Like most children that grew up in Florida, Walt Disney World was the place to go for the annual family vacation. For Michael Woodside ’08, those family vacations inspired his career choice.
“My family and I would go to MGM Studios, now Disney’s Hollywood Studios,” Woodside said in his Orlando Sentinel interview. “At the time they had a tour for how to make an animated movie [called] the Magic of Disney animation where Robin Williams and Walter Cronkite would walk us through the process. And that to me was like so eye-opening to see that… you could draw for a living.”
Woodside used what he saw at the theme park to create his own hand-drawn films at home. Now, in 2022, Woodside has been at Disney for a decade and has worked on projects like “Wreck-It Ralph,” “Frozen 2,” and “Encanto.” Most recently, Woodside helped bring characters’ facial expressions to life in the upcoming Disney movie “Strange World.”