Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

To the students, Smart, who was a cheerful and effervescent as one might expect a Disney employee to be, was in the strata of a rock star. After his presentation, some waited in line for his autograph and as a group they "oohed" and "aahed" over his animated movie resume which includes The Lion King, Pocahontas, Tarzan, and Lilo and Stitch.

Raised in East Providence, Smart said he drew every chance he got when he was young and always earned an "A" in art even if his other grades weren't as high.

A graduate of the Ringling School of Art and Design in Florida, Smart, 40, has been with Disney for 20 years and also works on projects for Disney World in Orlando where his office is.

The students had fun watching film clips that showed how the new princess movie evolves from black and white sketches into brilliantly-colored animated characters with seamless movements - from the arching of an eyebrow to a swan dive into a lily pond.

It takes a lot of hard work to create that much visual fun, Smart said, noting that a lush, animated movies can take a couple of years and hundreds of animators to create.

Like many Disney classics, The Princess and the Frog is hand-drawn, he said, with computer assistance enlisted for the colorization not the animation. For the artists, that means about 24 individual drawings are needed for each second a character is on the screen, Smart said, and the number can be much higher if there's a lot of movement involved.