Disney Plus Show 'Sketchbook' Turns Star Disney Animators Into Your Art Teachers
Drawing iconic Disney characters like Olaf from Frozen is easy. Just watch this new instructional show.
The new Disney Plus show Sketchbook spotlights one animator per episode.
From blockbuster movies to theme parks to endless merchandise, it feels impossible to escape Disney's globe-spanning tendrils nestling into every culture on earth. But trace those threads all the way back to their source and you'll find the creators themselves -- animators carrying the torch of making magic the Disney way.
New Disney Plus show Sketchbook, streaming now, introduces you to six of them. Older, younger, male, female and gender nonconforming, they're united by the same lifelong passion to one day animate for Disney. Each of the six episodes of the show spotlights one creator as they walk viewers through drawing an iconic Disney character step by step while opening up about their creative journey.
Over the years, Disney has given viewers occasional behind-the-scenes looks at how animators create the studio's famous films, and these peeks behind the curtain impacted young viewers that grew up to work at the House of Mouse, including those featured in Sketchbook. At an early April panel interview for press inside Walt Disney Animation studios in Burbank, California, the animators showcased in Sketchbook explained what being in the show meant to them.
"To me, it was always seeing those clips of amazing, incredible artists and being like, hey, this is how you draw," said Samantha Vilfort, who developed the character Mirabel, Encanto's protagonist. "The thing that I grew up with, I could potentially kind of do this for other people."
That sense of legacy is rich throughout Sketchbook. Jovial, white-mustachioed Eric Goldberg, who created the look of The Genie in Aladdin and walks viewers through drawing the character in his episode, explained that he watched drawing lessons on public access television growing up in Philadelphia in the early 1960s. Sketchbook is his way of passing his craft along to viewers, as he has passed it to other artists, like Hyun Min Lee, who was mentored by Goldberg and is also featured in the show.
Disney animator Hyun Min Lee drawing Olaf from Frozen.
Lee, who draws Frozen's lovable snowman Olaf in her episode, fell in love with Disney films growing up in Hong Kong. She was especially entranced when she saw behind-the-scenes peeks of animators making the movies she enjoyed.
"I was watching all those specials where the Nine Old Men or some of the artists, even the ink and paint artists, were just painting the cels, and I [said to myself] 'I don't know what that is, but I want to be part of that'," Lee said, referring to Disney's nine legendary animators who worked on and oversaw the studio's projects from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 through the 1980s.
After coming to the US to study at the California Institute of the Arts, a famous recruiting ground for Disney animators, Lee got a job at Disney like she'd always dreamed of doing. She's worked on movies from 2D feature The Princess and the Frog to the 3D film Raya and the Last Dragon.
Disney animator Eric Goldberg drawing the Genie from Aladdin.
Drawing, the core of Disney
Sketchbook's focus on two-dimensional drawing may seem antiquated, especially since many of the animators' latest projects are hit 3D films like Raya, Zootopia and Frozen. But the point of the series isn't to wow viewers with all the high tech it takes to render the latest 3D film graphics -- it's to show that the mythologized "Disney magic" boils down to shapes on a page brought to life by true believers of the craft. And, yes, anyone can do it.
"I think the thing that really hit home with me about the series and the core of it is that anybody can draw, and anybody can have fun with drawing," Goldberg said. "I often think that it's fascinating that human beings are the only animals who are compelled to make a mark on a piece of paper. It's natural for everybody."
And despite 3D animation outnumbering 2D drawn films, the classic format isn't going away. In fact, Goldberg has seen many students at USC, where he teaches, want to learn traditional animation because it's the base skill upon which modern computer-aided 3D animation builds off of -- enough for Disney to start a new trainee program this year for hand-drawn animators headed by Goldberg and Mark Henn, who has his own episode of Sketchbook drawing The Lion King's Simba, which he created. When Henn started, he was mentored by Eric Larson, one of the Nine Old Men.
"Everybody at that time was so giving and wanting to pass on all the information that they could so that this thing called 'Disney Animation' would live on," Henn said. On top of animation, a big part of his role at Disney "is working with people like Hyun-min, passing the baton on to her generation. And eventually, you know, when I'm long gone, she'll be doing the same thing."
Not every artist draws the character they pioneered. Jin Kim, the first South Korean animator at Disney, draws Captain Hook, the antagonist of Disney's Peter Pan released in 1953. The soft-spoken Kim is a veteran animator and started on TV series like Tiny Toon Adventures before jumping into feature animation on Hercules and graduating to designing characters in Tangled, Big Hero 6 and Frozen, among many others.
The new Disney Plus show Sketchbook spotlights one animator per episode who leads viewers through drawing an iconic Disney character while telling their own artistic journey.
But Kim chose to draw Hook for Sketchbook because that character gave him his break. His color-blindedness had led him to specialize in animation via black-and-white drawings, so when he moved to Los Angeles and saw Disney was looking for animators, Kim applied and was assigned Disney's most famous pirate captain to draw in motion for his animation test. While he hasn't drawn Hook in the two decades since, his Sketchbook episode is a return to the pencil and paper that made his Disney dream come true.
Some animators picked characters that were personal in other ways. Gabby Capili, who started her Disney career as an apprentice animating on Encanto, chose the spoiled emperor-turned-llama Kuzco from The Emperor's New Groove to draw. Not only was it the first Disney film she saw, but growing up a tomboyish kid who now identifies as gender nonconforming and queer, Capili didn't care much about the Disney princesses that captivated her sisters.
"I just didn't relate until Kuzco. There were jokes about how to be a [Disney] princess, you have to have a villain after you, to get trapped, to be saved by a man, to be in mortal danger. Kuzco fits all of those," Capili said, adding that she was gently nudged to pick another character that viewers might know better. "I was like, no, I cannot. It has to be Kuzco."
Samantha Vilfort draws Mirabel from Encanto in her episode, a character she developed.
Animators seen from the outside
Sketchbook's personal focus comes from its direction. The series was made by Supper Club, producer of Netflix's Chef's Table, and is the third production for Disney after the documentary anthology Marvel 616 and feature-length look at Pixar shorts, The Spark Story. The production company has made a name for itself showcasing artist craftsmanship, but as Supper Club co-founder Jason Sterman speculated on how they could bring a different spin to their next Disney-partnered show, they kept returning to the artists themselves.
"There's something where you're getting to see them do their craft, and the audience gets to hopefully learn from that, but if you don't want to pick up a pencil, you can just watch and learn from the human side," Sterman said.
Even after developing the format of following one animator walking viewers through drawing a famous character, Sterman and Supper Club weren't sure it would work. Was this engaging? Would viewers care? After shooting Capili's episode, Sterman -- who described his artistic capability as "a circle and a stick figure" -- went home and followed instructions, drawing a fairly good Kuzco.
"I showed Gabby my Kuzco and she said 'your shading's really nice' and, hey, I just did what you told me to," Sterman said. "There was something in me that said, oh, I guess I can draw. It was a weird thing to unlock. You discover things about yourself."
To Sterman, the show is about connection. People watching can rediscover their love of iconic characters, re-engage their artistic ability, or turn the drawing session into an activity for families to connect. And, of course, they can connect with the animators.
"Traditionally, you never see the human [behind the animation], so we're allowing them to tell their story," Sterman told me. "Everyone had this same goal [to work at Disney] but went about their journey in a very different way."
Sterman and Supper Club worked with Disney to pick the six animators for Sketchbook's first season. Some agreed to be profiled to set an example for young animators-to-be, they revealed during the panel discussion.
"When I was a kid, I didn't know what artists looked like. And then the artists that I did know were like painters from the 19th century who were white guys with floppy hair and everything," Capili said. "So, the opportunity to show kids that you can be anyone and get into animation and have a really good time and a good career was no question. Of course I'll do it."
The six animators on Sketchbook are a small subset of the hundreds working at the Burbank studios, but all expressed gratitude and passion for working within its walls. Even if they spend years on projects and don't get much recognition after releasing them into the world, seeing how they're received is reward enough. Sometimes after their films were released, Lee explained, the animators would sneak into the back rows of movie theaters and watch people react.
"It's such a thrilling and proud moment that I got to be part of something that makes people laugh and cry and fall in love with and root for," Lee said. "It's something that will be passed down through the generations. From a childhood dream that became a dream come true, it's just an ongoing dream always to work here."
