A year after Walt Disney made history with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, its artists were struggling to find the right design for Bambi（斑比) , the tale of a young deer. The film's production team realized they needed a style that highlighted almost all of the leaves, flowers and mushrooms in their first feature-length animated film. 

Soon they got their inspiration from Tyrus Wong, whose work was on display as a new exhibit at New York City's Museum. In 1938, the Walt Disney Studio hired him to draw the frames between the main drawings of the animators. After reading the story of Bambi, he saw an opportunity to break out of his humdrum job. He said to himself "This is all outdoor scenery. And I'm a landscape painter. This will be great!"

Inspired by Chinese landscape paintings, he used watercolor and pastels to make sketches that bring the feeling of forest scenes with simple strokes of color and special attention to light and shadow. Wong's sketches attracted Disney and became the guide for Bambi's background artists, who were later trained to imitate his style. "His expression was a great leap forward for the medium, "writes John Lasseter，the chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios. "Where other films were literal, Bambi was expressive and emotional. "In2001，Wong was named"Disney Legend", and he received the recognition as the true lead artist.

He pursued art all his life and still made art during his retirement, including toy animals from recycled materials and handmade kites that he regularly flew off the Santa Monica Pier in California. "People admire his works because of Bambi, but Bambi was just a really small partof his life, "says his youngest daughter. "He considers himself not a great artist but a lucky artist, who was at the right place at the right time. "