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Walt Disney Feature Animation (WDFA) is the animation studio that makes up a key element of The Walt Disney Company. The Feature Animation studio was an integrated part of Walt Disney Productions from 1934 (the start of production on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) until 1986, when, during the corporate restructuring to create The Walt Disney Company, it officially became a subsifiary of the company. It is headquartered in Burbank, California, across the street from the original Walt Disney Studios in a specialized building that was completed in 1995. Satellite studios once existed in Orlando, Florida (1989 - 2003) and Paris, France (1995 - 2002), but those studios were closed due to high production costs and low returns. WDFA was formerly headed by Roy E. Disney, who resigned from the company in November 2003.
Walt Disney begna the move into features in 1934, pulling selected animators away from the short subjects division that had previously been the whole of Walt Disney Productions. THe result was the first animated feature in English and Technicolor, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Snow White which became an unprecedented success when it was released in 1938, and it and many of the subsequent feature productions became film classics. Following the success of the features, Disney expanded his company's operations, moving into live-action features, television, and theme parks. Besides successes like Snow White, Dumbo, and Cinderella, Disney also had the Feature Animation staff create experiemntal and sylized films such as Fantasia and Sleeping Beauty, which sustained losses and did not recoup their costs until decades after their original releases.
After a dry period follwing Disney's death in 1966, WDFA found success again with The Little Mermaid in 1989. A string of successful films followed suit, and Disney expanded WDFA to a total staff of over 2400 by 1999, including employees located at satellite studios in Orlando and Paris. However, the expansion coincided with a decline in both revenue and quality of the department's output, and beginning in 2000, massive layoffs were done to bring the staff back down to 600. Deciding that the reason for its failing box office draw was the fact that they still used traditional animation methods in a time when Pixar and DreamWorks were producing highly successful computer-animated features, Disney converted WDFA into an all-CGI studio, performing more layoffs and selling off its traditional animation equipment. As of 2004, WDFA's last tradtional film was Home on the Range. Its first all-computer animated film will be Chicken Little in 2005. Disney continues to release lower-budget traditional films produced by the DisneyToons studio in Australia.
The Feature Animation studio is noted for creating a number of now-standard innovations in the animation industry, including:
- the multiplane camera (for Snow White)
- the realistic animation of special effects and human characters (for Snow White)
- advanced composition processes to combine live-action and animated elements using color film (for The Three Caballeros)
- the use of xerography in animation to transfer drawings to cels as opposed to ink-tracing (for One Hundred and One Dalmatians)
Among its significant achievements are:
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