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Wilhelm M. Busch 1959
To start off, let me inform you that my book on Disney's Nine Old Men has been published. If you order it from Amazon, it's not a pre-order anymore (even if it says so). Also, Amazon just added their...
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Milt's Thumper
We all know that Milt Kahl does "Eccentric" very well. Medusa, Madame Mim, the short TigerTrouble etc. He also does "Realism" well. Bambi, Peter Pan and Prince Phillip.Of course he also had a knack for...
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Kimball Thumbnails
Ward Kimball animated a little musical number involving Ludwig von Drake for Disney's 1961 TV show Adventures in Color. At that time Kimball didn't enjoy animating Von Drake very much, he was still...
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Art Direction for Ben & Me
I have always loved the look of Disney's 1953 featurette Ben and Me.Ken Anderson and Claude Coats were art directors, Al Dempster was head of backgrounds. (How lucky can you get, I had the chance to...
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Walt Disney on PBS
All I can say is that I was tremendously excited when I heard that American Public Television was working on a two part program on Walt Disney as part of The American Experience series.It turned out...
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Touch Up
Most everyone knows that the rough drawings done by Disney animators needed to go through a Clean Up process. The clean up assistant would take a new sheet of paper and trace the pose by applying a...
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1978 Thames TV Documentary
In the recent past I posted a few clips from this fascinating British documentary on Disney, which shows the company's history as well as what it was up to during the late 1970s.Those clips were of...
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Lecture & Book Signing
Tomorrow, Saturday October 10, I will be at Van Eaton Galleries in Sherman Oaks, California. At 4:30 pm I'll start off with a one hour lecture on the work of Disney's Nine Old Men, which will include...
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Peter Pan Stuff
Nice production photo with sequence director Wilfred Jackson (next to a kneeling assistant) discussing a live action reference scene with actors Bobby Driscoll and Kathryn Beaumont.You can see in the...
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The G#+x!! Prince
As I said before, Milt Kahl despised an assignment like a Prince character. As a young animator on Snow White he animated complex scenes involving all the forest animals surrounding the title...
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How rough, how clean?
Young pencil animators often wonder about the nature of their drawing style. Am I drawing too clean, am I loosing life in my animation? Or do I draw too rough, does my work still communicate? Eric...
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Eric Larson Art
It looks like Eric Larson is being handed what might be a ring from Disney Studio Chief Ron Miller to celebrate an anniversary during Eric's long career as an animator and teacher.His first feature...
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Aladdin Buddies
Two friends of mine are currently part of the the enormously popular universe of Aladdin "On Stage".Jonathan Freeman is the first and only actor who voiced a Disney animated villain and then went on to...
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Goofy
Some fun Goofy material.The beautiful watercolor illustrations above were published in Good Housekeeping Magazine.The quality of the art in this page as well as in many other ones, based on Disney...
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Jungle Book Thumbnails
I really don't know who drew these small thumbnail sketches for The Jungle Book. They might have been done for the original, darker story treatment, based on Bill Peet's concepts. The rhino Rocky shows...
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They Drew as they Pleased
You need to get this book!Didier Ghez has compiled the most beautiful Visual Development artwork, representing the 1930s at Disney Studios. You will find gorgeous sketches, watercolors and pastels by...
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Villains
If you'd ask me what Disney villain is the scariest, most evil, terrifying...my answer would be The Devil on Bald Mountain from Fantasia. Not much character development here, but a glorious animated...
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Technicolor Flowers
The Flower Ballet from Fantasia's Nutcracker sequence has always been one of my favorite pieces of animation. What an unusual mix of effects and character animation.The storyboard pastel sketches are...
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Before Ever After
If you -like me- ever wondered how on earth Walt Disney's artists reached such astronomical artistic heights, you will find some answers to that question in this new book.The short and feature films...
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Aristocats Stuff
I really like Ken Anderson's Vis Dev work for The Aristocats. Frank Thomas felt that Ken's work lost strength after his stroke in the early 1960s, but to me his art certainly never lost any charm. Just...
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