As a follow-up to 2013’s Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men: The Flipbooks, Pixar director Pete Docter (Inside Out, Up, Monsters, Inc.) is preparing a second book, Walt Disney’s Masters Of Animation: Nine More Old Men—The Flipbooks.
Based on the description available on the web site of book distributor Hachette, the project sounds similar to Docter’s earlier flipbook project. The unique part, however, is that this new series of flipbooks will address a longstanding complaint amongst Disney animation buffs: that there were many other great animators at Disney besides the group of animators famously known as the Nine Old Men.
Docter’s project takes a giant leap toward correcting this oversight by shining a spotlight on nine other great animators, each of whom will be represented by a flipbook. They’re not exactly anonymous names; anyone who loves classic Disney animation will already have some familiarity with their work. However, it’s certainly novel to see these animators given center stage, and it’s more than a bit subversive to distinguish them as “Nine More Old Men.” (Most assuredly, there’d be at least a few of the original Nine Old Men—if they were still alive—who would be incensed at the idea of labeling nine other animators as their equals.)