Click the image to the left and log in to get your exclusive reader perks.

Disney Animation team members Mary Twohig (from left), Jose Luis “Weecho” Velasquez, Sergi Caballer and Maryville native Kelly McClanahan pose with their award for Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature by the Visual Effects Society, handed out earlier this month.

Disney Animation team members Mary Twohig (from left), Jose Luis “Weecho” Velasquez, Sergi Caballer and Maryville native Kelly McClanahan pose with their award for Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature by the Visual Effects Society, handed out earlier this month.

Like a lot of children — women her age in particular, she noted — Blount County native Kelly McClanahan walked out of “The Little Mermaid” when she saw it as a young girl absolutely in awe.

The 2002 Maryville High School graduate remembers the villainous Ursula growing to a monstrous size during the film’s climax, something that frightened her at the time but mesmerized her a bit as well. It was just one in a long line of animated Disney classics that influenced her childhood, but as a viewer of such seminal films as “The Lion King,” “Aladdin” and “Beauty and the Beast,” she had no idea she would one day be making similar movies with the very same company.

These days, McClanahan calls the West Coast home, works for Disney Animation and was recently recognized for her work on one of the studio’s most popular films in recent memory: last year’s “Encanto,” which spawned a No. 1 soundtrack as well as box office success.

“It was incredibly surreal,” McClanahan told The Daily Times recently, speaking by Zoom to describe being one of the recipients for the Visual Effects Society’s award for Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature — Mirabel Madrigal, the heroine of “Encanto.”

“I had waited tables for 10 years … starting as a teen. That’s how I funded that whole journey,” she added. “It was a really big change to go from 10 years of waiting tables to a dream job, and I definitely cried tears of joy.”

McClanahan’s job as a digital artist draws on skills she came by naturally: Her parents, Walter and Teresa McClanahan of Maryville, met at the University of Tennessee and bonded over art. Her dad studied architecture and painted in his spare time; her mother was an interior design student, and Kelly’s childhood was full of movies, music, art and storytelling, she said. After graduation, she studied for a semester at Pellissippi State before transferring to the art program at UT, but she set her sights on the animation that had intrigued her as a child.

“I was looking for something more specific, and I really wanted to get into movies, so I started researching schools,” she said. “I left UT and went to the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, and I got a Bachelor’s of Science from there in computer animation and media arts. When I went and interviewed at that school, I wasn’t sure what all these different things they offered was right for me, but animation was the most drawing intensive, so I did that and really loved it.”

The industry, however, proved to be a competitive one, so after obtaining her degree, she enrolled in an 18-month program from the online Animation Mentor school, which allowed her to sharpen her skills and focus on her craft. And that, she said, led to a position with Disney Animation.

“The way I like to describe it is that CG (computer graphics) animation is really similar to puppeteering, in a way,” she said. “In older movies, characters were drawn from scratch for every single frame, but with CG animation, we create digital puppets that we move around on the screen. Our job is to take that puppet and make sure it’s performing the same way an actor would, that when it’s singing and dancing and moving, it looks as good as a drawing would have if it was drawn from scratch, and performs the same way a character or an actor would.”

The first feature to which she contributed was 2012’s “Wreck-It Ralph,” and in the years since her skills have been tapped for the majority of the studio’s animated features: “Frozen,” “Big Hero 6,” “Zootopia,” “Moana,” “Ralph Wrecks the Internet” and “Frozen 2” — but she sat out 2021’s “Raya and the Last Dragon” because she was tapped as an animation supervisor for “Encanto.”

“I came on pre-production a year before the rest of the animation crew,” she said. “My job was to kind of help build the puppet for the crew to use: doing animation tests, studying the actor, things like that. It was a massive team, and the award we son was an award for the character team that built that puppet.

“It was a team of 12 people, and my job was to help in building that puppet and overseeing the way that puppet was used throughout the film. I was consistently working with the directors on the kind of performance they wanted to see, studying the actress, collaborating with hundreds of animators for the movie and working with all those different people to make sure it looks really seamless and feels cohesive throughout.”

She’s already hard at work on her next project: the animated adventure “Strange World,” currently scheduled for a Nov. 23 release. She doesn’t make it home to Blount County as often as she’d like — she returned after her work on “Encanto” wrapped last August for two weeks, and again at Thanksgiving, and while the area has grown tremendously in the 20 years since she graduated Maryville High, some things remain the same.

“I love visiting the (Great Smoky Mountains) National Park, because those sort of things never change: the sound of waterfalls, the smell of moss in the air,” she said.

Neither does the sense of wonder a child feels when seeing an animated Disney film on the big screen for the first time. She remembers it well, and that she’s now part of turning that magic into reality is a reward in and of itself.

“It’s really inspiring, and it definitely keeps me and everybody else going,” she said. “It’s so great when the movie comes out and you get great feedback, because it makes it all worthwhile. This one (“Encanto”) was probably my favorite, but my favorite before it was ‘Moana,’ which was another film that touched so many people. It was just really special to work on, but they all have been, and they’ve all changed me a little bit.”

And, she added, whenever she’s burning the midnight oil working up against a deadline, no matter the stress of the job, she never fails to remember that she’s achieved something she once only dreamed about.

“Definitely growing up there, Disney felt really big and really far away, but I kept working at it, and I got here,” she said. “No dream is too big.”

Steve Wildsmith has worked as a writer, editor and freelance journalist for The Daily Times for more than two decades. In addition to coverage of entertainment and occasional news topics, he also serves as the social media specialist for Maryville College. Contact him at

Award-winning freelance columnist and entertainment writer Steve Wildsmith is the former WeekEnd editor at The Daily Times.

Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.

Your comment has been submitted.

There was a problem reporting this.

Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language. PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK. Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated. Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything. Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person. Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts. Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.