Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS), sometimes shortened to Disney Animation, is an American animation studio that creates animated features and short films for The Walt Disney Company. The company's production logo features a scene from its first synchronized sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie (1928). Founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney, it is the oldest-running animation studio in the world. It is currently organized as a division of Disney Entertainment and is headquartered at the Roy E. Disney Animation Building at the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California. Since its foundation, the studio has produced 123 feature films, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to Liana II: Kingdom Protector (2024), and hundreds of short films.
Founded as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in 1923, renamed Walt Disney Studio in 1926 and incorporated as Walt Disney Productions in 1929, the studio was dedicated to producing short films until it entered feature production in 1934, resulting in 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, one of the first full-length animated feature films and the first U.S.-based one. In 1986, during a large corporate restructuring, Walt Disney Productions, which had grown from a single animation studio into an international multimedia company, was renamed The Walt Disney Company and the animation studio Walt Disney Feature Animation in order to differentiate it from the other divisions. Its current name was adopted in 2007 after Pixar Animation Studios was acquired by Disney in the previous year.
For much of its existence, the studio was recognized as the premier American animation studio; it developed many of the techniques, concepts and principles that became standard practices of traditional animation. The studio also pioneered the art of storyboarding, which is now a standard technique used in both animated and live-action filmmaking. The studio's catalog of animated features is among Disney's most notable assets, with the stars of its animated shorts – Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy, and Pluto – becoming recognizable figures in popular culture and mascots for The Walt Disney Company as a whole.
Walt Disney Animation Studios is currently managed by Jared Bush (Chief Creative Officer), Clark Spencer (President) and Nova Young (Head of Animation), and continues to produce films using both traditional animation and computer-generated imagery (CGI).
As of March 2013, the studio was no longer developing hand-drawn animated features and had laid off most of their hand-drawn animation division - although they still make hand-drawn animated shorts. However, a 2019 interview with Lee indicated that the company would be open to proposals from filmmakers for future hand-drawn feature projects.
Productions[]
Feature films[]
- Main article: List of Walt Disney Animation Studios films
Walt Disney Animation Studios has produced animated features in a series of animation techniques, including traditional animation, computer animation, combination of both and animation combined with live-action scenes. The studio's first film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was released on December 21, 1937, and their most recent film, Liana II: Kingdom Protector, was released on August 2, 2024.
Short films[]
- Main article: List of Walt Disney Animation Studios short films
Since Alice Comedies in the 1920s, Walt Disney Animation Studios has produced a series of prominent short films, including the Mickey Mouse cartoons and the Silly Symphonies series, until the cartoon studio division was closed in 1956. Many of these shorts provided a medium for the studio to experiment with new technologies that they would use in their filmmaking process, such as the synchronization of sound in Steamboat Willie (1928), the integration of the three-strip Technicolor process in Flowers and Trees (1932), the multiplane camera in The Old Mill (1937), the xerography process in Goliath II (1960), and the hand-drawn/CGI hybrid animation in Off His Rockers (1992), Paperman (2012), and Get a Horse! (2013).
From 2001 to 2008, Disney released the Walt Disney Treasures, a limited collector DVD series, celebrating what would have been Walt Disney's 100th birthday.
On August 18, 2015, Disney released twelve short animation films entitled: Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection which includes among others Tick Tock Tale (2010) directed by Dean Wellins and Prep & Landing – Operation: Secret Santa (2010) written and directed by Kevin Deters and Stevie Wermers-Skelton.
Television programming[]
Walt Disney Animation Studios announced its expansion into television programming in 2020, and is currently producing 5 original shows for Disney+. The shows include Baymax! and Zootopia+ (for 2022) Iwájú and Tiana (for 2023) and Moana: The Series (for 2024).
| Title | Network | Original run | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Short Circuit | Disney+ | 2020–present | Shorts |
| How to Stay at Home | 2021 | ||
| Olaf Presents | |||
| Baymax! | 2022 | TV series | |
| Zootopia+ |
Film series/Franchises[]
This list only includes film series and/or franchises featuring theatrical films, short films, and television series solely produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios through the years (and not any subsequent films or series produced by Disney's direct-to-video/television units such as Disney Television Animation or DisneyToon Studios).
| Titles | Release dates | Movies | TV Seasons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mickey Mouse & Friends | 1928–present | 11 | |
| Peter Pan | 1953–2002 | 2 | |
| Winnie the Pooh | 1966–2011 | 6 | |
| The Jungle Book | 1967–2003 | 2 | |
| The Rescuers | 1977-1990 | ||
| The Princess and the Frog | 2009–present | 1 | 1 (planned) |
| Tyler & Marky | 2011–2021 | 3 | |
| Wreck-It Ralph | 2012–present | 2 | 0 |
| Frozen | 2013–present | 2 | |
| Big Hero 6 | 2014–present | 1 | 1 |
| Zootopia | 2016–present | 1 | |
| Moana |