Frank Thomas finding inspiration.

Upon the recent passing of animation legend Frank Thomas, Animation World Network began to collect thoughts on the man from animation professionals from around the world. We hope that this piece will serve as a lasting tribute to Mr. Thomas as an amazing artist and as an amazing human being. He has influence so many people in animation directly and indirectly that it would be impossible to quantify. From his work on some of Disney’s classic films to his dedication to helping new animators along their way, Mr. Thomas will be remembered as a true inspiration and pioneer in the art of animation.

We’d like to include a special thanks to the Frank Thomas family for allowing us to republish the transcriptions of speeches given by John Lasseter and Andreas Deja as well as Leonard Maltin’s interview with Ollie Johnston from the memorial to Frank Thomas, which took place at the El Capitan Theatre. The Sept. 29 memorial was conceived by the family and produced by Ted and Kuniko Thomas. We’d also like to thank The Walt Disney Co. and especially Howard Green for their assistance.

John Lasseter
Director of Toy Story

Frank Thomas influenced my life greater than I thought. Over the past couple weeks, I thought about the many ways that he influenced [me]. I grew up in Whittier, California. I always loved cartoons. My parents couldn’t get me up on a school day. But on Saturday morning I was up at the crack of dawn. Two feet from the TV set with Frosted Flakes, watching every cartoon I could see. I even watched them when it wasn’t cool in high school. I quietly ran home after school to watch cartoons. Bugs and his Buddies on KTTV Channel 11.

I was a freshman in high school and I had to do a book report. I was rummaging around in the Whittier High School library and I found this book called The Art of Animation by Bob Thomas. It dawned on me when I opened this book that people got paid to make cartoons. So I decided that’s what I wanted to do.

This was before there were videocassettes. We all know that in each of our towns there is a last run theater. In Whittier, it was the Warman Theatre uptown for 49 cents. So at the time I found this book, The Sword and the Stone was playing, so I asked my mom to drop me off there — alone — because I didn’t want any of my high school buddies knowing that I was going to see a cartoon. I watched this cartoon and I’ll never forget the feeling I had when Merlin turned Arthur into the squirrel. The incredible shape of that squirrel sitting in that tree has been burned into my memory.

I walked out of that theater and got in the car when my mom picked me up and said, “I want to work for Disney.” She was a high school art teacher for 38 years and she said, “That’s a great goal to have.” She always thought that art was a noble profession. I started writing to the Disney studios and they invited me over.

Then in my senior year I received a letter that they were starting a character animation program at CalArts. I applied and I was the second person accepted to the program in 1975. I got to actually go over and work for the summer of 1975 at the Disney studios helping Jack Hann, who was the head of the program, to get ready for it. My job was to go down to the morgue and pick any scene that I liked and Xerox it for CalArts. That was my summer job. I kept meeting more and more animators. Glen Keane had just started there. Ron Clements. I was just in heaven. I realized that I wasn’t the only one out there in the world who loved animation.

Then I went to CalArts. I went four years there and graduated. While we were at CalArts, it was just the most amazing group of young people we were with. Brad Bird was one of them. They had six 16mm prints of Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi, Dumbo, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. We looked at those again and again and again, all night. For four years, we studied those films. Terrible prints, but they were great to us. And I was so excited about working at Disney and doing animation.