Our so called term break, which was actually 3 days with no classes that we still spent in school doing assignments, began and ended last week. I have long planned to further detail my gratitude to the man holding the hand of the mouse in the picture above but thought to reserve the endeavor as a task I shall accomplish during the break. Sadly I failed to do so because more pressing demands required my attention, like seeing my sister and chatting with her after 2 months of just momentary glimpses in the morning when I am about to leave the house and in the evening when I arrive and just about ready to retire in bed, and also there is nursing my soul who has just gone through the first wave of bullets in this “war,” which meant quieting my soul one notch down as opposed to the constant hustle and bustle in the everyday hyper school life.

The speedy pace the school has undertaken for its lessons has made my stomach consistently upset for 2 months. I have learned manners of a civilized individual from my childhood. But I have never perfected that essential art of releasing gas discreetly now as never before. Now I do it so quietly, I hardly notice it myself. Sometimes I wonder if my excretory and digestive systems are making a fool out of myself.

Right now, the second wave of bullets has begun. I know I have to finish this task overdue before the frequency of the bullets as they come peak to a level that will allow no more room in my life but the bare essentials. So here is that little bit of detail that should have accompanied the Walt Disney clipping right from the start:

I am a Christian, Filipino artist who lives in the 21st century. Unlike my contemporaries who thrive in the search for new techniques and skills which our school has always been so happy to teach, I instead search for the stories of the lives of similar artists who came before me as extra work. People with the same pursuits I have in mine. I know the path I have taken is a lot harder than what my friends have taken. But I will not trade my journey for any other.

I could only wish someone older and wiser than I am has chosen to search for stories of the industry the way I want them. Sadly there is no compilation yet in this field. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars from my student allowance just buying books for stories that touch the soul.

My past studies has at least taught me that the great works of art and the great movements of technology began with one simple yet profound goal and that is to give back all the glory to the Creator of Heaven and Earth. I am inspired recklessly by the movement of God in History. I even go as far as to say my being Filipino is an accident that will serve my people good, because my heritage is not in the history of my blood, it is in the History told by the Scriptures in the way God has always sought to retie His relationship with us, His creation.

I am an artist and maybe in at least a minuscule way, I know how painful it is to loose a drawing, especially one you’ve put your very life into. I don’t want to be lost anymore. And I want to join the journey that countless others made before me. They have walked paths crisscrossing the Earth that eventually formed the world we live in today, so far from yesterday, all because of their search for the King of kings.

Stories from the Protestant Reformation and Renaissance movement inspire me. But somehow I wanted to be able to trace that heritage all the way to this day and to myself. I wanted to make a clear line of artists who inspired artists to seek God.

I have not made a line as long, encompassing and convincing enough. But I have a landmark set. And I can honestly say, in all confidence, that movies like Ratatouille, Happy Feet, Incredibles, Iron Giant and many other animations are the way they are because of Christianity.

Before Walt Disney, animation was hopeless. Animators animated for money. They did not care about becoming better in their crafts. On occasion, there will be a shining artist. Like Winsor McCay from 1914 who created Gertie the Dinosaur. His skill in animation was revolutionary even compared to Walt Disney himself who came decades after McCay. But skill and talent is always overrated.

God wanted animation to glorify him. He called Walt Disney, a kid who grew up in the farms as a child of devoted Christians, to become his vessel of good deeds. In Disney’s essay entitled Deeds Rather Than Words, he said “The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil, and that is what our pictures attempt to do.” That phrase sets him above all the other animators and God rewarded him with more than just that.

In fact, I know it is not written anywhere, but I believe with all my heart, that when Walt Disney decided to make a full feature film (we all know now to be Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) he actually received Wisdom during prayer. He had all the opposition. His partners, his brother and even his wife were all against it. An animated feature film back then was such a monumental task, add in the cutting edge quality that Walt Disney will always required in their works and the shortage in money everyone was going through back then and the expenses even an animation short would require, it is impossible. It was even stupid. But God had a plan. Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is like what the ark is to Noah. By following God Walt Disney ushered in the Golden Age of animation. Because during those times of intense hardships trying to reach impossible standards just to inspire and instruct the children of America, they developed the theories of animation that classical and digital animators use up to this day.

Brad Bird, the director of Ratatouille and the Incredibles, was trained by Milt, one of the 9 old men of Walt Disney (he said so himself in an interview he had in a podcast with Andew Gordon). So many inspiring animations(and even live action) films today owe it a lot to Walt Disney and his endeavors.

Like today, as I study animation, I see traces of lessons from the Bible that are so essential in the industry not even the postmodern movement could erase (they could only say it came from else where). Lessons like capturing the beauty of life in figure drawing, redemption is story-telling and story-boarding, love and insight in character-development. These lessons are not even constricted to animation. Even live action film directors employ the same tools invented by Disney.

My readings in animation tells of a story during this golden age. They say they even booked themselves to the hospital in front of Disney Studios 6 months in advance because they were still finishing Snow White but they knew they were really close to dying. I have no words to describe how noble and pure their endeavors were.

I look at the company Walt Disney left today, and I am disappointed at how far it has fallen from what it used to be. Families used to trust Walt Disney entertainment as both inspiring and instructive. That used to be what it meant to have the signature of Walt Disney on a movie. I don’t want to talk about what Disney is today. Suffice it to say that if Walt Disney was still alive, things would be different.

And to close, allow me to bring out one of the short films WD did during the Golden Age of Animation.

By the way, just a bit of trivia to drive home my point and how fortunate I am to be in this industry. To animate doesn’t mean to give movement. It means to give life. Those who followed after Disney wanted to write a book about the what Walt Disney and the studio went through. They entitled it the Illusion of Life. I bought that book. Very expensive. But well worth it.

It the introduction, it says, since the beginning of time, men has always been trying to capture the essence of life. We call it art. First instance was when man took colored earth and smeared it on the surfaces of caves to depict bulls. We know it know as cave art. They were able to capture the suggestion of bulls. Then, people wanted to capture more. Egyptian art was able to capture form better. The greeks were able to capture the ideal form with their statues. During the Renaissance, people were able to capture likeness and even capture a glimpse of the world. But it is not enough. In the 1920’s animators were able to make drawings move. But it was not convincing enough. It was only when Walt Disney came that they were able to give life to characters they drew. All because of that drive inside man to capture life, no matter how elusive it is, because we were also once created and given life. Now we want more of it and the more we want it, the more proof it is that we are created.

by Walt Disney

In these days of world tensions, when the faith of men is being tested as never before, I am personally thankful that my parents taught me at a very early age to have a strong personal belief and reliance in the power of prayer for Divine inspiration. My people were members of the Congregational Church in our home town of Marceline, Missouri. It was there where I was first taught the efficacy of religion … how it helps us immeasurably to meet the trial and stress of life and keeps us attuned to the Divine inspiration. Later in DeMolay, I learned to believe in the basic principle of the right of man to exercise his faith and thoughts as he chooses. In DeMolay, we believe in a supreme being, in the fellowship of man, and the sanctity of the home. DeMolay stands for all that is good for the family and for our country.

Every person has his own ideas of the act of praying for God’s guidance, tolerance, and mercy to fulfill his duties and responsibilities. My own concept of prayer is not as a plea for special favors nor as a quick palliation for wrongs knowingly committed. A prayer, it seems to me, implies a promise as well as a request; at the highest level, prayer not only is a supplication for strength and guidance, but also becomes an affirmation of life and thus a reverent praise of God.

Deeds rather than words express my concept of the part religion should play in everyday life. I have watched constantly that in our movie work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether it deals with fable or with stories of living action. This religious concern for the form and content of our films goes back 40 years to the rugged financial period in Kansas City when I was struggling to establish a film company and produce animated fairy tales. Many times during those difficult years, even as we turned out Alice in Cartoonland and later in Hollywood the first Mickey Mouse, we were under pressure to sell out or debase the subject matter or go “commercial” in one way or another. But we stuck it out — my brother Roy and other loyal associates — until the success of Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies finally put us in the black. Similarly, when war came to the United States in 1941, we turned from profitable popular movie-making to military production for Uncle Sam. Ninety-four per cent of the Disney facilities in Hollywood became engaged in special government work, while the remainder was devoted to the creation of morale building comedy, short subjects.

Both my study of Scripture and my career in entertaining children have taught me to cherish them. But I don’t believe in playing down to children, either in life or in motion pictures. I didn’t treat my own youngsters like fragile flowers, and I think no parent should.

Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil, and that is what our pictures attempt to do.

The American child is a highly intelligent human being — characteristically sensitive, humorous, open-minded, eager to learn, and has a strong sense of excitement, energy, and healthy curiosity about the world in which he lives. Lucky indeed is the grown-up who manages to carry these same characteristics into adult life. It usually makes for a happy and successful individual. In our full-length cartoon features, as well as in our live action productions, we have tried to convey in story and song those virtues that make both children and adults attractive. I have long felt that the way to keep children out of trouble is to keep them interested in things. Lecturing to children is no answer to delinquency. Preaching won’t keep youngsters out of trouble, but keeping their minds occupied will.

Thus, whatever success I have had in bringing clean, informative entertainment to people of all ages, I attribute in great part to my Congregational upbringing and my lifelong habit of prayer. To me, today, at age sixty-one, all prayer, by the humble or highly placed, has one thing in common: supplication for strength and inspiration to carry on the best human impulses which should bind us together for a better world. Without such inspiration, we would rapidly deteriorate and finally perish. But in our troubled time, the right of men to think and worship as their conscience dictates is being sorely pressed. We can retain these privileges only by being constantly on guard and fighting off any encroachment on these precepts. To retreat from any of the principles handed down by our forefathers, who shed their blood for the ideals we still embrace, would be a complete victory for those who would destroy liberty and justice for the individual.