Though inkers were considered the “queens,” the shimmering tails, transparent fins, sparkling water, and fairy dust—a combination of stippling and colored ink—of the painters were enchanting marvels, too. “My most unfavorite colors were gray and purple: they streaked,” said June, referring to her work on Monstro, the whale in Pinocchio. “And you had to work very, very fast so that they wouldn’t dry.” She remembers getting her first big assignment on the Pinocchio “coach” scene, and painting the whole thing on the wrong side of the cel by mistake. “I was sure I was going to be fired on the spot,” she recalls, “but when I went to see it at the Pantages Theater, they had used the scene but disguised it in a rainstorm.” Yet the girls themselves were often the ones to spot errors—such as the little animal in the “Rite of Spring” section of Fantasia that was supposed to walk into water but ended up floating in the sky.

Nothing pleased Walt more than creative solutions from every department to enhance naturalism, and inkers and painters, too, began experimenting. When they thought Snow White’s cheeks too pale, painters came up with just the right rosy blend to top them off. When her black hair was too dull, they perked it up with highlights. On the 1942 feature Saludos Amigos, inkers devised an Olympics of inking, working “four pens at once, tied by rubber bands,” said Jeanne. “I got twice as much done.” Grace recounted in a U.C.L.A. oral history that it took days to create the film effect for the dance of the flowers in Fantasia—“to capture it from one cel to another so it wouldn’t jerk and still look like it was just that fluttery thing that just could fly off the page.”

In early years, paints were given numbers, not names, with the exception of “Roy,” revealed Ruthie, “a beigy-brown” color the girls named after the man who carefully washed their nitrate cels. Later on, after the studio moved to Burbank, having a color named for you would become a special accolade. Once the paint was dry, the “airbrushing” (applied by spray for cheek tones or puffy clouds) or “drybrushing” (applied by brush for speed lines, pixie dust, smoke shading) specialists would finish up. At an average of 8 to 10 cels an hour, 100 girls could only, in theory, turn out less than one minute of screen time by the end of the day. A uniformed maid served tea (and occasionally highly prized Lorna Doones) at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.—a welcome respite they often enjoyed out on the lawn—and would gently nudge them if they accidentally nodded off during these 15-minute breaks.

Inkers and painters were not the only ones under scrutiny. All the animators, including the “in-betweeners,” underwent rigorous training, including classes with Chouinard Art Institute guru Don Graham. Their own athleticism and theatricality (and the mirror next to their desks) held extra opportunities for the all-important “action analysis,” the study of the mechanics of character motion. But just plain funny was important, too, and good gags—once worth up to $3.50, in cash—and practical jokes were subtly encouraged. “They put a fish underneath my board—it had a horrible smell,” said animator Don Lusk, notable for the “Arabian Dance” in Fantasia.

Walt and the animators were able to see early pencil tests in sweatboxes—once airless rooms—around a Moviola. When he pushed them for even more naturalism in Snow White, actors were filmed performing the action in a complex technique called “rotoscoping,” a detail he wanted kept secret from the public since he considered tracing a form of cheating, according to Neal Gabler’s award-winning biography, Walt Disney—The Triumph of the American Imagination. Individual frames of film were printed as photostats, then used as sophisticated guides for details of movement. (Fourteen-year-old dancer Marjorie Belcher—later Marge Champion—was cast as the princess.) From time to time, though, Walt would let the inkers and painters see “the roughs” as they perched on the soundstage floor. For the girls, whose work came to them in bits and pieces, it was a welcome chance to actually understand what they were slaving over.

It’s Off to Work We Go

Even as Animation and Ink and Paint were in full tilt on Snow White, story and music men were grappling with various stages of development on Pinocchio and Fantasia and Bambi: the Hyperion studio was bursting with creative excitement. The V.I.P.’s on Walt’s tours were in awe; it was the only place in Hollywood where artists, and not stars, were the main attraction. “I was workin’ away yesterday afternoon inking Donald Duck’s nephews when some visitors came through and stopped to look over my shoulder. I looked up and here was [British actor] George Arliss, monocle and all,” wrote Rae. In fact, there were never more charming assembly-line cogs than inkers and painters, in their rayon print dresses, pearls, and heels, or the high-waisted, flared pants and slip-ons that Katharine Hepburn had made fashionable. Their makeup was perfect, too—drawing a fine line around their eyes and lips was easy compared with refining the taper in Pluto’s tail. Occasionally, the Camera department would complain that dandruff or angora from a sweater would appear “like snow on the screen,” and thus silky pongee smocks eventually became common to avoid mishap. Yet the defining touch may have been the thin, white cotton gloves they customized by cutting off the thumb and first two fingers on their working hand, which made them appear so ladylike. “There was much more to being an inker than merely shoving a pen around,” wrote Rae. Steady hands were their lifeline. “I didn’t bowl, smoke, or drink,” said Jeanne. “We were worried that our hands would shake.”