As part of the Ollie Johnston tribute, a photo montage created by Rick and Ken Johnston is now available for a limited time on AWNtv.

Invitation to the Special Life Celebration for Ollie Johnston held at Disney's El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on August 19. © Disney.

The passing of the remarkable Ollie Johnston, the last of Walt Disney's original hand-picked team of animation pioneers, marked a sad transition for everyone who's ever enjoyed a Disney film. It also caused me to reflect not just on how much this magical man meant to me personally, but how much he influenced generations of animators, Walt Disney himself, and the shape of entertainment in general. Ollie remained passionate and enthusiastic about the art form he helped to invent well into his advanced years. He made a rare return visit to the Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank on his 94th birthday in 2006 and was surrounded by throngs of young Disney artists who came to celebrate the occasion. We showed him some of the new films we were working on, and his eyes flashed with excitement and welled up with emotion. Five months later, I visited him for the last time at his home in Flintridge, California. His energy was low, but his love of animation, interest in the future of the medium, and curiosity about our projects was as strong as ever.

Humble, quiet, and unassuming, Ollie was a master of his craft. Through his artistry, imagination, hard work, and determination to pass along the knowledge and experience of Walt Disney and his fellow "Nine Old Men," he proved to be an invaluable contributor to popular culture. In fact, modern animation would not be what it is today without the patience, wisdom and guidance of Ollie (and his equally brilliant and talented creative partner and lifelong friend, Frank Thomas).

I first encountered Ollie when I came to the Disney Studios in 1979. A wet-behind-the-ears graduate of California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), my first assignment (and Ollie's last) was on The Fox and the Hound. I now realize what a unique opportunity I had to learn from the guys who invented the art form. Ollie would flip my stack of rough drawings one at a time. He would place clean sheets of paper over my drawings and suggest how the poses and visual expressions could be improved. Most importantly, he taught me to animate feelings, not drawings. It was never about the animation; it was always about what the character was thinking and feeling. It was such a fundamental thing but it brought the character to life. It was an epiphany for me and I began to analyze my own body movements and how every thought process informed every movement.

(Left to right) Milt Kahl, Marc Davis, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston (seated) with Walt Disney. © Disney.

Ollie explained to us that no two characters would perform a similar action in the same way, and even the same character would have different approaches to the same action depending on his or her emotional state. He cited the Dwarfs in Snow White as an example of similar-looking characters with wildly different personalities and emotions. This knowledge proved extremely useful when I was animating the early experimental computer-animated short Luxo Jr. and tried to show the difference in personalities between the adult and child lamp characters strictly through their movements. And it was invaluable to us in creating the characters of Woody and Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story. Who they are and what kind of toy they are informed their movements. Woody, an older stuffed cloth cowboy with plastic hands, feet and a head, had a Gary Cooper laid-back personality, while Buzz, an older toy made of rigid plastic, had a buff, well-trained military kind of attitude.

While I was at Disney, Ollie and Frank began writing what was to become the "bible" for every animator -- their landmark book Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life. Many of the young animators at Disney would gather in the big story room on the second floor of the Animation Building to watch them pin up illustrations and vintage drawings as they laid out the book. On display were some of Ollie's most wondrous and heartfelt creations -- the distinctly personable Dwarfs from Snow White, the inventive Pinocchio lying to the Blue Fairy, the graceful centaurettes from Fantasia, Thumper's recitation about "eating greens" [in Bambi], the self-caricatured Mr. Smee from Peter Pan, Dalmatians Pongo and Perdita, and the carefree Baloo and his pal Mowgli, to name a few. We sat at their feet while they regaled us with stories and patiently answered all of our questions about the "old days." Ollie would tell us about the men who influenced him. He told us how Norm Ferguson's brilliant animation of Pluto stuck on a piece of flypaper gave them new insights into how a character would think and react, and how it elevated all of the animators to new levels of acting. And he talked about Fred Moore's approach to his work, and how he would spend most of his day thinking about a character's actions and analyzing every possibility before ever touching a pencil to paper.