When Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was premiered on December 21st 1937 at the Carthey Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, Welt Disney was only 36 years old. In the previous 11 years he had elevated what amounted to nothing more than a series of crude sketches into an art form and was just embarking on a career in animated feature films that would span over 40 years.
Seeing Snow White today, one gets the feeling that everything that followed was in no way superior, just a natural progression as film technology improved. The idea for a full-length animated feature was at the back of Disney's mind as early as 1928, following the success of Steamboat Willie, the first sound cartoon short. However, it wasn't until early 1935 that Disney first announced to his staff his intention to bring Snow White to the screen.
Some of the Disney artists, amongst them people like Ken Anderson and Wolfgang Reitherman, but kept notebooks with details of camera angles from live-action films they had seen. Disney encouraged this approach with all his artists in an attempt to improve and mould his cartoon shorts into more ambitious projects.
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