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Jon Favreau's dark reboot screens like a terrorized tale drained of humor, compared to Wolfgang Reitherman's amiable 1967 feature.

Steve Hulett recounts his experiences working on "Oliver & Company" and the unexpected tragedy that happened during its production.

Though the work that animators create is often exhilarating, the actual process of animating, which involves sitting at a desk for hours at a time, is not particularly interesting to the general public. In the past, when studio publicity departments were tasked with creating publicity stills of animators, they often posed animators making an expression in front of their mirror while drawing a character with a similar expression. The mirror, it turns out, was not just useful to the animator’s own process but also to the photographer who wanted to compose a dynamic image of the animator at work. It never occurred to me what a common motif this was until I collected a few of them on Instagram a few days ago. Looking at more recent publicity shots of 2D animators, especially from the 1980s and ’90s, the animator-making-an-expression-in-a-mirror publicity shot was largely phased out in favor of a more generic pose of an animator drawing at a desk, looking at the camera while drawing and flipping, or the unnatural pose of holding a maquette while drawing. Enjoy this collection of legendary animators hard at work creating some classic characters:

Don Bluth smiled at me. "I wouldn't worry about being laid off from Disney's, Steve. Nobody gets laid off around here. When somebody messes up, the studio just sends them to WED."

My wrestling match with Ken Anderson now over, I returned once more to Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman and Larry Clemmons, working on the story end of "The Fox and the Hound."

I was back in Don Duckwall's office, exchanging insincere smiles with him. I had been on "The Fox and the Hound" with Larry, Woolie, and everybody else for half a year. But now Don wanted me to go on another assignment.

Larry had me writing sequence scripts for "The Fox and the Hound," which turned out to be my assignment for the next six months. Part of the package was attending Woolie Reitherman's marathon story sessions, which often left me drained and dazed. There were also Woolie's marathon take-selection meetings, which left me drained and bewildered.

Disney's head animation writer in 1977 was cartoon veteran Larry Clemmons, who had first been hired at the studio in 1930. At the time of his hiring, he was a Yale graduate with a degree in architecture, but an Ivy League education was of little value in 1930 when the economy was collapsing...and few buildings were being erected.