Animation Roughs

A few of my "left over" animation rough drawings I donated to a charity auction a while back.

 

Film Museum Frankfurt

During my recent travels through Germany I stopped by Frankfurt to visit the local Film Museum. This is a great place to find out about German as well as international film history. Next time you transfer flights at the Frankfurt airport, spend a little time in the city and visit this beautiful museum. 

 

They have a small section on animation with a few pieces of Disney Art. I was pleasantly surprised to see a gorgeous rough animation drawing of Tinker Bell by Marc Davis. 

Here is the link to the museum:  https://www.dff.film/en/

Flashback Deja View

 

In 2017 I was lucky to have some of my animation as well as my personal artwork exhibited at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. I remember thinking...how did I get here? A kid from a small town in Germany (Dinslaken). 

During the opening I was so honored to greet members of Walt's family. Joanna Miller, Tammy Miller, me and Ron Miller, Walt's son in law. Sometimes I still pinch myself.

NDR Talkshow

 

I had the honor of being a guest on the popular German NDR Talkshow. We taped it a week and a half ago in Hamburg, and it has been aired three times over the past few days. Other guests included actors, breast cancer survivors, journalists and an olympian athlete. 

I talked about my career at Disney as well as my animated film MUSHKA, which will be available for streaming sometime before the holidays (More on that later.)

My Interview can be viewed here ( until Jan, 24):

https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/sendungen/ndr_talk_show/disney-zeichner-andreas-deja,ndrtalkshow-310.html

Frank & Ollie, Drawn Together

In 2003 the Academy presented an evening honoring animation powerhouses Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Needless to say, it was a fantastic event. I was lucky enough to be part of the group of presenters.

Here are the pages from the program that was handed out. It was also fun to help design the cover image.

I just found out that some of the presentations can be viewed on Frank & Ollie's old website here:

https://frankanollie.com/AtTheAcademy.html

Behind the Scenes....

I love photos that show animation artist at work during the medium's golden age. It's always a thrill to find new pics that take you back to a time when animation was this incredible, handcrafted art form.

Lisa Davis (Anita) and Eric Larson studying a Dalmatian. 

Hal King working on one of the original Winnie the Pooh shorts.

Frank Thomas checking rough inbetweens for one of his Pinocchio scenes.

Walt Peregoy with a few of his color designs for The Sword in the Stone. 

Kathryn Beaumont acting as Alice during the Caterpillar sequence.  

Retta Scott animating a Centaurette scene for Fantasia. 

Marge Champion is being filmed as Snow White. The person in the foreground looks like Art Babbit to me. 

An ink and paint artist working on a Pecos Bill cel.

A cel painter finishing a cel with Aurora.

Walt Disney during a lunch meeting at Disneyland. I recognize John Hench in the back and Marc Davis in front.

Lady Tremaine

These are clean up studies for Frank Thomas' character of Lady Tremaine in Cinderella. I don't know who the artist is, but these poses (except her head turn) are based on Frank's brilliant animation. 

A difficult character to animate, and equally difficult to clean up, because of realistic subtleties involved. When Walt asked Frank to take on this assignment, he thought: Poor me! But the more he got involved with her personality and her voice recordings by Eleanor Audley, the more he understood just how much to underplay her movements in order to get a very powerful performance. One of Disney's best villains.