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If you've seen Sleeping Beauty, The Jungle Book or the Toy Story movies, you've seen the work of animator Floyd Norman; for decades, he has helped bring Disney and Pixar classics to life. Now 81, Norman still works for Disney, where he has plied his trade, on and off, since he became the studio's first African-American animator in the 1950s. Norman's love of art began long before his Disney job, as he reveals in a new documentary, An Animated Life. "Any empty surface was a blank canvas for me," he says. His mother was constantly scrubbing scribbles off the walls. "I was drawing on everything," he recalls. Norman grew up in Santa Barbara, Calif., a place that, he says, sheltered him from much of the racial tension and segregation of the time. He tells NPR's David Greene he experienced no racism — "none whatsoever." […]