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The Queen of Hearts, from Mary to Frank
 I have always loved Mary Blair's depictions of the Queen of Hearts for the film Alice in Wonderland.A grotesque, brash, bossy and even dangerous monarch. Because of her stylized pre production imagery...
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Kaa
Milt Kahl is showing some guests the scene he is working on for The Jungle Book. Kaa, the python, has a strangle hold on Mowgli and is about to devour him. Luckily Bagheera, the panther, interrupts the...
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A Moment of Truth
I left Walt Disney Animation exactly five years ago.This moment makes me reflect on my early days at the studio, which was then called Walt Disney Productions. You can't tell from the photo (taken by...
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Stepmother Reference
I am always fascinated to find out how Disney animators used live action reference for their animated scenes. Fascinating as well is to see what went on during the filming of the live action. What kind...
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Fritz Hug Prints
More art from Swiss animal artist extraordinaire, Fritz Hug. I love his stuff.His compositions are always great, and each sketch or illustration showcases a pose that is so typical and unique for this...
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Brian Bedford
Tony award winning actor Brian Bedford, who provided the voice for Disney's Robin Hood has died.Bedford was a classical Tony award winning actor, who performed on stages in the UK, the US and Canada....
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Robin Hood Scene II
Here is part two of Milt Kahl's Robin Hood scene, which required many key drawings. Lots going on, there is a walk, and the acting is very lively. The more motion on the screen, the more drawings the...
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Robin Hood Scene III
Here is the final part of Milt's Robin Hood scene, in which the fox first acts out a proposal for Maid Marian, before admitting that "it just isn't done that way".I don't know why Milt's timing charts...
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Study by Marc Davis
Marc Davis drew this study of a young woman in a reflective mood when he was twenty-eight years old. The US had just entered WW II, and perhaps she is thinking about her boyfriend or husband, who was...
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More Book Ideas
I really enjoyed working with Focal Press (Taylor & Francis) on my Nine Old Men book. I was thrilled to find out about the generous page count of 400. And after discussing a unique kind of layout,...
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Mel Shaw at the Walt Disney Family Museum
A terrific exhibition opened a few days ago at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco.Mel Shaw: Animator on Horseback will run until Sept. 12, 2016.It is crazy to find out that Mel never had an...
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Fantasia Art
Development Art for Fantasia, done in a variety of techniques, amazes me. These artists were thinking outside of the box, they were doing stuff never attempted before. And they were thinking BIG....
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Mary Costa
Disney background painter and imagineer Frank Armitage died recently at the age of 91. I remember meeting him briefly once or twice when still working at Disney. He was soft-spoken, and like all of the...
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Lady & the Tramp Art
An animation colleague of mine said this about the film Lady & the Tramp: "Oh, it's just a soup opera with dogs. Boy gets girl, boy looses girl, boy gets girl in the end."Be that as it may, I think...
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Clock Cleaners
Clock Cleaners from 1937 is one of my favorite Disney shorts. The story provides plenty of great gags, and the character animation is incredible. The layouts involve dramatic down shots, which can...
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Madame Medusa Outtakes
These unfinished Medusa drawings by Milt Kahl were a Christmas gift to myself. Heritage Auctions offered them recently, and there are certain things ...you just have to have.It doesn't get any better...
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A Blast from the Past
I was surprised to see some of my earliest character designs for The Black Cauldron being offered at Van Eaton Galleries. I haven't seen these sketches since I made them, around 1981.Boy, if this...
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Saludos Amigos
This month seventy-three years ago Disney's Saludos Amigos premiered. Two years later in 1945 the second of the South American features The Three Caballeros opened.Frank Thomas was the only animator...
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Milt Kahl venting in Dallas
A lovely portrait of Robin Hood and Maid Marian from the ending of the movie. As so often with his characters, Milt drew Robin ever so slightly cross-eyed, which for some unbeknown reason actually adds...
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Roger Rabbit Scenes
As I mentioned before in a previous post, the scene above was the first one I animated on Who Framed Roger Rabbit ? I had never worked on animation/live action scenes before. It was pretty scary to get...
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