Andreas Deja Recommends: Art Books for Aspiring Animators

Disney Legend and animator extraordinaire Andreas Deja has hand-picked three art books for aspiring animators. These are the books that Deja used to hone his skills as not just an animator, but also as a painter, line artist and sculptor.

Seriously, if these books are good enough for a grandmaster like Deja, they should be considered holy texts for folks like us! :)

1. Composing Pictures by Don Graham

Deja: “Don Graham was head of Disney’s internal training program from 1932 - 1940. Chuck Jones called him the greatest American art teacher. The closest you will ever come to his teachings is through his excellent 1970 book Composing Pictures. It is in reprint and available at Amazon.”

Click here for Amazon’s listing of Composing Pictures

2. The Art of Animal Drawing by Ken Hultgren

Deja: “[Ken Hultgren] worked on Bambi. [In 1950,] he published the book, The Art of Animal Drawing. This book, to me, was a key to understanding animals. I wouldn’t say that he is the best animal draftsman ever, and from what I understand, he wasn’t even the best animator ever. But he was a fantastic teacher. This book was really helpful to me to understand what you’re looking at when you look at animals. He has this fantastic way of explaining the torso of a four-legged animal. He divides it up into three parts. And once you understand this, you know a bit more of what you’re looking at and it’s not so scary and hard to get started.”

Click here to purchase The Art of Animal Drawing for $4 on Amazon

3. Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes Vol. 1 + 2 by Walt Stanchfield

Deja: “Not many animation artists make good teachers, but Walt Stanchfield was a heck of an inspirational instructor to many folks who worked at Disney during the 1980s and 90s. In his life drawing classes he did not want you to copy the model on paper, he wanted you to interpret the model’s pose for animation. Go further with the body’s rhythm, push the action line, feel the weight.

"He frequently went over young artists’ work by helping them to find the essence of a pose, and make a clear, often entertaining statement.

"We loved Walt’s unconventional classes that differed so much from art school. He would have the model pose for a couple of minutes, and asked the students just to observe, no drawing yet. Then the model would disappear and we were asked to draw the pose from memory. Stuff like that was new and exciting and helped us to approach our drawing and observation skills in a different way.

"If you are a student, do yourself the favor and check out Don Hahn’s published notes that Walt used to hand out regularly. His writing is very insightful, it makes you think about making interesting statements through your drawings.”

There are two volumes. Both are available on Amazon:

Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes: Volume 1: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures

Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes: Volume 2: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures