LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. – Back then, a kid with talent – and a penchant for drawing Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck – could call up Disney pictures, proclaim his desire to be an animator and be invited to the movie studio for a job interview.
Dave Suding’s mother drove him to Burbank. It was 1955. In a month, he’d graduate from high school; in the fall, he’d study art in junior college. He wanted a summer job to fill the gap, and what could be better than Disney? He entered the lot, sketch pad under his arm, brimming with life drawings and faithfully rendered Disney doodlings.
First job
Disney, for its part, was insatiable for artists. The simple facts: Disney animation required 12 frames for every second of screen time. That’s 720 frames a minute. And most every character and critter in the frame required his own army of artists to draw his own 720 frames of blinking eyes, galloping hooves, dancing feet and pixie dust. Another army painted the backgrounds. Another still did the inking.
Suding, just 18, was offered a full-time job the next day. Can you start right away? I’m still in high school. Can you start as soon as you finish high school? He graduated on a Friday. On Monday, he began a 42-year career with the undisputed lords of the animation empire, a career that would span the history of modern cartooning and grant him a front-row seat to the bittersweet turning of tides. What he calls the horse and buggy being replaced by the automobile. Evolution.
Confederacy of artists
In 1955, he was a wide-eyed kid among the greatest talents of his time. Animators, he felt, were actors with pencils: They had to persuade you, with lines and color and light, that this drawing of an elephant was as real and heartbreaking as an abandoned child. The scene in “Dumbo” where the mother elephant is imprisoned, but manages to snake her trunk through the bars to cradle her baby, still brings tears to his eyes.
It took an unsung army to create the art Disney was known for, and he was a new recruit. These men drew cute bunnies and elephants, but they talked tough and drove each other crazy with their antics. No quirk escaped their notice. The big nose, the funny gait, the restless spirit – all would be captured in quick cartoons and hung on office walls for all to see. During coffee breaks, Suding hopped from desk to desk to see who had been skewered and how. He’d be the subject of a skewering himself: A series of panels shows a rubber-like young man writhing at his table, bent into a plethora of pretzel-like positions, before finally settling down to work on the floor.
A brush with greatness
At the time, Disney’s operation was enormous. Walt was at work on the theme park in Anaheim. At first, Suding ferried finished artwork between the animation and camera departments. They were far apart on the lot, so he traveled by bicycle; one day, he was racing as fast as he could around a corner and found himself hurtling into the startled face of Walt Disney.
One of us is going to die, he thought. Suding jerked the wheel, plunged head first into the bushes, extracted himself, hopped back on the bike and raced off before Disney could speak. Suding sat at his desk all afternoon, wondering when he would be fired.
He graduated to commercial work (toothpaste, milk, candy bars), then to shorts (he drew many Donald Ducks), then tried out for features. With “Sleeping Beauty,” Walt wanted to achieve something different – a vertical, angular, formalized beauty. Every frame, he was quoted as saying, should be its own work of art. Suding made the cut, vaulting to the rank of “inbetweener” – the lowest rung on the artists’ ladder.
Art meets technology
Junior college never materialized. He developed a taste for zany characters; married Carolyn, the art department secretary with the long blond hair (portrayed as Rapunzel in one of those infamous wall cartoons); and became a veteran in the studio’s unsung army. He was “coordinating animator,” “key assistant” “key clean up artist,” for “Jungle Book,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin,” “Lion King,” “Hercules,” “Pocahontas” and “Mulan,” among others.
He came to view the art of animation as akin to the art of the Renaissance. A master artist’s name was enshrined on the piece; but behind him was a phalanx of apprentices doing much of the work. TV animation – “The Flintstones,” “The Jetsons” – couldn’t compare to Disney’s. Neither could the anime from Japan. When “Tron” – the first film with computerized animation – came out in 1982, he dismissed it as stiff and lifeless. But when “Toy Story” – the first film done entirely with computer animation – came out in 1995, Suding knew the world had changed.
This, he said, is a Disney type of film. It has character. Empathy. Just like “Dumbo.” Mouse and monitor had replaced pencil and paper, but the principles were the same. They’ve done an awfully good job, he told himself. “This isn’t the old hand-drawn animation,” he said of “The Incredibles,” “but these guys have got it. They’ve got it.”
Suding retired in 1997 and lives in Laguna Beach, where he was rattled by the recent slide. An old-style animation table sits in his office. Above it hang the cartoons of Carolyn as Rapunzel, of the hopelessly restless Suding at his Disney desk. He hasn’t drawn in eight years. He protests when visitors pester him to pick up a pencil, seems surprised when he finds old cels of the Good Fairies from “Sleeping Beauty” in a drawer, hesitates as he turns on the light table. He positions the drawing paper, moves the pencil, and the fairy’s chubby cheek appears. Her kind eyes, cheerful mouth, ample bosom.
Not bad, Suding says. But it is an art whose time has come and gone.
“Evolution,” he says, flipping off the light.
Comments are no longer available on this story