Disney Institute -- Steamboat Willie Says Take Risks

Disney Institute -- Steamboat Willie Says Take Risks, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

This pic is the third in a set of six visual facilitationpics covering the first day of an intensive seminar series on customer service.

'Steamboat Willie' is the first cartoon to feature synchronised sound. (Source: Wikipedia: Steamboat Willie.) It also happens to be the second time Mickey Mouse saw screen time. And it was the movie that made him the biggest mouse in the history of, uh, mice.

But Mickey wasn't Walt Disney's first success. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit has that honour. (Source: Wikipedia, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.) And Walt lost him in a court battle. (Which, incidentally, is why the Disney Corporation has such a vicious approach to intellectual property.)

But I digress.

The idea behind this session is that risk-taking is vital. The risks Mickey is talking about here pertain to the fact that Walt Disney was pretty much broke when he resigned from Universal over what amounted to the theft of Oswald. He and his family took huge risks in bringing 'Steamboat Willie' to the screen.

Later, Walt Disney took all sorts of risks, flouting expert opinion to make the world's first feature-length animated film, 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'. (Source: Film History of the 1930s.) The risks paid off.

This painting was made live during the Disney Institute day of the Service Excellence Emporium 2007 seminar. I'm using ArtRage 2.5 on a Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc. No mice were mutilated in the making of this painting.