By Miette Deschenes
With the recent launch of Disney+, Disney’s new online streaming platform, over 500 films are available to watch (for those who are willing to add another $6.99 a month to their collection of streaming services). It’s an exciting development: Disney has always been notorious for having a limited number of their films available to stream, keeping most of them only available to rent or buy at high prices. For big Disney fans, or for anyone who has decided to use Disney+, it can be hard to pick where to start. So many previously unavailable movies, so little time! So why not start with the films of Byron Howard, an Evergreen alumnus?
Howard is an incredibly successful filmmaker with Walt Disney Animation Studios. His filmography as a director includes Bolt (2008), Tangled (2010), and Zootopia (2016), all of which were nominated for or won Golden Globes and Academy Awards. Zootopia won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature and grossed over $1 billion at the box office. Howard is also known for being one of the few openly gay Disney employees.
According to an article by The Olympian called “Evergreen Alum gets Oscar for Zootopia,” Howard was born in Issaquah, Washington. In his profile on Cyclops Print Works, an official online retailer of licensed and original Disney prints and artwork, Howard states that he loved animation from a young age. He grew up watching classic Disney animated films like Robin Hood and Cinderella. He also admired Chuck Jones, a Washington native who famously animated and directed many classic Looney Tunes cartoons, and Bill Watterson, who wrote and drew the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.
According to the Evergreen Magazine, Howard decided to pursue an animation career after a visit to the Disney Animation Studios at Walt Disney World. He met two Disney animators and used their advice to structure his curriculum at Evergreen. During his time at Evergreen, he studied literature, film, writing, art, and cinematography. He graduated in 1990.
After graduating, Howard moved to Orlando and worked as a tour guide at Disney-MGM Studios. He practiced animation and drawing in his free time. In 1994, he applied for an internship at Disney and was hired as an “inbetweener” and cleanup artist on Pocahontas (1995). Evergreen Magazine defines inbetweener as “an animator’s assistant who makes the drawings that go between the key poses drawn by an animator.”
After the success of Pocahontas, Howard was promoted to animator on Mulan (1998), which was critically and financially successful and praised for its animation. He was then a lead character animator and supervising animator on Lilo and Stitch (2002) and Brother Bear (2003). He was also an additional story artist on Chicken Little (2005).
Howard’s directorial debut was Bolt (2008), which he co-directed with Chris Williams. Howard also designed some of the characters featured in the film. Bolt tells the story of a dog who plays a superhero on a TV show and thinks his powers are real. Bolt was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. The film was generally well received, with film critic Peter Bradshaw describing it as “one terrific piece of simple entertainment and fun” in a review for the Guardian.
Howard’s next project was Tangled (2010), a retelling of the classic fairy tale Rapunzel, which he co-directed with Nathan Greno. “It’s a very contemporary, unexpected film in our pacing, our action and humor,” Howard said in a 2010 interview with Bill Desowitz of online publishing group Animation World Network. “[Having] a 2D and 3D hand-in-hand approach, that was very exciting for us because it hadn’t been done before.”
Tangled, Disney’s first CG animated fairy tale, had the challenge of animating Rapunzel’s long hair. According to another article from Animation World Network, the production team had to redesign an animation model called Dynamic Wires, which had originally been created for the production of Bolt. They also had to create new programs to add more motion control, shading, and volume. These breakthrough models allowed them to animate up to 140,000 strands of hair and was the most realistic hair animation that had been produced by the studio at that time.
Rapunzel’s realistic hair, as well as the rest of the animation, was very well received by critics. “For the eye, there are sequences that have some of the ravishing beauty and exquisite detail of the great, old hand-drawn Disney features,” wrote film critic A. O. Scott in a review for The New York Times, “including a few that make gorgeous use of 3D technology.” The story and music were also highly praised. Tangled was nominated for Best Animated Film at the Golden Globes, and for Best Original Song for “I See The Light” at both the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. According to Box Office Mojo, it grossed over $591 million worldwide.
Howard’s most recent project, and his most successful to date, was Zootopia (2016), which he co-directed with Rich Moore and Jared Bush. Zootopia tells the story of talking animals who live in a human-like society. The film follows a bunny named Judy Hopps who wants to be a police officer as she attempts to prove herself in the workforce and uncovers a plot to take over the city and segregate animals. The politics of the film represent racial discrimination, and the film is an attempt to provide commentary on discrimination in a kid-friendly context. “As we were working on the film, the world around us continued to go crazy with these issues that the film was starting to talk about,” Howard told Matt Grobar in an interview for Deadline in 2017. “And what’s great about the fact that it’s an animated film, is that the characters can serve as symbols for people to find themselves, no matter what their experience with bias is around the world.”
In order to create realistic fur animation, the production team for Zootopia again had to modify animation models in order to create a more advanced program. The result was the most realistic fur that Disney has produced to date.
“[We] want believability,” Howard said in the Deadline interview. “All of what we’re doing, and I think what we’ll continue to do in the next generations, is we’re going to try and keep removing those barriers between you and the characters and the world of the film.”
Zootopia is Howard’s most financially and critically successful film so far. It grossed over $1 billion and won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Howard is currently developing his next animated film with actor and writer Lin-Manuel Miranda. While nothing about the project has been revealed yet, based on his track record, it is sure to be another stunning success.
