The animation family pays patriarchs their due

They all came to the motion picture academy Wednesday night, stars and tycoons, college students with sketch pads and wizened actors with walking sticks, to honor Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, world-famous animators who, it was clear, were adored like the brilliant, generous and sometimes silly progenitors of a sprawling and talented brood.

“It’s like a big family reunion,” said Richard Sherman, songwriter for Disney films such as “Mary Poppins,” at a noisy academy reception.

Known affectionately as “Frank and Ollie,” Thomas and Johnston are the last remaining members of Walt Disney’s pioneering animation team, whom he dubbed the “Nine Old Men” while they were still in their 30s. They will both turn 90 this year. After the death last year of another veteran, Ward Kimball, colleagues at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to pay tribute to the legendary pair, said Andreas Deja, supervising animator at Walt Disney.

“It’s incredible. It’s like all the people from all the generations in animation are here,” said independent animator Raul Garcia. In a world dominated by computer-generated images, the hand-drawn, two-dimensional animation of Thomas and Johnston (“Snow White,” “Bambi,” “The Jungle Book”) may be a dying art, Garcia said. But echoing a theme of the evening, he said the tribute celebrated the art of animation that brings human emotion to characters, animal or human, computer-generated or not.

Sharply dressed and lively, though physically frail, the pair were wheeled onto the stage where they waved to a standing and cheering crowd that had packed the auditorium and answered a few questions from film historian Leonard Maltin. Thomas and Johnston, who attended Stanford University together and still live next door in La Canada Flintridge after more than 50 years, are generally credited with spreading Disney’s revolutionary techniques of humanizing the famous characters they helped create, from Mickey Mouse to Thumper.

They also co-wrote “Illusion of Life,” a book that DreamWorks’ chief Jeffrey Katzenberg called the “animator’s bible.” Katzenberg said at the reception that he reads the book during his annual summer vacation in Hawaii and showed a slide of himself with a hardback copy on a lawn chair to prove it.

Working in a profession that often rewards self-promotion, some animators praised the pair for their unpretentiousness, persistent humility and unrestricted access to devotees. They still answer questions on their Web site, www.frankanollie.com, they told Maltin. “It used to have a D” for “and,” Johnston said. “But that made it Frank an’ Dollie. I didn’t like that.”

On a panel of “disciples,” computer animation wizard John A. Lasseter, executive vice president of Pixar Animation Studios (“Toy Story,” “Finding Nemo”), said that when he was starting out at Disney he often sought advice from Thomas and Johnston. Even when he turned to computerized images, he said, he kept remembering what they taught him, “It’s not how something moves, it’s why something moves.”

To audience applause, Lasseter added, “Software can’t make an audience cry through pure movement. If computer-generated characters make you laugh, if computer-generated characters make you cry, if computer-generated characters make you think, that is what Frank and Ollie brought to computer-generated animation.”

The two were also praised for their remarkable powers of observation and the beauty of their working drawings that captured motion and character.

Admittedly awestruck, Deja (“The Lion King”) and Glenn Keane (“Beauty and the Beast”) went over their allotted time to show Frank and Ollie’s pencil sketches. Many in the audience were animation students, born after Thomas and Johnston had retired from Disney. Even so, Katrina Kaminaka, 24, a senior at Cal State Fullerton, said she still felt like member of the family. She ticked off her lineage: Walt taught Thomas and Johnston, who taught Deja, who taught her teacher Brian Kennon, who continues to spread the legacy to a new generation.