Biography

Frank Armitage, the acclaimed artist and production illustrator who contributed to such Disney classics as Sleeping Beauty and Mary Poppins and to the Fox visual-effects standout Fantastic Voyage. A longtime Walt Disney Imagineer contributed murals and designs to theme parks around the world, he contributed to backgrounds and layouts for such features as Peter Pan (1953), Sleeping Beauty (1959), Mary Poppins (1964) and The Jungle Book (1967). In 1977, Armitage returned to Disney to become an Imagineer, and his artwork of anatomical subject matter paved the way for the Wonders of Life Pavilion at the Epcot park in Orlando. He created a concept painting for Le Chateau de la Belle au Bois Dormant (The Castle of the Sleeping Beauty) at Disneyland Paris, in the style of the original Eyvind Earle designs. He also painted a 5,500-square-foot mural for the Safari Fare Restaurant at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida as well as several murals for Tokyo DisneySea.

Armitage left Disney after The Jungle Book, and went on to provide production illustration for Fox's science fiction film Fantastic Voyage. The film sees a submarine crew shrunk to microscopic size to repair the damaged brain of an injured scientist. The visual effects made good use of Armitage's expertise in anatomical drawings, and went on to win two Academy Awards for Best Art Direction-color and Best Special Effects.

In 2006, Frank donated much of his medical art collection to the University at Chicago (UIC), the organization's Biomedical Visualization Graduate program (BVIS), which established "The Frank Armitage Lecture," honoring his legacy in the field of medical illustration. Frank lived in Paso Robles with his wife, Karen Connolly Armitage when he passed away peacefully on January 4, 2016. Frank is survived by his former wife, Patty Ray and their three children, Natalie Doolittle, William Doolittle, Kenyan Armitage and Trent Armitage, a sister Margaret Parfett in Australia.