Two of Walt Disney's famous "Nine Old Men," Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston met as students at Stanford University and joined the Disney studio within a year of each other in the mid-1930s. In 1978, they retired from Walt Disney Productions and began work on this book. In that same year, they received the "Pioneer in Film" award from the University of Southern California chapter of Delta Kappa Alpha National Honorary Cinema Fraternity and further honors from the American Film Institute at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. As Frank and Ollie wrote first-hand about their Disney animation volume The Illusion of Life, “We hope that some readers will be stimulated to carry on these traditions and elevate this art form to an ever-higher level.”
