other for Stokowski and his contributions to the film. This shows that even in his less successful films at the time, they still won Oscars and became popular in a few years and have been ever since, making Walt Disney one of the most talented directors, producers, writers and animators ever known.