Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS), also referred to as Disney Animation, headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, is an American animation studio that creates animated feature films, short films, and television specials for The Walt Disney Company. Founded on October 16, 1923, it is a division of The Walt Disney Studios. The studio has produced 56 feature films, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to Moana ( 2016 ).
It was founded as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in 1923 and incorporated as Walt Disney Productions in 1929. The studio was exclusively dedicated to producing short films until it expanded into feature production in 1934. In 1983, Walt Disney Productions named its live-action film studio Walt Disney Pictures. During a corporate restructuring in 1986, Walt Disney Productions was renamed The Walt Disney Company and the animation division, renamed Walt Disney Feature Animation, became a subsidiary of its film division, The Walt Disney Studios. In 2007, Walt Disney Feature Animation took on its current name, Walt Disney Animation Studios after Pixar Animation Studios was acquired by Disney in the same year.
For much of its existence, the studio was recognized as the premier American animation studio ; 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.
