Why Walt Loaned His Best Artist to MGM

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]This is one of the most unforgettable images in 1950s science fiction.

[00:00:09]The monster of the id attacking in the MGM movie Forbidden Planet. And believe it or not, the solution to that effect came from Disney. So, how did Disney end up connected to one of the most haunting monsters in science fiction? To answer that, we have to go back into the strange history of how Disney learned to bring force and intention to things that were not actually alive.

[00:00:33]Hi, I'm Dennis and this is West of Neverland. At Disney, the practice of bringing life and movement to elements like weather, energy, and other phenomena had a name, effects animation.

[00:00:45]Someone had to animate all the things that weren't actually characters, but still had to feel real. Water had to splash. Fire had to flicker. Shadows had to follow characters as they moved across a room.

[00:01:00]All of that atmosphere had to be drawn in a way that felt believable on screen.

[00:01:06]Eventually, Disney formalized that work into its own department so those effects could be controlled with the same care as the characters themselves. So all this really starts with Disney artists solving one visual problem after another and in the process turning effects animation into its own kind of craft.

[00:01:31]In the early years of Disney animation, there wasn't really a separate effects crew waiting off on the side. If an animator had to show Pluto jumping into the water with a splash, a cow running from a tornado amid blowing leaves and debris or flowers struggling to put out a wildfire.

[00:01:57]Much of the time, the same animator that was animating the characters would handle those things, too. And that worked for a while. The problem was that Disney cartoons were becoming more realistic and much more demanding.

[00:02:10]Splashes and smoke puffs were easy gags, but when the elements themselves had to carry the drama, that's when things got a little complicated. Once that happened, effects couldn't just be filler anymore. They had to perform.

[00:02:25]And you can start to feel that shift starting in the grasshopper and the ants.

[00:02:29]>> You dance? Let's go. Oh, the world owes us a living.

[00:02:36]At first, the world feels light and open. But when winter arrives, the whole cartoon changes.

[00:02:47]The snow is thick and the cold closes in. The storm underscores the grasshopper's foolishness and the consequences of his choices as he's left out in the cold. And once Disney starts using effects that way, the studio immediately runs into a new challenge.

[00:03:03]By 1934's The Wise Little Hen, Disney was increasingly relying on specialists like Yugo Deorsy for that kind of work.

[00:03:12]Animating things like the hen's meal, the cooked corn bubbling in the pot or the butter melting over it. That kind of animation asks for a very different kind of skill. The craft of effects animation is really starting to take shape here.

[00:03:27]These aren't just after effects of some other action on the screen. They're the center of attention and they need to perform just as much as Mickey, Donald, or Goofy. And from there, Disney pumps up the volume on the effects even further. By the time you get to music land in 1935, the problem has become much bigger. Because when the battle erupts between the aisle of jazz and the land of symphony, the barrage of artillery punctuated by musical notes needs to have power and impact.

[00:04:04]And all of it has to stay in sync with the story's rhythm.

[00:04:14]By now, effects work was being organized under Sai Young. For a short time, much of that work was being carried out by a remarkably small team with artists like Young and Yugo Deorsy, coordinating the smoke, explosions, water, and atmosphere across entire sequences. This is where you really start to see the specialist craft become visible. The scenes and the story are becoming much more complicated, involving more and more effects for the animator who's animating the characters to also take care of those effects on the side. What started as animators handling their own effects gradually became a specialist craft in which effects artists control the elements and generate fullcreen energy that's becoming increasingly believable.

[00:05:01]And the next leap would prove just how powerful that craft had become.

[00:05:07]Then you get to the old mill in 1937 which feels like a real turning point in the story. Not because it suddenly invents effects animation out of nowhere, but because many of those early problems now come together in one place.

[00:05:19]What makes this important is that the environment is no longer just supporting the scene from the edges. The mill, the storm, and the moving air, the shifting light, all of it carrying emotion. It creates tension. It makes the storm feel dangerous and shapes the film's tone from moment to moment. By this point, effects animation had matured into something more dramatic. It can set a mood, push a scene forward, and make the audience feel the force of what's happening.

[00:05:50]You're not just watching weather happen in the background. You're watching a whole world of the film react. That's why the old mill lands is such a payoff.

[00:05:58]The scattered scene work from the early shorts had grown into a fully expressive storytelling craft. Effects are no longer just decoration, and they're no longer just technical problem solving.

[00:06:10]They're helping drive the dramatic experience.

[00:06:16]And once Disney reached that level, it needed artists who could specialize in that kind of work. Artists who could study motion and break it down to its basic form and then replicate it in a stylized way that only an animator could. And if you're enjoying this video, please hit the like button and subscribe. I've got more stories like this coming your way. And if you'd like to support the channel, please consider becoming a member.

[00:06:42]One of the artists who came out of that world was Joshua Meter. Meter is not usually one of the first names people think of when they think about Disney animation. He wasn't one of Disney's star character animators, and he wasn't one of the famous nine old men. But Meter belonged to one of the most demanding corners of the studio. At Disney, Muter became part of a specialized tradition built around observation, study, and experimentation.

[00:07:12]>> One of the things brought out very clearly by these studies was that animating breakage or shattering effects of any sort required tremendous attention to detail.

[00:07:25]This applied all the way from animating a shattering window to the cataclysmic effects of an earthquake. These artists had to look closely at the real world, then transform what they saw into movement that felt alive on the screen.

[00:07:42]You can see that kind of thinking in Disney's Tricks of Our Trade, where natural effects like bubbling mud and lava become examples of the kind of motion and effects an animator had to study.

[00:07:54]>> For the molten lava, they had to resort to a substitute.

[00:07:59]They finally agreed to settle for orange colored mud.

[00:08:04]Here is Joshua Mador, one of our effects animators. He was in charge of the project. By the time of the old mill, Meter was already putting that kind of skill to work, animating storm exteriors, lightning, and water effects.

[00:08:17]That's what made me so valuable. He was working on a craft where the subject was often unstable, unpredictable, and constantly changing shape. The challenge was not just to draw it, but to understand how it moved and then shape that movement into something expressive.

[00:08:33]Disney had already spent years learning how to make water, fire, and smoke move on screen. And Joshua Meter had become one of the artists best at giving motion, force, and intention to things that had none of their own. Once Meter was inside that tradition, the scale of the work kept getting bigger. You can see that escalation in Fantasia. By then, Disney was no longer asking effects artists to support a gag or decorate a background. The studio was asking them to help visualize entire worlds. And the bigger the effects problems became, the more Disney relied on artists like meter to help solve them. In the right of spring sequence, the volcanic imagery pushed that kind of work into something much more massive.

[00:09:20]This was effects animation as spectacle, but also as storytelling. Meter skill was no longer useful for just small moments. It could help carry some of the most ambitious imagery Disney had ever attempted. Over time, Meter was not just part of Disney's effects department.

[00:09:37]Eventually, he became one of the artists trusted to lead the department itself, solving visual problems that were as technical as they were artistic.

[00:09:48]By that point, Meter had become a very specific kind of artist. Someone trained at Disney to make impossible things move in a way that felt convincing, expressive, and alive.

[00:10:04]Which meant that if another studio ever ran into a visual problem that normal liveaction effects couldn't solve, Meter was exactly the kind of person they would need.

[00:10:17]And that brings us back to MGM's problem. In Forbidden Planet, the monster is terrifying because it's not supposed to be a normal creature. It's invisible. It's psychological.

[00:10:28]It comes from the mind itself. So MGM had to answer a strange visual question.

[00:10:34]How do you show something the audience is not really supposed to see? MGM already had major effects talent working on the film. The studio had people who knew miniatures, mats, and optical work and large-scale Hollywood illusion. But the monster of the id needed Disney's specialized effects animation tradition.

[00:10:53]It needed to be able to show the energy and force created by the monster who itself was invisible. So the air and the energy around it had to give life to this monster. Walt Disney loaned Joshua Meter to MGM. And suddenly the hidden line from Disney effects animation to 1950s science fiction becomes visible.

[00:11:21]Meter provided the crucial animated element, the drawn force that lets the visible creature appear on screen. The outline writhes and burns with a kind of purposeful energy. when they were doing the id drawings, he he gave me a bunch of them and they're like cinemascope proportion, but they're in pencil. And I said, "Well, did where are the cells?"

[00:11:40]He said, "They didn't really do cells this time, but he said they just took that, they shot it on a high film, reversed the polarity, did it in negative, and then it was sort of a red tint that went to it and yellow eyes."

[00:11:53]And it was really pretty neat. And by shooting them in reverse, you could see through it, which is kind of cool. And the monster of the id wasn't the only thing Meter animated for the film. His hand was there in the landing beam when they first land the ship on the planet and the electrical arcs around Robbie the robot and the energy blast from the crew when they're fighting off the monster.

[00:12:29]And once you know Meter's background, the connection makes sense. So when MGM needed to make an invisible psychological monster appear, the solution came from the same tradition that had learned how to make the elements perform. And that's what makes this story so easy to miss. When people talk about animation history, they usually talk about the characters first.

[00:12:51]Mickey, Donald, and Snow White, and Pinocchio.

[00:12:54]>> He's gone.

[00:12:55]>> Where'd he go?

[00:12:58]the figures with faces, voices, and personalities. But so much of what makes these characters feel real is the world moving around them. The storm and the shadow or the burst of flame, all of that work is often invisible because when it succeeds, you stop noticing it.

[00:13:15]Joshua Meter wasn't a celebrity animator, but he was exactly the kind of specialist the studio and Hollywood needed. So, when the monster of the it appears in Forbidden Planet, it's not just a science fiction effect. It's the continuation of a Disney craft tradition, giving weight and a terrifying kind of life to things that don't actually exist. And if you'd like to hear about another Disney talent who most everyone has heard, but very few people really know his name, click on this video. I'm Dennis. This is West of Neverland, and I'll see you real soon.

[00:13:54]I'm Dennis. This is West of Neverland.

[00:13:57]And I'll see you real soon. I'm Dennis.

[00:14:00]This is West of Neverland. And I'll see you real soon. Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the scars.

[00:14:07]Stars. Scars. Okay, I think that is good.