.jpg)
Glen Keane announced over the weekend that he’s leaving Disney Animation. Most of us probably don’t know who Glen Keane is, even if we’ve seen his name dozens of times while idly watching the ending credits of many Disney movies. I only know him because my work on this blog has motivated me to watch and pay more attention to behind the scenes Disney films and featurettes.
Keane has been an animator at Disney for around forty years. He arrived in the 1970s, in time to be mentored by Eric Larson, Frank Thomas, and Ollie Johnston—members of the old guard of Disney animation, some of those whom Walt himself dubbed the “Nine Old Men.”
So what does any of this matter? If I’m not personally an animator and was specifically inspired by Keane’s work on Disney animation, what difference does it make to me? If I hadn’t seen “Waking Sleeping Beauty” I might not have known. But that film taught me multiple things: a deeper appreciation for animators both on an individual level and as a team, and who to thank for Disney’s revival in the 1980s.
When production began on “The Little Mermaid” Keane begged to be put in charge of the titular character’s design. His wish was granted and he brought Ariel to life. Sometimes it’s hard for those of us who aren’t artists to understand just how important character design is. We assume that no matter how the character would have been drawn, he or she would have seemed just right within the context of the movie.
But that’s not necessarily true. How much of Ariel’s character is bound up in those wide blue eyes in a slender face, in the way her bright hair curls around her like an expressive, coat-like third limb? We have Keane and the team he led to thank for that.
Since then Keane’s gone on to be the lead animator on central characters in many of Disney’s most famous films. Fresh off of Ariel he headed up the team for the Beast in “Beauty and the Beast,” and then returned to titular character work for “Aladdin.” Keane also was the guy in charge for the characters of Pocahontas, Tarzan, and Rapunzel. In addition to that he worked as an executive producer on “Tangled.”
Disney Animation won’t be the same without Keane. The Nine Old Men, some of whom under which he studied, are legends at the company for being part of the animation team if not from the beginning, then for decades of the studio’s most famous early films. Keane put in 38 years at Disney, and I’d say that makes him as much of a cornerstone for its more recent history as the Nine Old Men were for its golden years. He’s sometimes referred to as one of the “Nine New Men.”
Keane has left Disney not because he wants to retire from animation, but because he wants to explore it further. I love Disney, but I know they only want to do certain sorts of things with their films. If Keane really wants to branch out and work on new genres and styles, it’s probably best that he does so on his own or with a company with a greater range.
Thank you, Glen Keane. I never realized how much of the Disney with which I grew up I owed to you. I can’t wait to see what you’ll do next.
Related Articles:
“Newsies” to Carry the Banner to Broadway
*(This image by JeffChristiansen is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
