Walt Peregoy VINTAGE DISNEY SERIES 1950

Walt Peregoy

Disney Animator 1950's-60's

"My style was unusual for Walt Disney, but he tolerated me," Peregoy says. Although, since he was "tolerated" for 14 years, the artist sheepishly admits, "I had to be doing something right."

Born in Los Angeles in 1925, Walt Peregoy spent his early childhood on a small island in San Francisco Bay. He was nine years old when he began his formal art training, attending Saturday classes at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Berkeley. When he was 12 years old, Peregoy's family returned to Los Angeles, where he enrolled in Chouinard Art Institute's life drawing classes. At age 17, he dropped out of high school and went to work for Disney as an in-betweener.

In 1951, with a young family in tow, Peregoy returned to the United States, and resumed his career with The Walt Disney Studios. Initially, he served as a designer and animator on Peter Pan (1952) and Lady and the Tramp (1955).

"To this day, Walt Peregoy's color styling in 101 Dalmatians (1961) remains a fine example of how color can be used creatively in animation while serving more than a merely decorative function," says modern animation authority Amid Amidi.

Peregoy continued at Disney on the features The Sword in the Stone (1963), Mary Poppins (1964), and The Jungle Book (1967) Peregoy's unique style meshed well with that of his contemporary, stylist Eyvind Earle, and their work on the Academy Award®-nominated short Paul Bunyan (1958) was a departure for Disney.

Special Thank you to the talented Michael Humpries for visiting + inspiring us here in Cleveland. He shared wonderful stories about his days at Disney. Here's one of the DISNEY GREATS he spoke of.

eyvind earle VINTAGE DISNEY SERIES 1950

Eyvind Earle

DISNEY ANIMATOR

b1916-2000

Born in New York in 1916, Eyvind Earle began his prolific career at the age of ten when his father, Ferdinand Earle, gave him a challenging choice: read 50 pages of a book or paint a picture every day. Earle choose both.

Special Thank you to the talented Michael Humpries for visiting + inspiring us here in Cleveland. He shared wonderful stories about his days at Disney. Here's one of the DISNEY GREATS he spoke of.

At the age of 21, Earle bicycled across country from Hollywood to New York, paying his way by painting 42 watercolors. Earle by the age of 21, came into his own unique style. His oeuvre is characterized by a simplicity, directness and surety of handling.

In 1951 Earle joined Walt Disney studios as an assistant background painter. Earle intrigued Disney in 1953 when he created the look of “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom” an animated short that won an Academy Award and a Cannes Film Festival Award. Disney kept the artist busy for the rest of decade, painting the settings for such stories as “Peter Pan”, “For Whom the Bulls Toil”, “Working for Peanuts”, “Pigs is Pigs”, “Paul Bunyan” and “Lady and the Tramp”.

Earle was responsible for the styling, background and colors for the highly acclaimed movie “Sleeping Beauty” and gave the movie its magical, medieval look. He also painted the dioramas for Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. He worked at the Disney studios of 15 years until 1966.

Earle holding an animation cell from Sleeping Beauty

joanna neborsky

ABOUT:

JOANNA NEBORSKY is a maker of jittery ink drawings and 1960s-stung collage; her work suggests a blend of "Shel Silverstein, Yellow Submarine, and Cy Twombly." (She would gently add Monty Python.) Her first book, an illustrated series of gruesome turn-of-the-century French news items translated by Luc Sante, was published by Mark Batty Publisher in September 2010. Her clients include Farrar, Straus & Giroux, W Magazine, and the New York Times. The illustrator doffs her beret to the Sauls (Steinberg & Bass), the Bens (Shahn & Katchor), and people with other names. She lives in Brooklyn.

M.F.A. Illustration, School of Visual Arts, 2009

B.A. English, Yale University, 2003

Special thanks to Kathy Mac for showing me her work!