Walt Disney's Bambi — The Magic Behind the Masterpiece Bambi is a 1942 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the book Bambi: A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten. The fifth film in the Disney Animated Canon , the film was released by RKO Radio Pictures on August 13, 1942, during World War II. The main characters are Bambi (a white-tailed deer), his parents (the Great Prince of the Forest and his unnamed mother), his friends Thumper (a pink-nosed rabbit), and Flower (a skunk), his childhood friend and future mate, Faline and the villain of the story Man. The plot centers around Bambi learning to grow up in the wild after his mother is shot by Man. For the film, Disney took the liberty of changing Bambi's species into a white-tailed deer from his original species of roe deer, since roe deer do not inhabit the United States, and the white-tailed deer is more familiar to Americans. The film received three Academy Award nominations for Best Sound, Best Song for "Love Is a Song" and Original Music Score. The film was a major catalyst in what people now see as "environmental films", as well as Walt Disney's favorite of his animated films. In June 2008, the American Film Institute presented a list of its "10 Top 10", the best ten films in each of ten "classic" American film genres. After polling over 1,500 people from the creative community, Bambi placed third in animation. A direct-to-video midquel, titled Bambi II, was released in 2006.