Ideas Into Motion

Animation in Partnership with The Walt Disney Family Museum

by Chelsea Woodard

I can vividly remember the blue and violet trees, spindly castle, and magicfuming chimney of Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. While animation has come so far in the nearly sixty years since the film’s release, re-watching it, I am amazed by the detail of each branch and expression, the depth of the forms, the ability of the landscape and figures to transport the viewer into another time and place — that in-between realm that fairy tales inhabit, where a needle’s prick can kill, where an eerie green light foreshadows evil, and where true love can conquer everything, even death.

This masterpiece, or rather, the artist behind it, is one of the many treasures on display for the public at the San Francisco-based Walt Disney Family Museum in their current special exhibition: Awaking Beauty: The Art of Eyvind Earle (pictured below). In addition to exhibitions like these, the museum houses the drawings of Walt Disney (including the original sketch of Mickey Mouse), the icon’s multiple Academy Awards, a learning center, and a screening facility that can seat over one hundred guests. In founding the museum, Walt Disney’s daughter, Diane Disney Miller, hoped to recognize the man behind the “brand” –– the remarkable individual himself, the visionary behind so many innovations in film and animation, and a driving force in the formation of the collective American imagination.

In discussing what she finds most meaningful in the work of the museum, Executive Director Kirsten Komoroske states "Walt Disney was one of the most inspirational people who ever lived, and we have the great honor of telling his story. Seeing visitors and students impacted by the museum, the special exhibitions, the classes, and other offerings based on Walt’s life is one of the most rewarding aspects of my job. Many museums can inspire people; this museum can change people. It reminds them that they, too, have a great creative drive that can be pursued, at any age."

It is perhaps this ageless quality, this permission to dream and imagine new frontiers, that distinguishes Walt Disney and his incredible legacy. Few artists have had the national and global impact that he has; few names have reached the iconic, household status his holds, or its associations with wonder. But as Komoroskementions, the museum not only celebrates the achievements of this incredible man, it also performs outreach, offering classes and engaging in partnerships with schools. In this vein, they are bringing his ideas into practice, much like the animator who gives motion and speed to what would otherwise be a static figure on paper. Mickey Mouse on the page is endearing; his character in real time, however, brought to life with gesture and music, is unforgettable.

“In the last three years,” Komoroske shares, “we have partnered with schools throughout the Bay Area, bringing our Animated Classrooms program to them.” Having now expanded the program to include multiple Bay Area schools, she explained that, “our outreach team has had the opportunity to teach animation skills with our multiplane and stop-motiontechnology to students who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to learn these disciplines in school.” And in the fall of 2016, this outreach expanded across the country to the east coast and to a fortunate pilot group of students at New Hampton School. The course is Animation, a subject that has never before been taught at New Hampton, but one for which there seemed to be a demand. The class is unique in other ways too: it is co-taught virtually by animators from The Walt Disney Family Museum, and on-site by New Hampton’s own Visual Arts faculty.

The partnership itself was an idea that came up in a conversation between New Hampton’s Sam Cieplicki ’08 (Associate Director of Advancement) and Clare Rothschild (Trustee and parent of Max Rothschild ’15). “We were discussing the possibility of new programs at New Hampton,” Rothschild remembers, when Cieplicki “mentioned computer science and, in the next breath, the arts. Right then and there I gave my sister Kirsten [Komoroske] at The Walt Disney Family Museum a call.” Going to show how far the threads of family and foresight can go to create new opportunities, it seemed that, here, the timing was also just right. It turns out, that at the same time, Komoroske was looking for a school to partner with to pilot its distance learning initiative. According to Rothschild, “It was destiny!”

But how to make this cross-country brainstorm a reality? At the very least, some technical groundwork had to be laid. Establishing this infrastructure, though, was much less of an obstacle than one might think.

“There are many things about this partnership that are unique,” says Komoroske, who sees this partnership aligning well with the museum’s mission, “but the one I most value is how we are using a simple technology — communicating via video-conference — to bring the class to life. Walt was a pioneer of innovation, and by connecting students to educators in an extremely efficient and accessible way, using modern technology, we are carrying on his legacy.” This partnership and virtual experience are unique, too, to New Hampton students and faculty partaking in the course.

For The Walt Disney Family Museum’s educator and animator, Travis Lacina, the geographical distance the course spanned was also a distinctive feature. “The most exciting element of this partnership for me was the cross-country connection” he states. “The fact that we were able to reside on the west coast and connect so seamlessly with a school on the east coast was a tremendous opportunity.”

During a visit to campus, The Walt Disney Family Museum educator Ryan Eways helped explain the basics of lightboard use to New Hampton School students.

Piloted in the fall of 2016, with Visual Arts Department Chair Amy Wilson teaching the on-site portion of the class, Animation was a resounding success. A combination of weekly Skype sessions with animators Travis Lacina and Ryan Eways, and regular “studio” meetings on campus, the students had different teachers at different times. Chris Fridlington ’19, a day student from Laconia, comments on this non-traditional learning experience, “You had three teachers in a way.” He explains, “Mrs. Wilson, on the days we didn’t Skype in, was our instructor. She did each assignment with us in advance, so she would know what we had to do. That was something she didn’t need to do necessarily, but showed that she was so interested in it –– that she was just like us, learning about it along the way. But she submitted assignments right alongside us for critiques, so that aspect of it was really neat, to see your teacher learning something right alongside you. It was really cool.”

The learning curve was something, as Fridlington observed, that was experienced by teachers as well as students in this format. Visual Arts faculty member Charlie Smith, who taught the second semester of the animation course in the spring of 2017, comments, “For the most part, it was just fun.” Like Wilson, Smith shares that he, too, “did the first several projects right along with [the students] so I could get a handle on what they were doing.” A case of teachers also being active learners, Wilson and Smith, in addition to doing assignments with their students, both remarked on the expertise and patience of Lacina and Eways from the The Walt Disney Family Museum team. Smith notes that the “incredible talent of the two animators” was one of the highlights of the course. And along with their knowledge, he adds that his co-teachers are “very relatable; they’re very good with the students; they’re very laid back.” One thing many of us are probably wondering is, how did this not all go terribly wrong? Weren’t there issues with internet connections and software? There, of course, were. According to Smith, “whenever we ran into the inevitable technical hiccup, they were always ready to roll with whatever we had to do. One day I had to Skype them on my phone because we couldn’t get the Wi-Fi to work in the classroom — and they were always that sort of California cool — ‘no worries, we’ll do whatever we have to do to make this work.’” Fridlington ’19, too, having never experienced a class quite like this, was at first somewhat skeptical about the logistics involved. “It was honestly a little bit easier than I thought it would be — I had worried, ‘Oh my gosh, they’re in another time zone; they’re not going to be accessible,’’’ he goes on, “but they made themselves available, like…all the time; you could email them whenever and they would respond probably within an hour. So, they were really on top of it and really dedicated…I was impressed.” Fridlington, in hindsight, appreciates the ways in which this varied and cross-continental instruction diversified his outlook, stating, “having an outside instructor is so beneficial, because you’re not

In their introduction to traditional animation, New Hampton School students used lightboards to overlay a series of hand-draw frames that ultimately led to the animation of their characters and objects. The pages are shot consecutively and looped give a sense movement and to make sure drawings are properly aligned.

within the NHS bubble per se, but gaining someone's outside perspective and thoughts, and just that idea exchange I thought was valuable in addition to the learning we did.” In a campuswhere, before the digital age and even during, it is easy to feel insulated, it is neat to see what Fridlington calls the “NHS bubble” broken, or rather, expanded into new territories.

In addition to the geographical and technological aspects of the animation class that make it so unique, given the nature of the discipline and the novelty of the format, the comradery the group experienced also made it memorable for both students and teachers. Of his experience co-leading the class, Smith shares, “There was a great sense that we were all in this together, that this stuff is really hard. And we just have to figure it out by talking to each other and comparing drawings.” He continues, “It became a very communal class that really supported each other, even when we weren’t Skyping one day and someone was having trouble trying to transition from one frame to another, and I would bestumped, and someone else would come along and say ‘I wonder if you just moved this frame over a bit,’ and all of a sudden, it worked!” Wilson, too, describes herself as a learner in the pioneering stages of the course: “As students, we used our resources and each other to move forward as a group.” She concludes, “It was a rewarding experience.”

Along with an appreciation for collaboration and flexibility, and a broadened perspective, what are the hallmarks of this course? What does animation teach the 21st century high school student? Why is it valuable?

Clare Rothschild, who envisioned the partnership, is a Professor of Theological Studies at Lewis University in Illinois, and has a unique view of her work as a board member and the place of this course in 21st century education. “Learning to animate,” she says “is not just about making cartoons. It is about self-understanding and the value of a story.” Rothschild, who specializes in Scripture Studies and who shared her love of apocalyptical stories with New Hampton Religion and Creative Writing students during a 2015 visiting lecture, posits that “We have and can tell only our own stories, and learning to muster the courage to communicate them creatively is our best way of contributing to the common good.” Like her sister and those involved in the museum, Rothschild, too, sees the profound value of Walt Disney’s work as an animator. And as a theologian, she places Disney’s most famous storyline in a fascinating historical context: “Walt Disney courageously brought his own message of hope to the world in the face of the two greatest wars the world had ever known. And, by what technique did he creatively engineer this message? An animated mouse!” She concludes, “For me, Mickey Mouse is an emblem of selfunderstanding through critical reflection, creative engineering, and communication of a story.”

Along with the important skill of storytelling, one that, as Rothschild eloquently puts, can heal during trying times, the animation course leaves students with other valuable tools and perspectives that extend well beyond the digital or concrete walls of the classroom. Lacina, an experienced teacher and animator, shares that, above everything else, he hopes students leave the class “first and foremost” with “patience.” He says, “Anybody doing animation in my class will hear something from me along the lines of: ‘You’re making a movie in slow motion; it takes time!’ It takes time and attention to produce a piece of animated art; it’s more than just taking a camera and shooting. A second important message I like to get across to students is that they will literally have to go back to the drawing board… a lot.” Smith agrees that a rewarding aspect of the class was seeing students work through a very complicated process to results that gave them immense satisfaction. “It’s all about the work they are willing to put into it,” Lacina says, “and that lesson applies in far more situations than just one class.”

From the student perspective, patience, planning, and a sense of achievement were also important. Fridlington remembers, “You had to carefully plan out your time.” As a student whose summer job involves creating page layout and design for local newspapers, and as the graphic designer for the student art and literary magazine at New Hampton, Fridlington knows something about planning processes in creative endeavors. Still, he says, “Most art forms are more instant. You draw something and you’re like, how does that look? But with animation, you’re checking as you go, you’re hoping it will look right, but sometimes, I’d watch and think, ooh, I wish I had changed that, so then I would go back and re-draw and change it, so I feel like the process of revision was interesting, as well as the process of animation, because the discipline and care can be applied to many other subjects.” Tina Zhao ’19, an international student from China, also appreciates the specific skills she gained in “anatomy” and drawing, as well as the ability, or patience, to “observe films” now when she is watching them. Zhao, who is confident that she will pursue a career as an animator or director, said that taking this course gave her increased confidence that this field was for her.

More broadly, in addition to fieldspecific skills like stop animation or smoothing, Wilson, who has taught at New Hampton for over twenty years, says with conviction, “I know students in this class will come away with a great work ethic/ discipline, and especially a new and very large appreciation for all the work that goes into animation!” A passionate educator

From animated shorts to live-action features and all things in between, the breadth of Walt’s cinematic achievements will likely never be surpassed. A man of many titles — innovator, storyteller, entertainer — Walt was one of the most prolific filmmakers in history.

The Walt Disney Family Museum presents an inspirational journey through the life of Walter Elias Disney. The mission of the museum is two-fold: to inform present and future generations about the man and, through his story, to inspire them to heed their imagination and persevere in pursuing their goals.

Walt’s daughter Diane Disney Miller, undertook an active advocacy to document the life and accomplishments of her father. She worked tirelessly to conceive of and complete both the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and The Walt Disney Family Museum. Located in the scenic Presidio of San Francisco since 2012, the museum is a 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization that features contemporary, interactive galleries with stateof-the-art exhibits narrated in Walt’s own voice alongside early drawings, cartoons, films, music, a spectacular model of Disneyland, and more. As part of its mission to preserve the legacy of Walt Disney, the museum is committed to providing educational experiences that honor Walt Disney’s legacy and spark creativity and innovation in students, teaching professionals, and their families.

who sees art courses not as isolated studio experiences but as those that can be formative and transformational, Wilson describes art classes as opportunities for broadening horizons: “I get to open up my students thoughts to what is possible.” She says, “I teach them transferable life skills such as the generation of ideas, flexibility of thought, resiliency, empathy, the willingness to take risks, and a variety of ways to solve problems.” Whether in the animation course or the many others her department offers, she works to leave students with “a visual language, and tools for selfexpression.”

And it is the hope of all those involved that this partnership will not merely culminate in a singular course, but rather open up a variety of exciting possibilities for students and teachers. Not the least of these is to offer different courses in animation for New Hampton students and a new Project Week trip, scheduled to run in the spring of 2018, centered around the The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. In this program, students will work closely with animators at the museum, and will supplement their time there with visits to local studios such as Pixar. Smith, who will lead the pilot trip next year, says that “to get an opportunity like that to go to California, to visit with trained animators, to visit Pixar studios –– I can’t imagine that that opportunity exists for many high schoolers.” Smith hopes that the trip will become an annual event, with spots reserved for students who are interested in animation. Smith, who studied studio art at Skidmore College and the Glasgow School of Art reflects, “I think back to when I was in high school: if I had the opportunity to visit The Museum, and Pixar and Lucas Studios — I would have been the happiest kid in the world.” The prospect seems, in true Disney style, to be a sort of dream come true.

- CHRIS FRIDLINGTON '19

As a parent, educator, and board member, Rothschild, whose son Max played basketball at New Hampton, sees the importance of developing a vibrant arts community even as she holds pride for the accomplishments of the school’s impressiveathletic programs. “In terms of the future of this partnership,” she says, “I dream big. Rather than just a few classes, I would love to see an entire pre-college animation curriculum at New Hampton School. I want NHS to become a hub for youth animation instruction on the east coast. I would love to see tandem high school computer science and animation art courses: New Hampton School considered a flagship pre-baccalaureate program in both areas worldwide. I also dream about a Disney Arts Building at New Hampton — space for work, practice, and performance.” Rothschild’s vision seems to align in its scope with that of Walt Disney, who demonstrated that anything was possible if you have the freedom to imagine it, and the patience and skill to put it into action.

New Hampton has carved a niche for itself in recent years as a school where innovation is valued and practiced, whether through Apple distinction, the International Baccalaureate, or exciting new partnerships like this.

In discussing how The Walt Disney Family Museum celebrates similar forward thinking, Komoroske commented “Walt Disney was always open to new ideas, new thinking, and using the art of animation and film to tell a story. The success of this course is that it shows students ways to access their imagination and creativity. Empowering people to think in innovative ways is one of Walt’s many great hallmarks.”

In a culture where humanities and arts programs are frequently underfunded and overshadowed by more “practical” disciplines, it is exciting to see this endeavor –– a marriage of technology and artistic expression –– be such a success. Bringing ideas to life requires not only ingenuity, as those involved with this partnership have shown, but also practice, and the discipline to draw each frame meticulously, then have the faith to set them free.