10 Fun Facts About Disney's Animated Short "Get A Horse!" #DisneyFrozenEvent

It's been a long standing tradition that an animated short precede each of Disney's new full-length animated features. While elements of Frozen's short, Get A Horse!, may look old, it's 100% brand new, with a groundbreaking use of 2D and 3D animation.

Get A Horse! follows Mickey, his favorite gal pal Minnie Mouse and their friends Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow as they delight in a musical haywagon ride—until Peg-Leg Pete shows up and tries to run them off the road.  

I was fortunate to be able to sit down with Get A Horse! Director Lauren MacMullan, Producer Dorothy McKim, CG animator Adam Green, and Legendary Disney artist Eric Goldberg to get the inside scoop on what's sure to win this years Best Animated Short.

10 Fun Facts About Disney's Animated Short "Get A Horse!"

1. Get A Horse! takes 1928 Mickey Mouse into the modern world, with color and CG.

2. The short is a combination of hand drawn and CG animation. {The CG in Get A Horse! is so well done that it TRULY looks 3D in theaters}.

3. Everything was new except for the voice of Mickey Mouse, which is voiced by Walt Disney — His dialogue was taken from animated shorts he did from 1928 through 1946.

4. It took the editorial staff three and a half months to pull all of Walt’s dialogue from those shorts.

5. "Red" was the only word that could not be found in Walt's dialogue. To keep authenticity, Danya Joseph, first assistant editor, spent two and a half weeks to the pull the syllables R E D  from Walt’s voice over work.

6. It was important to animators that 1928 Mickey looked the same as modern day Mickey. Animators had to work backwards with Mickey's 1928 design, adding in dust, scratches and contrasts to make the animation look old.

7. Mickey's ears were a challenge to animate in CG. The trick was to slide his ears along the top of his head — if you watch closely you can see whenever he turns his head left or right, the ears actually slide along the top.

8. 1928 Mickey was physically small. Sort of like, "⅓ mouse, ⅓ man, and kind of ⅓ ape" — Lauren MacMullan, Director

9. Get A Horse! is a good example of multi-discipline work.  It was a small team, working around the clock, during the same time as FROZEN. "We had a lack of resources, and we were sharing resources between Frozen and Mickey. So people would put on different hats.  Some people who were doing animation would come over and help with effects, or they would jump over and help with clean-up" — Adam Green, Head of Animation

10. Oswald makes an appearance in Get A Horse!

Special thanks to Walt Disney Pictures for inviting me to attend the Disney Frozen Event. All opinions are my own.