The Perfect Animator's Desk

November 13, 2018 6:20 PM

In Disney's Golden Age, a Modernist Pioneer Designed the Perfect Animator's Desk. In his latest book, Kem Weber: Mid-Century Furniture Designs for the Disney Studios, author and former Disney animator David A. Bossert offers fresh insights into the Disney-Weber relationship, particularly in the way it affected the half-dozen or so different desk styles Weber designed for character animators, layout artists, and animation directors. Naturally, Weber received a steady stream of input from Disney, but Weber also solicited ideas from one of the greatest animators of the 20th century, Frank Thomas, who used the prototype of the desk he helped Weber design—built by the Peterson Showcase & Fixture Company—to complete his work on “Pinocchio.”

And here's the article on Kem Weber himself: Kem Weber paved the way for Ikea

posted by MovableBookLady (4 comments total)

I gotta wonder how many of these desks are still kicking around the LA animation scene. I'm pretty sure I saw a few of them, or ones very like them, when I was around in the early 20000s. So much work is digital now, though. I saw some experiments with desks with Cintiqs mounted into an animation disc, so you could turn it around however you desired; I dunno if that's really persisted.
posted by egypturnash at 6:34 PM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

I was an animation student up in the Bay Area in the early 2000s and at one point Disney's LA office was - I don't know - moving? Restructuring for more digital workstations? I don't remember how some of these desks came to be up for grabs, but classes had to be canceled because a bunch of our teachers drove a motorcade down to Southern California to lay claim to one, and drive it back in pieces as a team because none of their cars were big enough to properly transport it.

They kept it in the shared space we had for scanning cells, as kind of an up-for-grabs workstation, and some student was working at it, no joke, 24/7. There was no time early enough you could arrive to be confident you could work at that thing, and all-nighters were routine in that program. It was a joy and a privilege just to sit at, and made you feel connected to the craft you were learning in a way the light-boards and work tables didn't. It smelled like wood and drawing charcoal. Things were obviously all going digital in those days, and that desk felt like an artifact that proved what we were often learning in a clean digital space had firm, tangible roots in the real world - in an artistic tradition.

I'm rambling. Just saying, it was a Very Good Desk.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 6:52 PM on November 13, 2018 [18 favorites]

The studios I worked at in the 80s had cheaper desks but the shelving was similarly high enough to serve as one of the walls to our cubicles. We complained about lack of space and privacy back then, never imagining the day we'd be sitting at monitors and Cintiqs - elbow to elbow, like workers in a garment factory.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:29 PM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

“Sometime back in the 1960s,” Bossert continues, “the facilities folks at Disney actually took a couple truckloads of Weber desks to the dump and threw them away, which is crazy to me.

It never ceases to amaze me what is considered disposable by large organizations.
posted by TedW at 1:39 AM on November 14, 2018 [3 favorites]