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Experimental Yzma

March 3, 2013, 6:51 pm
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As I mentioned in a previous post about the character of Yzma I had something to to with her early development, when the movie was called "Kingdom in the Sun".
The one and only Eartha Kitt had been chosen as her voice, but at that time I didn't have any recordings yet.
So I picked a line from one of Eartha's last movies, Boomerang, in which she played opposite Eddie Murphy.
I tried to find a piece of dialogue that would epitomize Eartha Kitt's sultry image and …just have fun with it.
Actually I thought I had lost this footage, but recently a tape with the scene resurfaced.
The character design was still in progress, but I needed too move Yzma around, just to see what I had at that point.
So here is the lost experimental scene, Yzma is responding to the Inka figure Pacha, who just let her know that she is "over the hill".



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Thunderbolt and Dirty Dawson

March 5, 2013, 8:53 pm
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I found these two rough model sheets by Tom Oreb online, and they present a nice comparison to Milt Kahl's final character designs. 
Oreb begins with ideas for very graphic representations of character types. Milt maintains the modern graphic quality and adds form and dimension. The end result works beautifully for full animation, and the animators can now turn and draw the design from any angle.
I believe that Milt contributed final models for just about all of the characters in 101 Dalmatians, except for Cruella. She was in the very capable hands of Marc Davis, no refinement necessary there by another artist .









Just love this sketch, a big hole for a mouth with a bunch of lines around it.



A drawing of the Kanine Krunchies guy, who reacts so memorably, when Pongo turns off the TV.

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Pongo and Puppies

March 8, 2013, 10:44 pm
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When the whole Dalmatian family watches the Thunderbolt TV Show, we get the chance to see the puppies interacting for the first time. They behave like real kids, being caught up in the excitement of the show while commenting frequently. What a clever and beautiful sequence!
The puppies' personalities come through in the animation, and they are drawn with ultimate appeal.

Just a few years ago I came across a bunch of old xeroxed model drawings from this sequence.
They are the work of Milt Kahl, who didn't animate a single scene for this section of the film.
My guess is that Milt was asked to have a hand in many of the key poses, because of the fact that right here the audience gets to know the puppies' personalities.
I am nor sure if Milt came up with these terrific drawings based on Bill Peet's story board sketches, or if he went over other animators' rough drawings.
In any case, the key animators for this sequence were Eric Larson and Hal King, who wisely used Milt's input, because they knew it would make their scenes look much better.

The copies are very light and needed a little doctoring, but great drawings always shine through even in third generation xeroxes.














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Insightful Comments

March 11, 2013, 12:01 am
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In this clip from the 1977 UK TV show Ken Anderson, Ward Kimball, Marc Davis and Frank Thomas remember Walt Disney, Mickey Mouse and what it was like working at the studio in the old days.
I find these reflections fascinating, Frank Thomas might be exaggerating a little when he talks about relationships among the artists. Sure, there were egos, likes and dislikes, but in general these guys respected each other for their unique talents and contributions to the films.
I know this because they told me so, including cranky Milt.



Click on this link to see the clip on my youtube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpCMVZGV3xY

After some technical issues are resolved, the usual video format will appear on this blog.

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Geppetto

March 13, 2013, 12:19 am
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That's animator Art Babbitt animating a close up scene with toymaker Geppetto from the Disney classic Pinocchio. 
I had the chance to meet Art when he was still working for Dick Williams on The Thief and the Cobbler. He didn't mind talking about his Disney years and his strained relationship with Walt.
I remember him saying that after he left Disney he never again animated a character with so much warmth like Geppetto. He felt it was one of the best things he ever did.
I would agree, the level of depth Babbitt was able to inject into the character's acting is astounding.
He just loves this wooden puppet that came to life, and when he looses Pinocchio, his whole world seems to fall apart. But he still has enough hope and searches on to find his "son".
A real high in character animation.

Below is storyboard like panel which also shows frames from the animators' pencil tests.
Whenever the character drawing is transparent and you see the layout shining through, you are looking at rough animation. 
These Geppetto scenes were animated by Art.



During early design stages Fred Moore helped out with beautiful drawings like these.



More rough exploratory sketches by Fred and probably Art as well




After clean up artists did their magic you end up with refined drawings like these. 
The feeling of real volume is unbelievable. There is a thickness in the vest, the shirt and the apron.
And look at the subtle squash on the two fingers holding the string. Just beautiful!




For much more on art Babbitt's animated life go to Jake Friedman's outstanding blog:

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Roger Rabbit Screening and Panel

March 14, 2013, 8:57 pm
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Next month on April 4 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present a screening of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and a panel discussion with some of the film makers.
I am honored to be included, and I look forward to this special evening.

The event is already sold out, but there will be a standby line where tickets might become available in case of cancellations and no shows. Here is the link to the Academy's website:


Way back when the movie turned out to be such a big hit, Disney and Amblin thanked the key animators with this lovely note, and we also received a cel from one of our scenes. In this one Jessica was of course animated by Russel Hall. 
"Let's go home, Roger. I'll bake you a carrot cake!" What a fantastic line of dialogue!

Animation had become cool again. Little did we know that more great projects and huge successes were around the corner.



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Hands

March 17, 2013, 12:33 am
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My teacher in art school told me way back: "Once you figure out how to draw hands well, once you know the bone structure and how hands work mechanically and emotionally, the rest of the human figure will come fairly easy to you!"
He had a point. Hands are very complex body parts, and it takes serious study to understand and appreciate their expressiveness. 
In animation it's mostly head and hands working as a unit that communicate the character's emotions. The more comfortable you feel with hands being part of the acting the more successful your scenes will be.
I did these sketches above in preparation for Gaston, who needed to be handled with a fair amount of realism. But even if the style of the film is much more graphic and caricatured than Beauty & the Beast, I think it's always a good idea to research real hands as a basis to start from.

So let's take a look at how animation's master of linear hands Milt Kahl does it.
I made up these sheets of Brom Bones' arms and hands for inspiration and as research for Gaston. Since there is no shading in the drawings Milt makes every pencil line count. Even difficult positions are beautifully depicted, the anatomy is always spot on. Foreshortening, correct placement of fingernails and defining boney as well as fleshy parts, all that doesn't seem to be a problem for Milt at all.






Years later for the characters of The Sword in the Stone Milt pushed the graphic style of hands much further. All those boney knuckles, wrinkles and flesh folds are a joy to study, because this is now sophisticated design.



Ludwig van Drake's hands are much simplified, and the fingers maintain somewhat of a feathery look.



Medusa is about to grab the diamond from Penny, but before that she nervously opens and closes her hands in anticipation. These are the sketches of a master. The perspective just kills me.





Now she has the diamond in her hands and moves it in front of her. Look at the brainwork involved in finding the best staging and design for this short scene.



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Searching for the Perfect Pose

March 18, 2013, 8:56 pm
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Ollie Johnston animated this short scene with Pongo, who is trying not to loose sight of Anita and Perdita who are heading for the park. After a brief pause he leaps off the window ledge toward screen right.
What happens then is Pongo's attempt to convince Roger Radcliff to take him on a walk to the park.

It is fascinating to see how many sketches were made by various artists in order to find the perfect pose for the start of the scene. Since Bill Peet's storyboard didn't include a drawing for this moment, it was up to the animators to work it out.
The challenge is portray a dog from from a 3/4 rear angle, who looks out the window down the street with a sort of anxious attitude.
Above is the final frame from the film, but check out all these drawings.

This is how Frank Thomas analyzed Pongo's pose and its staging.





These could possibly be Ollie Johnston's sketches.




Milt Kahl tried a couple of different versions which helped to solve the drawing problem.



It looks like these animators exchanged drawings and asked each other for help more often than I thought. Then again producing a Disney animated feature is one big team effort.

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Albert Brenet

March 21, 2013, 12:41 am
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My rediscovery of this extraordinary French artist frustrates me for a couple of reasons:
First of all, since he passed away as recently as 2005 in Paris, I could have made the effort to meet him, when I was living there. 
Secondly, I love his animal studies, but very little of this work is published or available elsewhere.

Brenet was born in 1903, he showed artistic talent at a very early age, and in 1920 he enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His main focus became animal painting. 
In 1929 his artistic interests changed when he boarded a trade sailing vessel which took him to the West Indies on a seven month journey. He became fascinated with daily life onboard, and started to paint the ship's crew, see ports and people from foreign cultures.
Later his objects were also airplanes, trains and scenes from manufacturing factories.

This is some of his early spectacular animal work.





Bad photocopies, but unbelievable drawings. What power!



This one is a killer - no pun intended. Great inspiration for my film!





These paintings represent a small cross section of his life's work.
The style reminds me of some American Illustrators from Brenet's generation. Confident brush strokes loosely applied give you accurately observed environments and situations.




His paintings often seem to approach photographic realism. 
But just like a John Singer Sargent painting, the result is actually impressionistic.








I still haven't given up on sometime finding more of his great animal studies.

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Happy Birthday, Milt Kahl!

March 22, 2013, 6:39 pm
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Today is Milt's 104th birthday.
The photo was taken around June 25, 1974 at his "40th Anniversary with Disney Party" at the studio.
Milt is obviously enjoying goofy gifts from some of his colleagues.
When I started at Disney I remember seeing a long printed panel that was made up for the occasion. It was titled "40 Years of Kahl Characters" and showed many drawings from his long and astonishing career at the studio.

So this is a good enough excuse to post more of his roughs from his last animation assignment, Madame Medusa. Except for the the eyelash scene, all of these drawings are throw aways. The final animation differs just a little from what you see here.
"I was always trying to get the most entertainment out of everything" Milt said, and that intense search for character comedy, inventive drawing and great animation is evident in the these images.

But let's start off with a drawing from one of the first scenes he ever animated for the short "Mickey's Circus" from 1936.
























I posted a xeroxed image of this thumbnail page before, but this is a better scan.
Both of these were a offered at auction recently.



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Countdown to Marc Davis' 100th Birthday

March 24, 2013, 11:51 pm
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This March 30 marks the 100th birthday of Marc Davis.
I thought it might be a nice idea to post material relating to Marc's career until then.
The photo shows a very young Marc Davis. It was most likely taken sometime in 1939.
Some of the rough model sheets on the wall date back to 1938 and early 1939.
This means that the location isn't an office at the then new Burbank Studios, but a much smaller temporary studio for the Bambi unit on 861 Seward Street in Hollywood.

It's always fun to have a look around and see what you can find and identify in photos like this one.
It looks like Marc is holding a fly swatter, and he is pointing at a print of the Michelangelo painting The Holy Family (perhaps a fly had just landed on it). I don't recognize the artist of the print next to it.
Love the vintage radio, and what looks like a lunchbox on the left.
The illustration with a flock of birds Marc is working on is probably a story sketch. For inspiration he has a stuffed woodpecker in front of him. 
There is a sheet of paper just for sharpening pencils, but I also detect a Mickey Mouse doodle from The Sorcerer's Apprentice on it. That's unusual since Marc didn't work on that film.

Below are scans of a few of Marc's model sheets you see in the photo.






Some of Marc's bird studies for Bambi. All of these look so solid, because of his thorough understanding of birds' bone structure.


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Victory Through Air Power

March 26, 2013, 10:42 pm
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For this most unusual of all Disney animated feature films Marc Davis storyboarded the fight sequence between the eagle and the octopus. The drawings date back to 1942/43.
What a change from his story work on Bambi, which delicately showed  the poetry of nature and animal characters in the forest. Here Marc pulled all the stops in order to portray these action scenes in the most dramatic way. These story sketches were so effective that the powerful staging, color and lighting made it into the final film intact.
Marc had established himself as an artist who could handle any kind of material. Wether character styling, story sketch or animation, he excelled at all of these.

Incidentally, it was the Bill Tytla who animated the sequence, and I believe this was his last assignment before leaving Disney.
Marc and Tytla remained friends for the rest of their lives.





A final film frame from the sequence.

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Marc Davis talkes about Bambi

March 27, 2013, 9:15 pm
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Here is a clip from another UK TV show, this time from the early 80ies.
Marc is in his home studio, where he explains how he achieved human expressions on a realistic fawn. 
Frank Thomas told me once that the animators couldn't have come up with he same results if it wasn't for Marc's thorough and extremely useful research.

Characters like the ones in Bambi could easily look overly sweet and kitschy, but when you have artists involved with Marc's caliber, that's not going to happen. Instead the film's cast is portrayed with unparalleled elegance and beauty. 


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Moments with Marc

March 29, 2013, 12:56 am
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I was working on the Mickey Mouse featurette The Prince and the Pauper, when I got invited to attend a screening of the story reels for Marc Davis and Joe Grant.
I remember that both men had quite a few story notes. Marc told me that if I was going to animate Mickey, to keep in mind that even a little cartoon character like him has an inherent anatomy.
You can squash and stretch him all you want, he added, but it's important to maintain the specific structure that is so typical for him.
Can you tell that I am paying attention to Marc's words of wisdom?

In this photo Marc is giving direction to Jane Fowler alongside director Clyde Geronimi.
Jane is standing in for Eleanor Audley, who voiced the character of Maleficent and provided live action as well. Jane later married effects animator Jack Boyd.



A beautiful sculpt of Maleficent's head by Marc Davis.



This meeting with Walt seems to be going very well. That's sculptor Blaine Gibson on the right, who perfectly captured Marc's designs in three dimensions. 



The Disney ride It's a Small World was created by top notch artists.
The "unforgettable" song was composed by the Sherman brothers, Mary Blair did color and art direction while Alice Davis not only researched all of the folklore patterns for the dolls' costumes, but also supervised the manufacturing of the outfits. 
(We celebrated Alice's birthday earlier this week).
Marc helped with final staging of the many characters, he also developed their motion range.






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Marc's Cruella

March 30, 2013, 12:01 am
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A great photo with Marc Davis, Milt Kahl and Ken Anderson being interviewed, possibly for a radio program. Marc is doing the talking, but it looks like Milt is trying to get a word in.
These guys are at the top of their game, and the animators couldn't be happier, because for the first time they would see their own drawings on the screen thanks to the new Xerox process.

I cannot even imagine this film being inked, just look at the vitality of the line in this gorgeous scene.
Cruella is facing off with Nanny, who is holding her own in this confrontation.
An incredible composition for these two characters, full of personality in this one frame alone.



Stay tuned for Marc's official birthday post in a few hours!

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Twenty Years Ago...

March 30, 2013, 5:40 pm
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…to this day Marc and Alice Davis were hosting a garden party for family and friends to celebrate Marc's 80th birthday. 
As you can imagine I was looking forward to the event, but didn't want to show up to congratulate Marc with a store bought card. So I came up with this illustration in which Jafar invites Maleficent to a dance. I added lyrics from an old song in order to point out that Maleficent had an influence on the way I designed and animated Jafar. Simple, clear lines and shapes, resulting in a stylized design for the character.
The photo shows me presenting the drawing to Marc, who seemed to get a kick out of it. That's animation historian Charles Solomon in the middle.



In this clip from an interview from the late 1980ies Marc talks about how he developed Maleficent.
One thing about his calm and kind demeanor, behind all that is a forceful artist with brilliant judgement and strong opinions. If you asked him a question he would always tell you what he honestly thought, but unlike Milt Kahl, Marc did it with a tone of patience and composure.

Marc, you are greatly missed. Happy 100th birthday!


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Freddie Girls

April 2, 2013, 9:46 pm
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For a change of pace, here are a few Fred Moore girls you hopefully haven't seen yet.
Just when you thought you have seen all of them, in books or online, a new auction suddenly offers  brand-new ones. It's obvious why everybody at the studio wanted a drawing of a Freddie girl.
They are full of charm and innocence….most of the time. I have a few, which can't be posted here. I'd have to open an adult only blog, which I won't do.
It really wasn't that unusual for Disney animators to do gag drawings with adult topics. Kimball, Milt, Marc and others exchanged sketches "that were not meant for the public to see" as Alice Davis puts it. 
So in some ways these animation legends were just like regular guys.







An animation drawing from the Donald Duck short "Duck Pimples"


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Mushka Sketch

April 5, 2013, 4:59 pm
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                                                                         © Andreas Deja

Here is a little vis dev piece for my film Mushka. The bg/layout is by Peter Moehrle, and captures the sketchbook look of the film very well. So this is could be a final frame from the film.

On a different note, I will have a report a little later on the fantastic "Roger Rabbit Academy Event" from last night. 
The film looked great on the big screen, and it was fun to catch up with friends who worked on the movie, wether they were on the panel or in the audience.
We all wished of course that Richard Williams could have made it.

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The Dodo

April 7, 2013, 10:59 pm
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This character from "Alice in Wonderland" is beautifully designed, sometimes gorgeously animated, but with a completely underdeveloped personality.
There is way too little screen footage of him to get any real sense of who he is and why he would be important to the story.
The Dodo is a very handsome design though, and it's fun to trace back his visual development. 

This rough model sheet, probably drawn by Joe Rinaldi, is somewhat based on John Tenniel's  illustrations for the original book by Lewis Carroll.



Milt Kahl left the wonderfully contrasting design intact, as you can see in this clean up model sheet.
It is made up of tied down animation keys from a couple of his scenes.



Two of Milt's rough animation drawings of the Dodo. It's the character's unique proportions that make him stand out. A huge lower body with a relatively small chest. 



The Dodo advises the White Rabbit what to do with the oversized Alice, who is filling up a whole house: "Pull it out of the chimney!"
White Rabbit: "Yes, yes…go on, go on!"
Dodo: "Who me? Don't be ridiculous! What we need is a …."

Here are a few key drawings from that scene.
Beautifully drawn and acted, the character shows believable weight in the animation. The strong squash and stretch adds a sense of flamboyancy.
It is interesting to compare the way Milt is treating the hands compared to later bird characters.
These are very human like, while Allan-a-Dale and Lady Kluck from "Robin Hood" maintain wings, capable of articulating human gestures.






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Louie Schmitt

April 10, 2013, 5:59 pm
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When Cartoon Brew featured an article last year on "The Cute Greeting Cards Of Louie Schmitt And Stan Spohn" I had no idea that Amid Amidi was talking about THE Louie Schmitt. The one who drew this model sheet of the field mouse for the film Bambi.
Here is the link to Cartoon Brew's article:


These drawings just kill me. Schmitt is not following any early cartoon formulas, this stuff is based on real life by a super sensitive artist. Each and every pose is interesting and crazy appealing.
Best mouse studies I've ever seen.
And look at the these beautiful Mole sketches.



I believe this opossum is his work as well, but I am not 100% sure.



According to Frank and Ollie's book on Bambi this is Louie Schmitt in the front.
(Behind him are Ollie Johnston and Milt Kahl.)
Now I need to find out what scenes he actually animated in Bambi. After leaving Disney Schmitt ended up working for Tex Avery on some classic shorts, including the hilarious Bad Luck Blackie from 1949.


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