Animating Forces

Every good story has a villain, and Disney’s stories are no exception.

Every good story has a villain, and Disney’s stories are no exception.

As I’ve studied the animators who created all these Disney characters, I find their different approaches to crafting the villains we know and love fascinating, because none of their creative processes were the same.

Let's take a look at three artists for context, and the characters they animated, starting with Bill Tytla.

Volodymyr Peter Tytla, otherwise known as Bill, was a Ukrainian-American animator who was one of the first people at Disney Studios to create characters that evoked an emotional connection with the audience. Animation had begun as just a silly, slapstick piece of nonsense before the feature presentation, it was never considered serious and certainly not as emotionally compelling as “real” films. But Walt Disney had a vision, a passion for creating convincing characters that you wanted to cheer for, or cry for, or both. And Bill was one of those people who could do just that.

One of Bill Tytla’s first major assignments at Walt Disney Studios was Grumpy in Snow White. Perhaps one of the most lovely scenes in the movie is the one where Snow White kisses Grumpy’s head, and as he walks away, his gruff demeanor slowly melts away as the realization that he is loved reaches his heart. While all of this takes place in a short span of a few frames, the impact of this moment created by an animated character ripples throughout the movie, as the hand-drawn personalities connect in a profound way with our humanity and our desire to be loved and accepted for who we are.

But Bill didn’t only animate loveable characters. In fact, he is likely more well-known for his dastardly villains than anything else. Bill was the one who brought Chernabog to life in Fantasia’s Night on Bald Mountain sequence, as well as creating the large and lumbering giant in the 1938 short Brave Little Tailor, a character who became the industry standard for how giants were portrayed. And then there was one of the most evil and repulsive villains of all, the child-exploiting Stromboli from Pinocchio. Bill didn’t just draw the characters he created, he became them. As animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston put it, “Everything was ‘feelings’ with Bill. Whatever he animated had the inner feelings of his characters expressed through very strong acting. He did not just get inside Stromboli, he was Stromboli and he lived that part.”