Frank Thomas: biography, creativity, career, personal life

Frank Thomas is an American Disney cartoon animator. One of the first beginners mastered the modern technology of that time. His hand touched such world-famous cartoons: “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “101 Dalmatians”, “Lady and the Tramp” and others.

The childhood and youth of Frank Thomas

Frank Thomas, full name Franklin Thomas, was born on September 5, 1912 in a subtropical city named after St. Monica - Santa Monica, a suburb of Los Angeles, California (USA). Frank's father served as president at Fresno State College, where since 1949 it was allowed to provide undergraduate degrees.

Little Frank had a great passion - he loves to draw. After school, he entered Fresno College. In the 2nd year I was carried away by one of the most interesting and widespread types of animation - classical animation. It was done by drawing on a transparent film (or tracing paper) every single frame. Then these frames were collected in a special editing program. Such an animation is very lively, smooth, spatial. As a cool project, Frank Thomas wrote the script and directed a film about school life in college, which was played in local movie theaters.

After graduating from college, he entered Stanford University, which is now one of the most prestigious higher education institutions not only in the United States of America, but throughout the world. As a student at Stanford University, Frank Thomas was part of the Theta Delta Chi student association and worked in the Stanford Chaparral comedy magazine with his friend Olli Johnston.

After graduating from Stanford, he entered the California Institute of the Arts. Since 1929, this school has been supported by Walt Disney, who began to take his inexperienced animators to Friday evening classes, a tradition that will last for many years. A few years later, Disney hired a Shuinar teacher named Donald Graham to conduct more formal classes. In the studio, Chouinard will later be used by Disney as a breeding ground for artists for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Creative career animator

Walt Disney

In September 1934, Frank Thomas was recruited to Walt Disney Company under personnel number 224, where he joined the work on the short animated film Mickey's Elephant.

Artists actively used the Rotoscoping method, invented back in 1914, but is still popular. The cartoon was created by sketching frame by frame (with real actors and scenery). Initially, a previously shot film was projected onto a tracing-paper and outlined manually by an artist, now a computer is actively used for these purposes. This technique was also used when a completely drawn character requires very realistic, accurate and lively interaction with real actors and objects of decor. In this case, the digital person was first played by a real person, and then he was completely, seamlessly replaced by an animated character. Walt Disney and his artists have successfully used rotoscoping in cartoons like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Cinderella (1950). Frank was involved in the production of about 20 full-length animated films at Disney Studios, including Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and 101 Dalmatians.

Short films

The work of Frank Thomas was occupied by short cartoons. Among the scenes he animated are for example, such as the scene with Mickey Mouse and the king in The Brave Tailor and the dialogue between the Germans in the propaganda cartoon Education for Death.

During the Second World War, Frank also engaged in the production of educational cartoons in the "First block of films." In full-length cartoons, Frank worked on: a scene in which the gnomes mourn Snow White in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", a scene with Pinocchio singing in a puppet theater in the animated film "Pinocchio", an ice scene with a deer Bambi and Tampere in the animated film "Bam" eating spaghetti in the cartoon "Lady and the Tramp" and many others.

The famous Frank Thomas retired from the studio on January 31, 1978, having worked there for 45 years. He co-authored with his old friend Olli Johnston four books.