The Wonderful World of Color Scripts at Disney’s Art of Animation Resort

As its name implies, Disney’s Art of Animation Resort not only immerses guests into the settings of some of Disney and Pixar’s most popular animated films, but it also spotlights the artistry that goes into creating them. Nowhere is that more apparent than the décor of the Resort’s lobby, Animation Hall. For example, the walls on either side of the main entrance to the “Ink and Paint Shop” and “Landscape of Flavors” food court are adorned with artwork from the color scripts of animated features including “The Lion King” and “Finding Nemo,” as seen above. Resort guests will instantly recognize early versions of characters such as Simba and Nemo in this artwork but may not know the reason why these particular pieces were created in the first place.

While an almost subliminal form of storytelling, the use color and lighting in film is an important part of conveying the mood and emotion of a scene, and one of the ways the filmmakers at Disney and Pixar artists decide how to best utilize color in their movie is through the creation of color scripts. Similar to the more familiar storyboard process, color scripts are a series of sequential painting that act as a blueprint for which colors should be featured over the course of a specific scene or the entire animated feature in order to get the correct feeling across to their audience. These pieces may serve as an important tool in the animated filmmaking process, but they are also quite amazing artwork in their own right and certainly worth closer inspection when visiting Disney’s Art of Animation Resort.