“Hyperion,” Hidden Compass, May 2024

From 1934 to 1937, hundreds of men and women worked day and night in Disney’s original Hyperion Studio to create the studio’s first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Animators — many of whom were previously trained as newspaper cartoonists and advertisers — sat at slanted desks lit from below to draw each frame on paper. Some had stripped down to their undershirts. Occasionally, an artist lifted his face to a mirror to check the facial expression he was drawing. A layer of cigarette smoke hung near the ceiling.