JAY HORAN: Why don’t we just start off at the very beginning. How did you get started working for the Disney Studio?
X ATENCIO: I came out from Colorado in 1938 — it was the end of ’37, actually — and enrolled at Chouinard Art Institute. I went there for one semester and at the end of the semester one of the teachers who was also an instructor here at the Studio on the night classes, Palmer Shoppe… There were two of them: Palmer Shoppe and Eugene Fleury. Eugene Fleury still teaches at Chouinard’s Art Institute. Anyway, they suggested that we get a portfolio together and they were to bring it out to the Studio. I wasn’t really too interested at that point in time. I didn’t think I really had enough artistic background at that point. But they insisted that I put it together.
I went home that night and had some drawings put together. I’m a procrastinator by nature. I always wait until the last minute to do things. I got a few boards put together and submitted them the next day. I think it was the following week, I got a call from the Studio and in the meantime I had gone out to the Studio — this was the end of the semester and I was going to see if I could get a job in Traffic for the summer to make some money to continue my education. Unbeknownst to me, they had called my home and asked me to come out for an interview. […]
