One Joe was in his 97th year when he died in 2005; the other Joe died the same year at age 45. Both died before their time. This book explores the interplay between personal creativity and the craft of animation storytelling, as seen through the lives and art of two of its greatest practicioners: Joe Grant and Joe Ranft. Grant and Ranft were unique influences on storytelling at two major studios during important periods in the history of animation.Joe Grant, in fact, straddled two eras.A gifted newspaper caricaturist, he contributed ideas for Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony shorts and classic masterworks, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , Pinocchio , Fantasia , and Dumbo . As Walt Disney’s confidant, Grant played a leading role in defining Disney’s pioneering animation legacy.After a forty-year hiatus, he returned to the studio in his 81st year, his creative spirit and abilities undiminished, and made significant contributions to Beauty and the Beast , Aladdin , Mulan , and The Lion King , among others.
Joe Ranft built on the traditions of the past forged by Grant and others to become the top animation storyboard artist of his generation for Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas , The Brave Little Toaster , Who Framed Roger Rabbit , James and the Giant Peach , The Little Mermaid , and Beauty and the Beast , among other films.As one of Pixar’s creative founders and a close friend to John Lasseter, Ranft had a major influence on the studio’s signature originality, warmth and irreverent humor, through his contributions to Toy Story (1 & 2), A Bug's Life , Monsters, Inc. , and Cars .
Inventive and imaginative, with keen insight into characters, they inspired colleagues and entertained audiences around the world. Although their combined careers span the Golden Age of traditional animation beginning in the 1930s at The Walt Disney Company and continuing into the present digital age at Pixar Animation Studios, their extraordinary contributions remain largely unknown to the public.

John Canemaker reviews and fully analyzes McCay's achievements in print and film, examining his work in relation to his life, his family, and to American culture and values of the period. Original art from all the McCay's endeavors and rare personal photographs provide a visual counterpart to Canemaker's fascinating text. Begining with McCay's childhood in pioneer-era Michigan, circa 1870, this biography moves on through his earliest attempts to find an artistic voice in Chicago and turn-of-the-century Cincinnati, his work with circus posters, as a quick-sketch newspaper reporter, as a headliner chalk-talk artist in vaudeville, as crown jewel in William Randolph Hearst's grand line-up of newspaper cartoonists, and as the greatest of the early animators. McCay's masterpiece is the epic Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905), a beautiful and surreal fantasy rendered in stunning art nouveau line and subtle yet daring colour, and designed with layouts that anticipate cinematic storytelling techniques. McCay's ten animated films, among them How a Mosquito Operates (1912) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), remain landmarks in the history of this art and were unmatched in the fluid movement and personality of the characters until the mature films of Walt Disney came along two decades later.