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Ferdinand
Disneyās short film Ferdinand The Bull from 1938 is one of of a few gems produced at the studio at the hight of its golden age of animation. It is based on the book by Munro Leaf which was published...
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Young Kimball
Here is Ward, practically as a kid at about twenty-five, animating rich acting scenes with one of his iconic characters Jiminy Cricket. It is astonishing to realize just how young the Disney crew was...
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Milt Kahl's Great Granddaughter has Talent
Her name is Zoe, and it sure looks like she inherited some of her great grandfatherās artistic ability.I met Zoe in April of 2009 when she and her family visited Disney Animation (a day before the Milt...
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Goons
Sleeping Beautyās Goons have their roots in paintings by Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516). When I was a kid there was nothing scarier than to look at his pictures depicting visions of hell....
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TS Sullivant 10
My 10th post on the breathtaking art of Mr. Sullivant. who influenced so many artists that followed him, Disneyās animators, Walt Kelly, Ralph Bakshi, to name a few.Ā One thing that amazes me is the...
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Disney Colors
Traditional animators generally donāt deal a lot with color. We express ourselves with black pencil lines on white paper. That doesnāt mean though that most of us donāt have great appreciation for...
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Walt Stanchfield
Not many animation artists make good teachers, but Walt Stanchfield was a heck of an inspirational instructor to many folks who worked at Disney during the 1980s and 90s. In his life drawing classes he...
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Heinrich Kley's Reynard, the Fox
The stories about Reynard the Fox go back hundreds of years. There are French, German and Dutch versions, who all portray the character as somewhat nasty, but also clever and charismatic. He gets into...
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Mowgli Studies
āYou eat ants?ā Mowgli asks Baloo in disbelief. The scene from the film Jungle Book was animated by Ollie Johnston. Milt Kahl drew this sketch of Mowgliās face as a suggestion for what the kidās...
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Disney Articles
Not so many years ago there were hardly any books available relating to animation. Today of course every new animated feature comes with its own book on The Making of.Back then magazine articles were...
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Marc Davis at the Walt Disney Family Museum
I am off to the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco for the opening of the Marc Davis exhibit, Leading Ladies and Femmes Fatales: The Art of Marc Davis.Marcās expertise in developing and...
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Pinocchio comes to Life
Here once again are a couple of panels (I call them updated storyboards) from the film Pinocchio that demonstrate how the Blue Fairy brings him to life. These are snapshots from the original 35 mm...
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Sleeping Beauty's Lackey
The character designs for the film Sleeping Beauty are highly inventive and groundbreaking. Other studios had already experimented with short films that looked very different and modern. These...
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Character Relationships
Staging personalities together in a way that brings out their personalities is a quality Frank Thomas was very good at. He knew well that having contrasting attitudes among characters helps to create...
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Busch Horses
Wilhelm M. Busch was good at drawing anything, but his illustrations depicting horses show the artistās special connection with the animal. The reason could be the fact that horses are readily...
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Hook has a Cold
After his rough encounter with the Crocodile at Skull Rock, Captain Hook manages to get back to his ship, where a bad cold plagues him. Frank Thomas animated this sequences with Hook wheezing and...
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Peter Pan Rough Layouts
I find these layout sketches utterly magical. Disney artists who researched and designed environments were wizards. Even the house of the Darling family, in- and outside, is presented with a dreamlike...
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Baloo brags about fighting the Monkeys
Milt Kahl only animated a handful of scenes with Baloo from The Jungle Book.After King Louieās monkeys kidnap Mowgli, they trip the bear who subsequently falls down a steep hillside. At this point the...
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Downsized
After Cruella and the Baduns crash their cars during a chase, we see the characters stranded in the snow among automotive wreckage. Cruella yells at Jasper and Horace, and blames them for this...
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Scar in Entertainment Weekly
What a pleasant surprise! I was recently going through the pages of the magazine Entertainment Weekly when I came across this article on animated villains. The write up referres to the upcoming release...
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