David Hand

Born: David Dodd Hand
Birthday: January 23, 1900
Location: Plainfield, NJ, U.S.
Alma mater: Chicago Art Institute
Occupation: Animator
Years active: 1919-1986
Died: October 11, 1986

David Hand’s animation career began in 1920s as he worked on the Out of the Inkwell cartoons for Max Fleischer.

David was recruited by the Disney studio in 1930, and by 1932 he was considered one of the best animators at the studio. Having become a close friend of Walt Disney himself, Hand’s strong organizational skills made it easy for Walt to select him as the studio’s third director. David’s directorial debut was on the animated short Building a Building with Mickey Mouse. He went on to direct many of the earliest and most famous Silly Symphony and Mickey Mouse shorts. By the late 1930s Hand’s management skills catapulted him up the Studio ladder to the point where he was Disney’s right-hand man. His successes with the many Disney shorts of the 1930s, led to David’s promotion to supervising director on the animated features Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Dumbo, and Bambi.

Hand ambitions for leadership could go no further. He couldn’t foresee the younger Walt ever stepping down or even sharing control of the studio, so David left Disney in 1944.

Moving to England, Hand established Gaumont-British Animation in 1946. There, he set about to produce the Animaland series and another series called Musical Paintbox. David began directing and producing several theatrical animated advertisements. The Animaland and Musical Paintbox series were unable to get distribution in the United States, and although they did get distribution in Canada by 1949, and were beginning to grow in popularity across England, the studio closed in 1950. Despite the studio’s failure, David Hand was honored at Buckingham Palace in 1950 for his contributions to British animation.

Hand moved to back to the U.S. where he worked for the next 18 years making commercials and industrial films at the Alexander Film Company.

David Hand was posthumously inducted into the Disney Legends program in 1994.

The Author

Lavalle Lee

Lavalle Lee has been creating animated cartoons online since 1999/2000 for his website flashcartoons.org. Many cartoons on the site have gained viral video status reaching millions of viewers online. In 2009, Lavalle started learning hand drawn animation from Don Bluth in his animation classes, as well as attending his Masterclasses in Arizona. He has also personally studied animation and visual effects from Veteran Disney animators in Orlando, FL.

Lavalle is widely known in the animation industry as the creator of the TraditionalAnimation.com website. After seeing that most animation sites were about all types of animation, not any specific to classical hand drawn animation, Lavalle knew Traditional Animation needed to be represented online. TraditionalAnimation.com has become the leading website and social media account for all things 2D. The website served as inspiration for “The Traditional Animation Show” in which Lavalle was both producer and host.

His partnership with Don Bluth began when he championed the Dragon's Lair Indiegogo campaign as lead project manager, editor, voice actor and in-betweener. The campaign reached $730,000 dollars to produce a 7-minute pitch video. In 2017, Lavalle brought the idea of creating a school to Don Bluth, and Don Bluth University was born. After a decade of learning from Don Bluth and working together on multiple pitches and business ventures, Lavalle accepted the position as Vice President of Don Bluth's new company Don Bluth Studios.