The Art of Aaron Blaise: Disney Animation Mastery Applied to Wildlife and Creature Design

Aaron Blaise is one of the most credentialed art educators on YouTube, bringing to his channel a career that includes working as an animator and director at Walt Disney Animation Studios on some of the most beloved films of the Disney Renaissance. His credits include The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Mulan, and Brother Bear, the last of which he co-directed. This professional background gives his teaching an authority and depth that is simply not available from educators without comparable industry experience, and his channel has attracted over 800,000 subscribers who recognise the value of learning from someone who has worked at the highest level of the animation and illustration industries.

Blaise left Disney in 2003 to pursue his own creative work and to teach, and he has since built one of the most respected independent art education businesses in the industry. His YouTube channel provides free access to a substantial body of his teaching, while his website offers more comprehensive paid courses in wildlife painting, character design, creature design, and animation.

Wildlife Painting: The Signature Subject

Wildlife painting is the subject that most clearly reflects Aaron Blaise's personal passion and expertise. He has spent decades studying and painting animals, developing a deep understanding of animal anatomy, movement, and behaviour that informs both his painting and his animation work. His wildlife painting tutorials are among the most technically detailed and biologically accurate available anywhere, reflecting genuine knowledge of the animals he paints rather than a surface-level aesthetic approach.

The wildlife painting content covers a wide range of subjects including big cats, bears, wolves, birds, and other animals, with each tutorial demonstrating not just the painting technique but the underlying anatomical and behavioural knowledge that makes the paintings convincing. Blaise explains how an animal's skeletal structure determines its surface form, how muscle groups create the shapes visible under the skin, and how understanding these structures allows the artist to paint animals convincingly from any angle and in any pose.

His approach to animal anatomy is systematic and thorough, drawing on the same knowledge base that informed his work as an animator. Understanding how animals move, how their weight shifts, and how their forms change in different positions is essential for both animation and painting, and Blaise's tutorials communicate this understanding in ways that are directly applicable to both disciplines.

Character Design and Animation

The character design and animation content reflects Blaise's Disney career directly, covering the principles and techniques that professional animators and character designers use to create compelling, expressive characters. These tutorials go well beyond the surface-level character design content that fills much of YouTube, engaging with the underlying principles of appeal, silhouette, expression, and movement that distinguish professional character design from amateur work.

The animation principles content covers the twelve principles of animation developed by Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, which remain the foundation of character animation in both traditional and digital media. Blaise's explanations of these principles are informed by his direct experience applying them in professional productions, giving his teaching an authority and specificity that purely theoretical treatments cannot match.

Creature design is another area of strength, covering the design principles that make imaginary creatures feel believable and alive. Blaise's approach to creature design is grounded in the same anatomical knowledge that informs his wildlife painting, using real animal anatomy as the foundation for designing fictional creatures that feel like they could actually exist. This approach produces creature designs with a biological plausibility that distinguishes them from purely decorative or fantastical designs.

Digital and Traditional Painting

Blaise's painting tutorials cover both digital and traditional media, with Photoshop being his primary digital tool and watercolour and gouache his primary traditional media. The digital painting tutorials demonstrate professional-level techniques for creating finished illustrations, from initial sketch through value studies to final colour rendering, with detailed commentary on the decision-making at each stage.

The traditional painting content is particularly valuable for artists who want to see how professional-level traditional painting techniques are applied to wildlife and character subjects. Blaise's watercolour and gouache work demonstrates a level of technical mastery that reflects decades of practice, and his explanations of his technique are clear and specific enough to be genuinely instructive.

The Online School

Beyond YouTube, Blaise operates a comprehensive online school at creatureartteacher.com, offering structured courses in wildlife painting, character design, creature design, and animation. These courses provide more depth and structure than individual YouTube videos, with defined modules, practice assignments, and the kind of cumulative skill building that comes from following a structured curriculum.

The online school has become one of the most respected sources of professional-level art education in the animation and illustration industries, with students who have gone on to careers at major studios citing Blaise's courses as significant in their professional development.

The Disney Legacy

The Disney legacy that Blaise brings to his teaching is not merely a credential. It is a genuine source of knowledge and perspective that shapes everything about how he teaches. The principles of character design, animation, and visual storytelling that were developed and refined at Disney over decades of feature film production represent some of the most sophisticated thinking about visual communication ever developed, and Blaise's direct experience applying these principles in professional productions gives his teaching a depth and authority that cannot be replicated by educators who have not worked at this level.

His willingness to share this knowledge freely through YouTube, and in more depth through his paid courses, represents a genuine contribution to the art education community. The knowledge he shares is the kind that was previously accessible only to people who worked at major animation studios, and making it available to independent artists and students worldwide has had a measurable impact on the quality of character design and animation education available online.

The Bottom Line

The Art of Aaron Blaise offers something genuinely rare: professional-level instruction in wildlife painting, character design, creature design, and animation from an artist with direct experience working at the highest level of the Disney animation studio. For artists who want to develop skills in these areas with the guidance of someone who has applied them professionally, Blaise's channel and online school are among the most valuable resources available anywhere.