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Medusa's Pivotal Sequence
By many moviegoers and critics Disney Animation during the 1970s wasn’t hailed as the pioneering medium it once was. But there were still groundbreaking achievements in character animation being made,...
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Quotes
…from Disney artists, who knew what they were talking about. In the past I have shown these and other “quote cards” during lectures on classic Disney animation, and sometimes they started off an...
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Chuck Jones
Like most of you I am a HUGE fan of Chuck Jones. Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him on a number of occasions. On New Year’s day of 1990 Chuck invited a small group of Disney animators...
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Daan Jippes on Prince & the Pauper
Famous Dutch Comic artist Daan Jippes worked at Disney Animation for a few years on movies like Beauty & the Beast and Aladdin. He also did storyboards and character designs for the 1990 Mickey...
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Daan Jippes on Aladdin
Here are a few more drawings by Daan Jippes. They are early character designs for the Genie, the Thief, Aladdin and Abu. As usual Daan’s work is inventive, alive and very animatable. His influences...
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More Maleficent
This is a powerful scene, Maleficent is in full control. Her curse has come true, Aurora touched the spindle and lies dead on the floor. The Three Fairies are too late.“You poor, simple fools..thinking...
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Peet's and Kahl's Brer Fox
It’s hard to imagine that story artist Bill Peet’s first character sketches of Brer Fox looked already this refined and so full of personality. He immediately came up with unconventional, appealing...
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Fred Moore, 103
It is still Sunday evening on the west coast, so I can still say that today Fred Moore would be 103 years old. For a moment I imagined how great it would be to be able to visit him, shake his hand,...
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Odds and Ends
As I am trying to organize my studio space, I came across a few things from my Disney past.The sketches above are character designs for Queen Moustoria from the 1986 film The Great Mouse Detective. I...
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Rhinos
The Royal Guards in the film Robin Hood are played by rhinos. This was a appropriate choice be production designer Ken Anderson, who came up with all the initial animal versions for the cast of...
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Variations on a Theme
While studying book illustrations by Wilhelm M. Busch I discovered a reoccurring theme.These three drawings were published in different books at different times.A elderly man is watching a young woman...
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Albert Uderzo
It must have been in spring of 1995 when I met the legendary Uderzo in Paris. I was working at the time at the French Disney Animation Studio on the Mickey short Runaway Brain. My friend Didier Ghez...
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Designing Cinderella
After my presentation on Marc Davis last Saturday at the Walt Disney Family Museum, his art is still on my mind. Beside animation Marc was involved in many aspects during a film's pre-production phase....
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A Hidden Gem Sequence...
…in the movie Robin Hood is the puppet show during the song number “The Phony King of England”.Overall this is a fairly weak section, it contains tons of re-used animation from Jungle Book, The...
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Say Cheese!
That would be a loose translation of the German phrase: Bitte recht freundlich!This Heinrich Kley ink sketch portrays an energetic photographer trying to position a male model for a perfect picture....
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That Staircase
In the film Cinderella I have always loved the way the staircase was portrayed, dark and scary like real Hitchcock setting. These eerie steps represent the passageway between Cinderella’s living...
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Fritz Hug- Animals from the Bible
More awesome drawings from Swiss animal artist Fritz Hug. This 1970 book edition, loosely translated from German, is titled:Animals from the Bible, Part 1 , All kinds of Birds and other Creatures (I...
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Jiří Trnka
Jiří Trnka (1912-1969) was a Czech puppet animator/director, children book illustrator and fine artist. Some people called him the Walt Disney of Eastern Europe, even though the content of their films...
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Toot, Whistle Plunk and Boom
Looking at stills or artwork from this 1953 Disney short reminds us just how great the need had become for graphic change at the studio. While quite a few short films from the 1950s showed a...
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Pinocchio Art II
Atmospheric studies and layout sketches from Disney’s film Pinocchio show a level of sophistication and dedication that leaves the viewer mesmerized. There is attention to detail, but nothing is...
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