How Disney Reunited Characters and Legends Alike For ‘Once Upon a Studio’
As part of the company’s 100th anniversary celebration, Disney premiered a new animated short titled Once Upon a Studio last night.
The roughly 10-minute cartoon brought together 543 Disney characters from 85 different feature-length and short films, a tribute to the lasting power of Disney’s stories, characters, and memories.


Photo: Disney
The Artists Behind The Magic
To create the cartoon, directors Dan Abraham and Trent Correy met in secrecy with a group of artists led by Eric Goldberg and Andre Feliciano to bring Disney’s cache of characters to life.
Abraham and Correy wanted each character to look like they had just stepped out of their movie, a daunting task considering Disney has been creating animated characters for a century now.


Photo: Disney
“It needed to feel that so the audience’s response would be visceral. We used our animation research library where we pulled out model sheets for the animators to work from. We had Eric Goldberg who has the studio history, and we did tests to make sure it was all working together in the scenes,” said producer Bradford Simonsen


Photo: Disney
The team of animators that Disney turned to reads like a who’s who of Disney history. James Baxter (Belle, Beauty and the Beast and Nik Ranierei (The Lion King) were on the team, as was Ruben Aquino who animated the final designs for Ursula in 1989’s The Little Mermaid.


Photo: Disney
“He hasn’t drawn her in over 30 years, and he came out of retirement to do Ursula for us,” said Abraham.
Choosing the Cast
With hundreds of characters to choose from, Once Upon a Studio’s directors had a wish list of who they wanted to be featured.
Chernabog from Fantasia was at the top of Correy’s wishlist. There was just one problem.


Photo: Disney
“He’s the size of a mountain and he couldn’t fit into the building,” says Correy
Abraham then came up with the idea of having the 101 Dalmatians watching Fantasia on TV.


Photo: Also Disney
Disney CG animator Jorge Ruiz asked the team if he could animate Chernabog.
“He reached out and said how when he was growing up in Venezuela, Chernabog was his favorite character of all time and that was the reason he wanted to work at Disney, so Eric helped him out and Jorge drew it.”
Disney Legend Return
Once Upon a Studio also saw the return of 40 original voice artists including Jodi Benson (Ariel), Jeremy Irons (Scar), Idina Menzel (Elsa), and Kristen Bell (Anna).
Correy and Abraham’s first recording was Auli’i Cravalho as Moana. According to the directors as each voice actor came back they would fondly reminisce about what their characters meant to them.
Robin Williams Voiced Genie
The biggest challenge for Correy and Abraham was that they knew they wanted Robin Williams’ iconic Genie to be a part of the new short. To include Williams’ voice, however, Disney needed to get the approval of the late actor’s estate.


Photo: Disney
“We tried to take them on the journey with us to say, ‘We’ve got this very special short that we’re doing. Robin as the genie means so much to so many people and we would really love to involve him. So Dan listened to the outtakes from the original recording and he found those little bites that we could use. We went back to the estate and said, ‘This is what we hope to do.’ Eric, who originally animated the genie is on the show, and he’s going to be part of it.’ And it was wonderful to see that happen,” said Simonsen.


Photo: Disney
The end result was pure Disney magic. The final version of the cartoon had over 500 Disney characters, the talents of Robin Williams, Jodi Benson singing, and Richard Sherman playing “Feed the Birds” on the piano. You can watch Once Upon a Studio on Disney+ now!


Photo: Also Disney
What a way to celebrate 100 years of Disney.
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