Founded as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in 1923, renamed Walt Disney Studio in 1926 and incorporated as Walt Disney Productions in 1929, the studio was exclusively dedicated to producing short films until it expanded into feature production in 1934, resulting in 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, one of the first full-length animated feature films and the first one made in the United States.
In 1986, during a large corporate restructuring, Walt Disney Productions, which had grown from a single animation studio into an international multimedia company, was renamed The Walt Disney Company and the animation studio Walt Disney Feature Animation in order to differentiate it from the other divisions. Its current name was adopted in 2007 after Pixar Animation Studios was acquired by Disney in the previous year.
For much of its existence, the studio was recognized as the premier American animation studio; it developed many of the techniques, concepts and principles that became standard practices of traditional animation. The studio also pioneered the art of storyboarding, which is now a standard technique used in both animated and live-action filmmaking. The studio’s catalog of animated features is among Disney’s most notable assets, with the stars of its animated shorts – Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy and Pluto – becoming recognizable figures in popular culture and mascots for The Walt Disney Company as a whole.
