How Disney Helped Me Grow Up

By Trevor Pacelli
​Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was among the many VHS tapes of Disney movies I grew up watching repeatedly, which contributed to Disney movies becoming a special interest of mine for as long as I could remember. Although that movie never spoke personally to me the same way as other Disney classics like Aladdin, The Lion King, or Toy Story, I still felt quite angry like millions of others about the mere existence of the recent Snow White live action remake. In fact, on the day it came out, I protested the movie by instead rewatching the original movie on Disney+. Before then, my feelings for the first ever animated feature film were more negative than positive because of its reputation for its shallow nonexistent story and giving children bad romantic expectations. Yet by watching it again this time under the lens of appreciating its strong qualities, I came to love how the film pioneered these timeless techniques in generating art.

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2D art in general is a medium I lately have found a whole new level of appreciation for as an author and illustrator. Watching the old Disney classics gave me the chance to admire the animators’ and background artists’ techniques used to exploit everything live action could never achieve, as Walt Disney was always a forward thinker with technology. Before Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he made the first cartoon with synchronized sound (Steamboat Willie), the first fully technicolor cartoon (Flowers and Trees), the first cartoon to use storyboards (The Three Little Pigs), the first cartoon to attempt realistic human movements (The Goddess of Spring), and the first cartoon with the multiplane camera (The Old Mill). Walt ultimately strove to prove that the medium of animation can become not just a roadshow attraction but a complex storytelling medium, which helped me better understand my ideal approach to digital illustration.

My childhood hobby of drawing already found room to grow with these cartoon drawing tutorial books I had as a kid, but turning this into a profession in book illustration was a different story. Photoshop was my medium of choice in drawing so I could easily make changes to a work, which meant viewing the multiple layers in Photoshop like the pre-digital age of animation when production cels were used to put together a single frame. Photoshop requires me to keep track of separate layers depending on outlines, color, shadows, or special effects (like creating a transparent layer that simulates glass). While the story of a certain movie or picture book may be shallow with some questionable messages, any artist would benefit from studying how the most acclaimed Disney films achieved their animation effects.

My growing appreciation for Disney’s technological prowess when the studio was at its best goes along with my newfound appreciation for how the Disney brand tells stories. Disney’s California Adventure for instance has a plaque in Buena Vista Street (the land where you first enter the park) that says, “Storytellers: We are just getting started.” -Walt Disney. How appropriate, seeing how this quote sums up the Disney parks’ mission statement! Consider for a moment how many storytelling mediums exist in the world: movies, music, lights, sound, production design, food, etc, Disney parks contain them all and much more!

I previously wrote about how I traveled to Disneyland on my own, and how that trip helped me overcome my challenges surrounding autism. So now, I get to go again this March as my sister and her husband invited me and my parents to join them on their upcoming Disneyland trip. Besides the time I’ll get to enjoy with the family in my favorite vacation spot in the world, I’ll get to experience the joy of seeing my four-year-old niece and one-year-old nephew have fun at this park that’s ready to tell meaningful stories for the new generation.

On a more personal note, I found that this can be my chance to apply what I learned from my recent trip there to help them plan their trip through a written itinerary. I could help lay out a plan for what restaurants to make reservations and which attractions each of us want to ride or avoid, which we can plan around the youngest child’s naptimes and when we can split the group up to go on different attractions.

For instance, my brother-and-law and I want to ride the Incredicoaster, but since the others wouldn’t want to ride it, they could instead take the kids on a gentler ride. The seven of us could enjoy rides together as well, particularly Pirates of the Caribbean and certain rides that would bring us the joy of seeing the kids’ excited reactions to riding, like Dumbo the Flying Elephant. The meet-and-greet character times are also things we’ll need to keep an eye on, so my niece could see certain characters like Anna, Elsa, Ariel, Belle, or Mirabel. Knowing how to lay this plan out for the trip opened my eyes to how my autistic special interest in Disney parks serves as my advantage, making this another way aside from drawing and illustrating that Disney has helped me amidst my autism.

So sure, you can still be pissed that Disney decided to remake another beloved animated classic from your childhood with all the heart and innovation sucked out and replaced with corporate greed. I learned that if something I’m obsessed with was made with love and respect for the arts, it can help the artform’s consumers in a multitude of ways. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs may not have had a particularly deep story nor had the most complex of characters, but what it did for the animation industry with the new techniques Walt Disney pioneered was enough to inspire millions of people, myself included, to be better versions of ourselves. For me, Disney helped me to become a better artist, which led me to a career path I’m genuinely happy with, and it helped motivate me to learn how to plan a vacation, which motivated me to help my family in vacation planning. No lazy slop like Snow White 2025 can do that, but only something that respects the audience, the creators, and the entire spectrum of art.

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Trevor Pacelli is a young adult on the autism spectrum as well as the author of What Movies Can Teach Us About Disabilities, What Movies Can Teach Us About Bullying, Summer of the Fruit Virus and the illustrator of The Kindergarten Adventures of Amazing Grace: What in the World is Autism?, and the author/illustrator of Amazing Grace Goes to the Zoo.