After Tyrus Wong retired from the movie business nearly 50 years ago, he started making kites that he would fly over the beach in Santa Monica, Calif. To this day, bobbing on the end of his kite strings are colorful handmade creatures, including owls, centipedes, a pink-and-yellow caterpillar, a panda—sometimes more than a dozen at a time.
At age 104, Mr. Wong now needs a little help navigating the sand. But his handmade flying toys?
“They have the feeling of animation,” said Sara Jane Boyers, who saw him on the beach this month and has photographed his flying creations for her book “Go Fly a Kite.”
That feeling probably isn’t a fluke. Mr. Wong, an artist, illustrator, designer and calligrapher, spent many decades lending his visual stamp to some of Hollywood’s most beloved movies. In addition to three decades of work as a preproduction illustrator for live-action Warner Bros. films such as “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955), he is also known for his seminal designs for the 1942 Disney animated classic “Bambi.” […]
