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Walt Disney Animation Studios

Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS), sometimes shortened to Disney Animation, is an American animation studio that creates animated features and short films for The Walt Disney Company. The studio's current production logo features a scene from its first synchronized sound cartoon, ''Steamboat Willie'' (1928). Founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney after the closure of Laugh-O-Gram Studio, it is the longest-running animation studio in the world. It is currently organized as a division of Walt Disney Studios and is headquartered at the Roy E. Disney Animation Building at the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California. Since its foundation, the studio has produced 63 feature films, with its first release being ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'' (1937), which is also the first hand drawn animated feature film, and its most recent release was ''Moana 2'' (2024). The studio has also produced hundreds of short films.

Founded as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio (DBCS) in 1923, renamed Walt Disney Studio (WDS) in 1926 and incorporated as Walt Disney Productions (WDP) in 1929, the studio was dedicated to producing short films until it entered feature production in 1934, resulting in 1937's ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'', one of the first full-length animated feature films and the first U.S.-based one. In 1986, during a large corporate restructuring, Walt Disney Productions, which had grown from a single animation studio into an international media conglomerate, was renamed The Walt Disney Company and the animation studio became Walt Disney Feature Animation (WDFA) in order to differentiate it from the company's other divisions. Its current name was adopted in 2006 after Pixar Animation Studios was acquired by Disney.

For many people, Disney Animation is synonymous with animation, for "in no other medium has a single company's practices been able to dominate aesthetic norms" to such an overwhelming extent. The studio was recognized as the premier American animation studio for much of its existence and was "for many decades the undisputed world leader in animated features"; it developed many of the techniques, concepts and principles that became standard practices of traditional animation. The studio also pioneered the art of storyboarding, which is now a standard technique used in both animated and live-action filmmaking, as well as television shows and video games. The studio's catalog of animated features is among Disney's most notable assets, with the stars of its animated shorts—Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy, and Pluto—becoming recognizable figures in popular culture and mascots for the Walt Disney Company as a whole.

Three of the studio's films—''Frozen'' (2013), ''Zootopia'' (2016), and ''Frozen II'' (2019)—are all among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, with the latter becoming the third-highest-grossing animated feature film of all time.

By 2013, the studio had no hand-drawn animated features in development as a result of their computer animated films performing better at the box office, and had laid off a large portion of their hand-drawn animators. However, the studio stated in 2019 and 2023 that they are open to proposals from filmmakers for future hand-drawn feature projects. In addition, in April 2022, Eric Goldberg, one of the studio's hand-drawn animators who has been working with the studio since 1992, confirmed plans within the Disney studio to once again return to hand-drawn animation. Provided by Wikipedia