In trademark history, December is also the birth month of Walt Disney, the famous inventor of Mickey Mouse and many other characters as well as animated films, who was born on December 5, 1901.

One of his well known inventions is the multiplane camera.With this new technique he created a better looking, richer animation for the audience. This new camera used stacked planes of glass, each painted with different elements of a cell animation. The multiplane allowed the animator to re-use the same background, a moving foreground, combined with other elements not in motion, saving hours of labor. It moves a number of pieces of artwork past the background at different speeds and at different distances. This creates the three dimensional effect when bringing the characters to life.


On December 21, 1937, Disney’s first full length animated movie production “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was trademark registered and premiered to the audience the same day.





Many other productions followed over the years such as Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi and Peter Pan. Walt Disney became not only a famous producer, but also an entertainer and international icon. He died on December 15, 1966, aged only 65. The Little Mermaid was the last film produced by using the multiplane camera in 1989, since the era of computer animation had already begun at the time. The cameras can be seen at the Disney Family Museum in San Francisco.