For Walton, the opportunity to voice the scene-stealing hyperactive hamster Rhino was a dream come true. "I love animation. I've always loved Disney," says Walton. "You know, having the chance to work at Disney in the first place is pretty much an incredible dream I didn't ever imagine would come true. Then getting to be a character, a voice in a Disney film, and in a really good Disney film, in a funny, well-written, well-animated character, it's not hard for me to generate a lot of enthusiasm. I'd say it's pretty much me dialed up a little bit more than normal."

As far as how Walton got the part, his story pretty much speaks directly to the internally collaborative process which Disney/Pixar is committed to only making stronger.

"The way we work is we do scratch dialogue with the intention of someday replacing it with the real actor that comes in from the outside, and Mark had been doing the scratch. Obviously, the search was over. He was fantastic," says Williams.

But, of course, they couldn't just come out and telling Walton he had won the part.

"We wanted to find a way to tell him that we could get on camera, so we set up a mock recording session," continues Williams. "We told him we were going to re-record a line with a little bit more enthusiasm this time, and we changed the end of the line to say, 'And I am the voice of Rhino!' So Mark goes through the line, he's all hyped up, and suddenly he stops when he gets to that part of it and looks at me. I said, 'You got the part!' And he went bananas! He was jumping up and down and throwing the music stand around and screaming. It was a really genuine reaction, and that's why it's so great because you sense that there's really truth there."

Even walking through the halls of the Disney Animation Studios, you can almost feel the atmosphere of creative collaboration. Around every corner are groups of animators or storymen huddled around a computer or talking amongst themselves. Where walls once were are wide open spaces, a move our tour guide tells us came almost immediately after the studio merger. Lining one of the Bolt hallways are pictures of at least a dozen dogs brought in to help animators create Bolt, and of Doink, the hamster who spent his weekdays rolling around Bolt's hallways and every weekend with a different staffer eager to take him home.

Longtime Actor Becomes First Time Disney Dog

As for what the Disney/Pixar studio is like for someone coming in from the outside, if John Travolta's experience is any indication, it is a great place to work.

Since Bolt marks Travolta's first foray into animated features (as the voice of Bolt), choosing his first role was not something he took lightly.

"What led me to the piece, is what my good friends have done," says Travolta. "Tom Hanks did Toy Story, Robin Williams did Aladdin, and I didn't want to do average—I was competitive in a certain way. If I'm going to do an animated feature, I'm going to do a great one."

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