Favorite Nature Moments in Disney Movies

by B Condon 2:06 PM

I love Disney; I love Disney history, the science of its animation, the labor of love from Disney's animators -- in short, I just love Disney movies! I could rant on and on about how much I love Walt Disney's masterpieces, but you can always watch "Waking Sleeping Beauty" for my reasons. But it's always interesting that most often certain Disney movies are almost love letters to nature. Of course that was Uncle Walt's intentions after all, making animation realistic.

For instance, Bambi is practically a Henry David Thoreau letter in an animated movie, despite having been adapted from Felix Salten's "Bambi. Eine Lebensgeschichte aus dem Walde" (Bambi, A Life in the Woods). Nature is as much as apart of the movie as Bambi or Flower or Thumper (my favorite from childhood) which is apparent with the selective songs of "Drip Drip Drop (Little April Showers)" and "I Bring  You a Song" using the elements and 7-layered multiplane camera with oil-painted Eastern Impressionism courtesy of Tyrus Wong. The more refined results have placed this Disney classic at number 3 in AFI's Top 10 Animated Films.

But before perfecting the multiplane camera on Bambi and Snow White the Seven Dwarfs, Disney and animators always did animated shorts to work on their techniques of what they wanted in their full length films. 1937's Silly Symphony The Old Mill did just that... and more than what the animators expected as it won that year's Academy Award for Animated Short. Between a creaky Mill and the elements of rain, lightning and thunder as well as the close depictions of animal movements, it's no surprise why it won! (Fantastic analysis here)

As a early adolescent, I was obsessed with the wind in Pocahontas, and I still am to a fault! The use of Rotoscoping, or rotated projection where image frames are traced onto the sequence, has not been a stranger to Disney movies, spanning all the way back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.It is this special effect that gives fluidity to Pocahontas's movements.  

The Princess and the Frog is a very eloquent use of Disney and Pixar's Toon Boom Harmony's computer software all over, but shines (no pun intended) in one scene. When the firefly Ray sings "Ma Belle Evangeline" for his love of the North Star, nature suddenly lights up and  in its 2D computer colored glory.

Princess and the Frog - Ma Belle Evangeline