Bill Belew has raised 2 bi-cultural kids, now 34 and 30. And he and his wife are now parenting a 3rd, Mia, who is 8.
When the Walt Disney studio was working on the production Snow White the studio grew in size, meaning more and more people came to work.
Artists had to work in newly constructed places, annexes, apartment buildings next door, makeshift locations, anywhere a drawing board could be set up.
The chaos encouraged rather than diluted rich creativity.
One of the animators, Art Babbit said, “There was an atmosphere of discovery, of learning, and everybody was eager. Guys would stay after work to sneak a look at somebody else’s work, on the desk or wherever it was, to try to learn, and nobody was stingy with their information. You know, they were happy to tell you how to do something.”
Related: Lessons Learned about Life at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco | Introduction
That spirit of creativity and sharing in the midst of chaos is what helped make Snow White the success that it became.
Another concept artist called the studio a, ” … drawing factory. It was incredible, the brilliance, the invention … Amazing. It was a fountain of drawing.”
It seems that the struggle to make things all right and proper so that you can become creative is not the right strategy at all. Rather it is better to create amongst the struggle, in the uncertainty, and do it with other like-minded souls. That is where greatness is found.
Hmm…