Few are the Disney historians who focus on the art of special effects. When they do, the names most often mentioned are Josh Meador and Cy Young, very rarely those of artists like Dan MacManus, Jack Boyd, Jack Buckley, and Ted Kierscey who followed their paths.
[…]
In the early 1930s, MacManus worked for some live-action studios in the cutting room and doing art titles, but by the mid-’30s he was working as a commercial artist and missed show business. Having heard that Disney was hiring, he joined the Studio in 1935 as an inbetweener, and then was transferred to the Effects Department in 1938.
MacManus worked on most of Disney’s feature-length animated movies from Pinocchio to Robin Hood. He also tackled a very large number of shorts. […]
