What is tilt shift?

In that Hollywood building here, the life-size, three-dimensional figure was being put through its final tune-up, its chin rising and hands gesturing in response to technicians, in preparation for shipment to the Hall of Presidents exhibit at Disney World in Orlando, Fla.

Disney officials declined to say how much it cost to build an Obama. They have cloaked the project with a blanket of secrecy befitting the Secret Service, permitting this reporter to be the only journalist thus far to view the figure up close but allowing only a Disney photographer to take its picture.

Mr. Obama has seen renderings of the figure, telling a Disney employee, Pamela Fisher, “that we had made him better-looking than he was.”

Ollie Johnston is what you call a complete artist. I spent many a day as a child reading his book The illusion Of Life (co-written with fellow master artist Frank Thomas) and it was a major contributor to my lifelong love of animation. They were two of Disney’s “Nine Old Men” who changed film and entertainment as we know it, for the better.

Ollie Johnston, who died on Monday aged 95, was a leading animator with Walt Disney and the last survivor of the “Nine Old Men” who had shaped the style of the studio’s films from Snow White onwards.

Johnston’s particular contribution was the injection of emotion and his insistence that the characters should seem naturally involved in the situations demanded by the plot.

According to his friend and principal collaborator, Frank Thomas, “Ollie was the only one of the Studio animators who was sensitive to character relationships and how they affected story.

Back then cartoon characters seldom touched unless they hit each other. But one day Ollie said, ‘You know, the act of two people holding hands communicates in a powerful way.’ And he was right. His warmth made a difference in so many of our characters.”

Among the friendships Johnston created in his work for Disney were Baloo and Mowgli in The Jungle Book (1967), the villainous, sycophantic relationship between Prince John and Sir Hiss in Robin Hood (1973) and the parents, Pongo and Perdita, in 101 Dalmatians (1961).

Brainy Gabriella of “High School Musical” would no doubt blush at the idea that nude pictures of young actress Vanessa Hudgens were circulating on the Internet.

The problem for the Walt Disney Co. is that Hudgens plays Gabriella.

The 18-year-old star of Disney Channel’s wildly successful “High School Musical” franchise apologized on Friday. The photos show a coquettishly smiling Hudgens posing naked in a bedroom with a red curtain behind her.

“I want to apologize to my fans, whose support and trust means the world to me,” Hudgens said in a statement. “I am embarrassed over this situation and regret having ever taken these photos. I am thankful for the support of my family and friends.”

Hudgens’ publicist, Jill Fritzo, wouldn’t say anything about who took the pictures and how they slipped out onto the Internet.

Once you take a picture in the year 2007, you should always assume it can and will get onto the internet (this picture was the nail in the coffin of my presidential aspirations). And why would you do such a thing? These kids today have no brains. They don’t think. They simply cannot add up two and two in their heads and realize that Disney won’t think twice to throw them out in the trash for being a skank. For every one of them that makes it, there’s 3,000 equally talented kids ready to fill their spot. But no, this dumb-dumb takes nude pictures and then is shocked and appalled when they get out into the internet.

Really.

If someone had told me back in 1991 that Generation X would have turned out to be the smart ones, I would have never believed you.