(From left to right) Ron Diamond, ARL expert guide Fox Carney, Tim Reckart, Fonhdla Cronin O'Reilly and me.

By Dan Sarto

We met up Tuesday morning at Disney’s Animation Research Library, known as the ARL.  Located in a non-descript building that housed Disney Feature Animation until unit moved to the current Burbank studio space, the ARL houses over 65 million pieces of original production artwork, from pencil sketches on napkins to painted glass panels used in the giant two-story multi-plane cameras. Everything animation art-related that can be found is brought here for cataloging, digitizing, databasing, storing and in some cases, restoring.  Our host, Mary Walsh quickly turned us over to Fox Carney, resident historian, archivist and librarian, who took us through the facility, sharing stories and history on some of Disney’s oldest, dearest and most amazing work.

Our first stop was a long table playing host to a selection of works Fox pulled on behalf of Tim and Fondhla.  This included watercolors, pencil drawn character designs, storyboards, rough animation drawings, and concept art from films like Snow White, The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast and Lady and the Tramp.  I was particularly taken with two background paintings, one from Sleeping Beauty, one from Peter Pan, as well as some concept art sketches of Scar from The Lion King. It must be nice to have talent.  Sadly, I’ll never know.

We were only able to take a few pictures and none of the work directly. Just to the left of the group, off camera, is the long table where staff had graciously laid out some pre-tour requested artwork.

By Zoe Chevat

Thursday morning found our traveling band of Oscar short animation nominees and AWN staff trekking eastward for a morning at the Animation Resource Library (ARL). The definitive, company-owned archive for all Disney production materials, ARL is something of an in-house secret, appropriately hidden from prying eyes in a low-slung concrete building surrounded by warehouses.

Inside is a different story. The unassuming exterior plays host to over 60 million pieces of original production artwork, from clean-up drawings to rare painted-glass backgrounds used on the (now-defunct) massive multi-plane setup. The collection covers everything surviving from Disney's early days, up through present shows, with sketches from the "Alice" shorts of the 1920s holding the title of oldest artifact.

Among the items set out for our visit, books of Jungle Book sketches caught everyone's attention.

Written by Dan Sarto

One of the highlights of the week was a morning spent at Disney's Animation Research Library (ARL).  Housed in the non-descript former feature animation studio, the library houses more than 65 million pieces of animation art representing over 80 years of work from Walt Disney Animation.  Formerly housed in the basement of the Animation department in the aptly named "Morgue," the library opened in its current location in 1989.  Complete with fire supression systems, climate controled vaults and state of the art scanning and database systems, the library serves both to preserve the company's heritage as well as to provide an inhouse resource for studio personnel needing access to the immense repository of Disney animation assets. If you love animation, or have any sense of animation history, then the Disney ARL is a little slice of heaven.  Actually, it's the whole pie.

The nominees check out Jungle Book and Alice in Wonderland art selected by Oktapodi director Julien Bocabeille (m) to view.

More amazing pics from the nominees experience at Disney's Animation Resource Library, where the history of Disney animation art is housed.

Oktapodi's Julien Bocabeille and I talked over lunch.

For more than a decade, I’ve been a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Short Film and Feature Animation Branch. Each year I look forward to our fall screenings where we get to see the finest short animated films from around the world and select the five nominees. It’s like attending the best film festival in the world.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of spending the day with the filmmakers of three of the nominated shorts — "Oktapodi," "Lavatory Lovestory," and "La Maison en Petite Cubes" — as they were welcomed into and toured the “birthplace” of American animation – Walt Disney Studios.

The tour poses for a pic with the Animation Resource Library archivists in front of background painted for a Donald Duck promotional tour.

As the tour swings from San Francisco to Los Angeles, the Oscar Travelogue switches chroniclers from Barbara Robertson to Rick DeMott.

Walt Disney kicks off the L.A. leg. For a touch of morning inspiration, we gathered at the Animation Resource Library. Having traveled with the Oscar Tour for the past two years in both San Fran and Los Angeles, it feels strange coming in midstream. I missed out on the bonding that took place in the Bay Area as the filmmakers from around the globe were getting to know each other. For the "Oktapodi" crew, the tour was the first chance for them to be together since graduating from Gobelins. Julien Bocabeille and Thierry Marchand, who both work for DreamWorks in Bangalore, India, joined FX, Olivier, Quentin and Emud, who already had a taste of the tour last week. Joining the six "Oktapodi" directors were Konstantin and Kunio, who having met for the first time in San Fran, have clearly bonded quickly, despite not speaking the same language.