On March 2, Focal Press will finally release Nancy Beiman's book Prepare to Board! I have been looking forward to this book for a while as it contains interviews with Disney artists T. Hee, Ken Anderson and Ken O'Connor.

Nancy has posted an animated ad for the book on her site and has sent me the following blurb:

[PREPARE TO BOARD: CREATING STORY AND CHARACTERS FOR ANIMATED FEATURES AND SHORTS discusses the all-important connection between story and character development in animation. It is profusely illustrated with artwork created by Nancy's students at the Rochester Institute of Technology School of Film and Animation and over 300 of Nancy's own illustrations. Guest illustrators include Floyd Norman, David Chelsea, Dean Yeagle, Doug Crane, Nina Paley, Mark Newgarden and Nina Haley. Three historic interviews Nancy obtained with Disney studio veterans T. Hee, Ken O'Connor, and Ken Anderson when she was still a student at the California Institute of the Arts are published here for the first time, and there is an extensive glossary of preproduction terms.]

Nancy was also kind enough to let me reproduce here a key part of her interview with Disney layout artist and art director Ken O'Connor, which reveals a fascinating aspect of Donald's early history:

"BEIMAN: Could you talk about some of the short films you worked on?

KEN O’CONNOR: Oh boy, that’s like picking out of the Sears Catalogue! Well, I liked CLOCK CLEANERS, because we got violent angle shots. There were some who felt that perhaps the layout man put in angle shots just for the sake of putting in angle shots! However, the picture called for it.

BEIMAN: What characters did you work with?

KEN O’CONNOR: I worked with all the characters. I was with Freddy Spencer right from the very beginning when he was first developing the Duck, before the Duck became cute.

(c) 1979, 2005 Nancy Beiman"