I just found this attitude of carefully studying the real world , in order to figure out how to best represent it in fiction/animation/3d,
kind of relatable :) there's tons of fun anecdotes like that in the book.
...because they wanted to figure out how the light of the fire would
reflect on the kettle surface, so a small fire was necessary to observe and figure this out. ignoring the protests of their coworkers, they just kept studying the moving fire and the surface,
until their coworkers ended up heroically putting out the fire...
in one anecdote, two animators wanted to animate a witch's kettle
under a burning fire. and so they started a small fire in the studio...
really enjoying this book so far. has so many neat and interesting anecdotes
from the early days of disney.