The Walt Disney Studios Animation Building

The Walt Disney Studios Animation Building is the home of the creation of some of the most timeless and magical films and music written by Walt Disney and other Disney legends like the Sherman Brothers, such as Cinderella, Mary Poppins, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and many more. The building is located at The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California and is not open to the public for touring unless specially selected for a Walt Disney Studios Tour. The Walt Disney Studios is the headquarters for The Walt Disney Company, housing the offices of high ranking company officials and sound stages used to film TV shows and movies as well as record music for them. There's magic within these walls!

The Walt Disney Studios officially opened in Burbank, California in 1940. Walt Disney and his brother Roy had a dream to adopt a lot to house offices and studios for bringing their animations to life. The Animation Building stretches to a whopping 243,000 square feet, and remains in its original architectural state. The building occupies around 500 animators and administrators who spend their time bringing storytelling to life from penciling out rough sketches to hand-painting finished animated scenes to eventually animate on computers.

The complex design of the building was created to fit animators specific needs.In the book "Animated Architecture", it mentions how, "George Lucas acted as a consultant in laying out some of the production spaces, to give designers information on how changing animation technologies might affect space configurations in the future". For example, the animators' offices were placed on the side of the building so that the windows would allow natural sunlight to enter the office and provide animators with a clear, well-lit space to develop their artwork. There are also tunnels underneath the building that allowed for artists to transport their artwork across property without having to worry about the weather messing up their fragile work. When designing this building, so much thought was put into it to accommodate animators' needs.

The Animation Building is such a historical landmark for The Walt Disney Company. Classic films like Fantasia, Dumbo, The Jungle Book, and Aladdin are just some of the incredible pieces of work accomplished from start to finish in this building. All throughout the building are framed original visuals from Disney classics with small plaques beside them explaining how they were created and how different animation methods work, such as visual development and compiling layouts. Being able to step foot in this extraordinarily magical building allows guests to see the fascinating behind the scenes action of how their favorite Walt Disney films are created.

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Collection photographs, Valley Times. “00044545.” CONTENTdm, TESSA: Digital Collections of the Los Angeles Public Library, 3 Mar. 1951, tessa2.lapl.org/digital/collection/photos/id/41217. 

(March, 1995). Animated Architecture. Architectural Record. https://advance.lexis.com/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:3SP2-BXY0-0091-N4DM-00000-00&context=1516831

Baker, Craig. The Animation Building: The Walt Disney Studios, The Historical Marker Database. January 30th, 2023. Accessed March 30th, 2023. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=168288.

Enterprises, Disney. Layout & Final Layout, Walt Disney Animation Studios. Accessed March 30th, 2023. https://disneyanimation.com/process/layout/.