Pres Romanillos - my 480th pick to be named a Disney Legend

Animator Pres Romanillos is my 480th pick to be named a Disney Legend.

In 1989 Romanillos was hired by Disney Animation, who were at the time actively recruiting animators. He began as an animation trainee, working on many Disney films, including The Little Mermaid (1989), The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Mulan (1998), and The Princess and the Frog (2009). Early on he impressed many of his colleagues. Supervising animator Ruben A. Aquino met him while working on The Little Mermaid, and said of him: "from the very beginning, I was impressed by his beautiful draftsmanship, but even more by his incredible passion for animation."

On Pocahontas he was promoted to animator, working under lead animator Glen Keane, who described him as "a man who loved to draw. When he came to the edge of his paper, his pencil didn't stop; he continued to draw characters onto the wood of his animation desk." Director Eric Goldberg said of his work: "It was so beautiful, Mike Gabriel and I glanced at each other briefly and said, 'Yep, you're an animator'."

Eventually he was given a lead role on Disney's Mulan, working at the new studio in Florida, and creating the character of Shan-Yu, the leader of the Hun army. Mulan co-director Barry Cook described Shan-Yu as "a straight villain who needed to feel like a real threat to our heroine. Pres pulled that off in an amazing way. 

In 2007, Romanillos was diagnosed with leukemia but still worked at Disney until after The Princess and the Frog. A year after the movie came out, he died from the complications on July 17, 2010.