Disney artists and former Disney artists Frank Thomas, X. Atencio, Jules Engel, Willis Pyle, Berny Wolf, Rudy Ising, ... all worked during the war in the 1st Motion Picture Unit at "Fort Roach".While this part of animation history is not as such "Disney history" the links with Disney history are so strong that I would love to see an animation historian write an in-depth article about the subject.
Charles Solomon, maybe, since his book The History of Animation, Enchanted Drawings contains a few great pages on the subject... or maybe one of the readers of this blog?
It looks as if a whole book is being written about the 1st Motion Picture Unit itself (but not its animation division as such). I really hope that an animation historian will decide to tackle the subject in the near future.
2 comments:
I discovered some info on this unit probably about 5 years ago. Check out this link: http://www.militarymuseum.org/1stmpu.html
I stumbled across and purchased at an antique shop a matchbook that features the unit's insignia.
Several great Disney artists received deferrments and were assigned to this unit, including Frank Thomas.
The Solomon book is very impressive! So much of the animation was destroyed that one would be hard pressed to be able to document enough of it.
Imagine the cooperation and trading of ideas and techniques that happened during the war efforts!
Also, the link is bad...
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