'' (1930), his first appearance as a friendly pet. The character of Pluto originated with animator
Norm Ferguson, who came to the Disney Studio in 1929. Ferguson is credited with introducing the
animation principle of "
follow through and overlapping action": where different parts of the body move at different times and speeds compared to the main action. Ferguson first introduced this technique in the
Silly Symphony short
Frolicking Fish (released May 8, 1930): where he animated a trio of dancing fish, and offset the movement of their fins, having them "drag" along with the main body's movement. This gave the characters a more flowing and natural movement than in most other animation of that time.
Walt Disney was so impressed with Ferguson's work on
Frolicking Fish, that he ordered all of his animators study the scene. Shortly after completing his work on
Frolicking Fish, Disney assigned Ferguson to work on the
Mickey Mouse cartoon
The Chain Gang (released on September 5, 1930); where Mickey is portrayed as a prisoner who escapes from jail, and is pursued by two nameless
bloodhounds. Ferguson was tasked with animating a scene where Mickey runs towards the camera and is followed by the two bloodhounds, who sniff Mickey's trail, look up, snort, and bark at the camera. According to
Frank Thomas and
Ollie Johnston, when describing this scene to Ferguson, Disney reminisced about different dogs he grew up with as a child, and acted out their mannerisms (much to the staff's amusement), which Ferguson would then translate into his animation. When animating the scene, Ferguson applied his principle of "follow through and overlapping action" to the jowls of the dogs, which gave them surprisingly lifelike movement for the time. Animation historian
Michael Barrier wrote about the scene: Upon reviewing the scene, Disney was so impressed by Ferguson's animation on the dogs, he decided to develop one of them into a recurring character. Disney animator
Ben Sharpsteen claimed they changed the name to Pluto because: "We thought the name [Rover] was too common, so we had to look for something else. ... We changed it to
Pluto the Pup ... but I don't honestly remember why." Some Disney animators reportedly believed that Disney chose the name "Pluto" to capitalize on the then-newly-named ninth planet of
Pluto. However, animation historian
John Canemaker states that Disney chose the name simply because he once had a dog named Pluto. Other animators handled the character, but Ferguson became the Pluto specialist at the Disney Studio. Over the next few years, Ferguson continued to develop and refine the character, ultimately crystalizing with
Playful Pluto (1934), in which Ferguson animated a scene where Pluto gets a piece of
flypaper stuck to his rear end. The sequence was storyboarded by
Webb Smith, and Ferguson padded the scene and added extra bits of comic business. The scene was considered a major landmark in the development of
character animation. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston described the scene as: Following the circulation of
Art Babbitt's
Character Analysis of the Goof around the Disney studio, Ferguson wrote a four-page character bible on Pluto that was published on Jan 4, 1936, and detailed Pluto's body construction, facial expressions, mannerisms and personality. ==Appearances==