Known for making a mark with some of the most popular and defining images in the American pop culture, Tyrus Wong is a Chinese-born American artist who is best remembered for his work on ‘Bambi’, the 1942 Walt Disney film.. To hounour this iconic and one of the most influential Asian-American artists of the 20th Century, search giant Google dedicates a doodle on his 108th birthday today.
Tyrus Wong was born Wong Gen Yeo, in a village in southern China's Guangdong Province on October 25, 1910. When he was 10-year-old, Tyrus and his father traveled to America, and lived in Sacramento, before eventually settling in Los Angeles. At a very early age, Wong’s father recognized his love for art but he didn’t have the money to give it a push. The video shared by Google shows how Wong’s father could only afford for Wong to practice calligraphy using water and newspapers as well as study Chinese art at the Los Angeles Central Library.
In 1938, Walt Disney hired Tyrus Wong as an "inbetweener" intern, an illustrator who sketches between key animator sketches, forming the movement of a character or object. Interestingly, the artist who gave the famous work of Walt Disney’s Bambi never actually met Walt Disney personally. However, eventually, he was considered the ‘Disney Legend’. Soon after the release of Bambi, Tyrus Wong was fired from Disney as a result of the Disney animators' strike. After this, he went on to work for Warner Brothers Studios for 26 years as a production illustrator. There he drew and painted storyboards that shaped the look of some notable films like The Wild Bunch, Sands of Iwo Jima, and Rebel Without A Cause.
The video shared by Google is a tribute to the warm relationship between Wong and his father. Overcoming poverty and racial discrimination, Wong rose to become one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.
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