This just in from Christian Renaut, author of two great books about Disney history, including the one pictured above:

[Dear Disney historians, Disney artists or more largely Disney employees or former Disney artists, gallery owners or relatives of deceased Disney artists, artists working in the animation business, this message is for you!

After having published two French books on Disny animation (“From Snow-White to Hercules” prefaced by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston and “The Disney heroines” prefaced by Glen Keane), I am starting in earnest work on my third project. Its title will probably be “The 20 greatest moments of Disney feature animation”.

That’s where you might get involved. Instead of imposing my standpoint, I intend to do a kind of poll or survey if you are willing to help. The book will be an analysis of 20 great “moments”. It is on purpose that I didn’t use the word “sequence” or “scene” as I want it to be very free, although we may expect the moment to last a certain length of time.
So, I’m asking you to select your 20 favorites, justifying, explaining and also giving details or anecdotes about these moments of Disney animation. For instance if you were a young artist working with the old timers, I’m sure you have a lot to tell.

The criteria are all yours. You may judge it from a layout standpoint, or because of a wonderful storyboarding, or a great song, or outstanding animation, or because it is very funny or moving, or because of the coloring/styling, or the backgrounds, or because you are stunned by the special effects, etc... But we could also think that an excellent combination of most of these criteria might lead to THE choice.

Yes, I know how silly it may sound to have to just select 20 moments when some features like... (oups, stop, no influencing anyone!) already contain at least 20 great moments. That’s why I have decided to split it all into two legitimate parts as you will see: 20 ‘greats’ when Walt Disney was alive, and later on, I will do another investigation for the other part, i-e, the features since his death. For now, I’m asking you to focus on this list:

VOLUME 1
Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
The Reluctant Dragon
Dumbo
Bambi
Saludos Amigos
The Three Caballeros
Make Mine Music
Song of the South
Fun and Fancy Free
Melody Time
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad
Cinderella
Alice in Wonderland
Peter Pan
Lady and the Tramp
Sleeping Beauty
The 101 Dalmatians
The Sword in the Stone
Mary Poppins
The Jungle Book

I will try to make a book with new information, as usual, based on interviews, but also with hardly ever or never-before seen artwork. It will surely be long in the making, but never mind! Thanks in advance for your participation, please think it over and send your mails to christian.renaut@wanadoo.fr]