Our hopes, our successes, our failures shape our thinking and our goals. The experiences and accomplishments of others will have a profound teaching impact on us and leave a positive impression with us. Their legacy is a very important part of our learning process. They have left a living fountain from which we can constantly gain knowledge and understanding, a fountain to which we should return again and again for inspiration but not for hard and fast rules as to why and how we must do things. As we go about being ourselves we must remember the fact that the animators of the "Golden Years" set a tradition and quality in Disney animation and that it is up to us, in our own way, to equal, yes even surpass, that which has been done.

        Great actors have always "PUT" themselves, physically and emotionally, into their roles. They were the characters. The best animators have done the same. Bill Tytla was always himself and the vigor and truth that filled his own life found expression in the characters he animated. So it was with Norm Ferguson, Fred Moore, Ham Luske, Bill Roberts and the many others who followed them and made positive contributions to the art. They gave a sincerity and life, drama and humor to linear drawings, as they moved on the screen. They, the animators, were, in their own minds, deeply involved with the characters they animated and their animation and the story it told were emotional outlets and experiences for them. So our animation should be for us. It should be our "sport."

        Walt Disney's enthusiasm for the creative adventure and his ability to inspire the people around him in the accomplishment of it never waned, even in those times when the financial going was tough. He was always climbing upward - new ideas, new excitement, new hope. He ascended a stairway that, throughout his life, seemed to never end. He had a "sport" within himself that never dulled.

        Each of us, as our capabilities will allow, should strive to keep our creative adventure alive and boiling. If we do, that area in which our talents are nourished will keep expanding and expanding and expanding.
Isn't this the best way to go?