How a Chinese Immigrant Shaped the Look of One of Disney’s Most Iconic Films

Disney’s 1942 classic Bambi defined an entire generation, and after years of re-releases on home video, in theatres and on streaming, you probably have no problem picturing its dreamy forest filled with soft pastels, drifting mist, and sunlight melting through trees that look more like a painting than a cartoon. You might be surprised to learn this beautiful, ethereal look came from the vision of one man: Tyrus Wong, a Chinese-born artist whose name appeared in the credits simply as a “background artist.”

Wong’s story is as cinematic as anything Disney ever made. He came to the U.S. from China around age 10, landing at Angel Island in 1920, during the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act. He and his father eventually settled in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, where life wasn’t easy. Chinese immigrants couldn’t become citizens or own land, and prejudice was simply a part of everyday life.

But Wong had something that couldn’t be taken away from him: pure artistic brilliance, a gift that earned him a scholarship to the Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design), where he developed a style that blended Western painting with the spirit and brushwork of traditional Chinese landscapes.

In 1938, Wong landed a low-level job at Disney as an “in-betweener,” filling in frames between senior animators’ drawings, according to LAist. It wasn’t a glamorous gig by any means, but it put him in the right place at the right time. Disney’s team was struggling with Bambi, and their usual bright, detailed style (like Snow White) didn’t fit a story that was set entirely in the woods.

After reading Felix Salten’s original novel, Wong came to realize that the story wasn’t really about talking deer. It was about the feeling of the forest. Inspired by Song Dynasty paintings, he created concept art that was all mist, shadow, suggestion. “You don’t have to paint every leaf and every tree,” he later explained. When Walt Disney saw Wong’s samples, he reportedly said, “I like it better than all this indecipherable junk behind it,” as noted by UH Stories. Wong’s vision became the visual language of Bambi and set the tone for one of animation’s most beloved films.

Though Wong only spent a few years at Disney, his influence was enormous. After a labor strike led to layoffs, he moved to Warner Bros., where he worked for nearly 30 years as a motion picture illustrator, contributing to films like Rebel Without a Cause and The Wild Bunch. At the same time, he was thriving as a commercial artist, designing everything from greeting cards (his best-seller The Shepherd sold over a million copies) to the iconic “shy boy” logo for L.A.’s Phoenix Bakery.

And in his later years, Tyrus Wong reinvented himself once again as “the kite man of Santa Monica.” On weekends, he could be found at the beach, flying his exquisite handmade kites shaped like dragons, centipedes, and flocks of birds—living art that danced against the California sky.

Recognition finally caught up to him late in life. In 2001, he was honored as a Disney Legend, and in 2016, at the remarkable age of 106, he passed away, leaving behind a body of work that bridged East and West, fine art and film, imagination and resilience. His life and legacy are chronicled in film scholar Karen Fang’s book Background Artist: The Life and Work of Tyrus Wong.

“If the only thing Wong had done was Bambi, that in itself would be an amazing story,” Fang says. “This non-white, noncitizen helped make one of the world’s most iconic films and essentially saved one of America’s greatest companies. But he did so many amazing things.”

Watch PBS' American Masters documentary Tyrus below:

Photo by Gwen Wynne/Wikimedia Commons and Walt Disney Studios.