Quick — what do Aladdin, Ariel, the Beast, Ratigan, Pocahontas, Rapunzel, and Tarzan all have in common? Yes, they’re all characters that have been featured in Disney animated films. But that’s only half the answer. The other half? They’ve all been animated by the mighty Glen Keane, whose thirty-seven year career at Disney produced some of the greatest hand-drawn character animation in film history. Since leaving the Mouse House in 2012 (after completing work on Tangled and Paperman), the sixty year old animator hasn’t settled into retirement just yet. Instead, he’s kept busy contributing interactive hand-drawn animation to Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects Group, and working on a very special short that recently debuted at Google’s I/O conference. It’s called Duet, and it’s now available for all to see on YouTube…

Beautiful, isn’t it? Keane was trained by Walt Disney’s hand-picked elite squad of animators known as the “Nine Old Men.” Their influence is felt in much of his work, but especially so in Duet, reminiscent as it is of studio classics like Dumbo and Fantasia. But there’s also a hint of other influences here. (Expressionism and director Chuck Jones’ Looney Tunes shorts come immediately to mind.) And the limited color palette really serves to highlight Keane’s style in a way that few Disney features (with their armies of artists) have. Fingers crossed we see more of this from Keane in the future. Computer animation is still the favored medium of studio chiefs, but for my money it’s the hand-drawn stuff that wires a viewer directly into the brain of an artist.