It took a village of creatives at Disney Animation to pull off “Once Upon a Studio,” the animated short that celebrates 100 years of stories and magic. Iconic characters like Snow White and Peter Pan feature alongside Robin Williams’ Genie in a cast of 543 characters from more than 85 feature-length and short films. And it all came together without any artificial intelligence involved.
Directors Dan Abraham and Trent Correy were seeking a way to honor the studio’s legacy. “Once Upon a Studio” takes place at the end of a work day at Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank. The studio becomes a magical place once Disney Legend Burny Mattinson, who worked there for 70 years on films such as “Lady and the Tramp” (1955) and “One Hundred and One Dalmatians” (1961), leaves. Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse step out of a photo and call for their friends to gather for an official 100th Anniversary Studio portrait.
Abraham and Correy met over eight months to pull the project off. Shrouded in secrecy, a group of artists, led by Eric Goldberg and Andrew Feliciano, worked to bring characters such as Snow White, Genie, Ariel, Belle, Peter Pan, Wendy and even Chernabog to life. Eighty percent of the characters were hand-drawn while the others were computer-generated.
Abraham and Correy wanted each character to look like they had just stepped out of their movie.
Producer Bradford Simonsen explains, “It needed to feel that so the audience response would be visceral. We used our animation research library where we pulled out model sheets for the animators to work from. We had Eric Goldberg who has the studio history, and we did tests to make sure it was all working together in the scenes.”
The team of heavy-hitter animators included James Baxter (Belle, “Beauty and the Beast”), Nik Ranieri (“The Lion King”) and Ruben Aquino, who animated the final designs for Ursula in 1989. Says Abraham, “He hasn’t drawn her in over 30 years, and he came out of retirement to do Ursula for us.”
Others simply wanted to be a part of this historic short. With thousands of characters to pick from, the directors had a wish-fulfillment list of who they wanted to be featured. Chernabog from Disney’s 1940 film “Fantasia” was top of Correy’s wishlist. But there was a slight problem. “He’s the size of a mountain and he couldn’t fit into the building,” says Correy. It was Abraham who came up with the idea of the “101 Dalmatians” pups watching “Fantasia” on TV.
Disney CG animator Jorge Ruiz expressed interest in animating the character. Correy says, “He reached out and said how when he was growing up in Venezuela, Chernabog was his favorite character of all time and that was the reason he wanted to work at Disney, so Eric helped him out and Jorge drew it.”
As for bringing the voices, at least 40 original voice guests including Jodi Benson (Ariel), Jeremy Irons (Scar), Idina Menzel (Elsa) and Kristen Bell (Anna) enthusiastically said yes to returning. Yvett Merino was simple. She says, “It said, ‘We’re working on a short film to celebrate the 100 years. We’d love you to be a part of it and many came into the recording session not knowing anything about it. For anyone that came in, we’d show them the boards. To have them come back and visit characters that they hadn’t done in years, so many were grateful to be included and to be a part of it.”
Correy and Abraham’s first recording was Auli’i Cravalho as Moana, and as each voice character came back, they’d fondly recall stories of what their characters meant to them.
From the very beginning, Correy and Abraham knew Robin Williams’ iconic genie needed to be a part of it. Simonsen and producer Merino reached out to the estate. Says Simonsen, “We tried to take them on the journey with us to say, ‘We’ve got this very special short that we’re doing. Robin as the genie means so much to so many people and we would really love to involve him. So Dan listened to the outtakes from the original recording and he found those little bites that we could use. We went back to the estate and said, ‘This is what we hope to do.’ Eric, who originally animated the genie is on the show, and he’s going to be part of it.’ And it was wonderful to see that happen.”
Piecing the voices and characters together in a nine-minute short was a challenge. The first cut hit the 13-minute mark. With thousands of characters to choose from, the biggest challenge wasn’t just picking the characters, it was deciding who would rise to the top.
One sequence had “The Little Mermaid’s” Ariel in the restroom combing her hair. Next to her was the Dinglehopper. “She didn’t say anything,” says Correy. “We thought, ‘What are we doing?!’” With Jodi Benson returning to voice the character, they needed her to sing or at least say something, and so they shifted things around to incorporate a speaking part.
Richard Sherman’s cameo came at the suggestion of the studio’s head of music, Matthew Walker. The Award-winning composer recorded a new version of the Mary Poppins hit, “Feed the Birds.” Says Merino, “That was the pinch-me moment.”