Bambi, a newborn white-tailed deer, is welcomed to the forest by many friendly faces. As he learns to walk, his mother warns him of the danger lurking in these woods, known as ‘man’. Bambi faces more challenges when the season changes and fields turn bare. Praised as a timeless classic, Bambi is known for its delicate storytelling capturing the joy and sorrow of a fawn’s coming of age.

While multiplane cameras weren’t unfamiliar to Disney animation in the 1940s, the success of Bambi lies in the distinct landscapes Tyrus Wong brought in his concept drawings. Wong immigrated to the United States at the age of nine and found his passion in art. He continued to paint amid financial hardships, and became one of the four Asian artists to participate in the first Asian art exhibition on American soil, on the second floor of a Chinese restaurant. Eventually, he landed a position at Walt Disney Animation Studios as an inbetweener. Unsatisfied with his role, Wong sketched some frames for Bambi in his loose, atmospheric, ink painting style. The unusual simplicity impressed Walt Disney, who then appointed Wong as the inspirational sketch artist for Bambi. His paintings were adopted by the crew, from directors to layout artists to animators. After his brief career at Disney, Wong continued to work on the film sets as an illustrator to translate scripts and blueprints into storyboards, setting the tone for many classic titles of that era.

David Hand (1900–1986, United States) was an animator and filmmaker known for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Bambi (1942). Hand began his career with Max Fleischer’s Out of the Inkwell (1918) and was scouted by Walt Disney Animation Studios shortly after. He then directed many Mickey Mouse shorts, including Building a Building (1933), The Flying Mouse (1934), and Thru the Mirror (1936). While Hand was the Supervising Director of Bambi, the film was a collective effort with six Sequence Directors—James Algar, Bill Roberts, Norman Wright, Samuel Armstrong, Paul Satterfield, and Graham Heid.