Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Geraldine Page inspires Medusa

At Disney each time animators started exploring a new character assignment, it became very useful to do some research on the character's voice actor. Before animating Scar I looked at photos and watched film sequences with Jeremy Irons. You never know if you might find interesting expressions or gestures that could influence and benefit your animated performance. 

I am certain that Milt Kahl did the same when he started animating Madame Medusa in The Rescuers. Milt mentioned that he had observed Geraldine Page for a little while during her voice recordings at the studio. I imagine that photos of the actress were available to him for further study. Of course I have no idea if Milt was inspired by these press photos shown here....but I wonder.










Here is a link to a previous post on Geraldine Page:

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2013/09/geraldine-page-is-madame-medusa.html


Sunday, April 20, 2025

The Magic of Xerox

I was thrilled last week to be given the opportunity to revisit Disney's original Xerox "machine" in the old Ink & Paint Department on the Disney Studio Lot. This thing STILL WORKS, after all these decades.

Ub Iwerks had developed this "two room" contraption in 1959 in order to reproduce animators' drawings straight onto cels. The costly process of inking cels was eliminated. From then on Disney characters appeared with black outlines. Walt Disney was not happy originally with this new look, but when 101 Dalmatians was such a box office smash, Walt eventually accepted this new aesthetic.

The current Ink & Paint Disney department is very small. There is no need for production cels anymore, but special cels are still being painted for Disney employees. 



















Here is a link to a previous post on Disney's xerox:

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2014/05/xerox.html


Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Two Ladies by Iwao Takamoto

When the film Sleeping Beauty followed Lady and the Tramp in 1959, audiences were in for a surprise. All of a sudden the styling, for both backgrouds and characters, had become flat and graphic. Sleeping Beauty looked like a Renaissance painting come to life, while Lady and the Tramp had a Norman Rockwell feel to it. Quite a few animators needed to learn how to draw "flat", but keep the movements dimensional. Not an easy thing to do. For animators with superior draughtsmanship like Marc Davis and Milt Kahl this became a fairly easy task. 

What about the key clean up assistants? One of them, Iwao Takamoto, made the switch just as easily. It is fascinating to compare these two drawings by Iwao. His clean up study of Lady looks like a  sculpture. Round, dimensional forms that had been so typical for Disney's animation style. Aurora on the other hand looks like a beautifully designed paper cut out. 

I don't know about you, but I love BOTH styles. 


 

Sunday, April 13, 2025

Marc Davis, Jungle Cruise



Some of you might not be aware that in 2019 Disney published a two book edition called: Marc Davis In His Own Words: Imagineering the Disney Theme Parks. By Pete Docter and Christopher Merrit.

Each volume has 750 pages. Combined they seem to show everything that Marc Davis ever drew for Imagineering. Absolutely incredible!! 

After 101 Dalmatians Marc's (and Ken Anderson's) proposed animated project Chanticleer got cancelled in favor of The Sword in the Stone. Marc was crushed since he had produced a lot of stunning artwork for Chanticleer. 

So Walt Disney offered Marc a brand new challenge away from Animation. According to him, Walt needed someone with his talent to add storytelling and humor to new as well as existing rides at Disneyland. And the rest is history. Milt Kahl was NOT happy to see Marc leave the Animation department, and when a few years later Walt asked Ken Anderson to help out at the park as well, Milt had a "spirited" conversation with the boss about draining the animation talent pool. Ken ended up doing some work for Imagineering, but in the end he remained full time with Animation.

Here are just a few samples of Marc's gorgeous work (scanned from the book) for the Jungle Cruise, which originally opened in 1955. But this attraction really came to life when Marc got involved later. 

Get these two books at Amazon, if you want to study staging, solid drawing with flair, character development and much more:

https://www.amazon.com/Marc-Davis-His-Own-Words/dp/1484755758/ref=sr_1_1?crid=T8XTO5EUBWPU&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.moOirCEaEfu8C3KJlrX-vfn53e6-aH4BLhEZ1z0DvWiaLkk79FuqDRwI3bVQsB4sOX6d4TuUWezKVJ_v4bNLIpUv867MDi58DpQT59DRZhifJ4IfEdLWx-tr_ZDvylhy.PPAkxlvczKrjBgn5kykIQzbliMJUjdby7IgwSTBNCfc&dib_tag=se&keywords=marc+davis+in+his+own+words&qid=1744610578&sprefix=marc+davis%2Caps%2C204&sr=8-1
















Saturday, April 12, 2025

Props

 


Disney Feature Animation posted this amazing drawing a while back. It reminded me of what Milt Kahl told a young animator (not me) : "Don't underestimate the importance and the potential of props for your character!"

And he is absolutely right. Using props can give the character something interesting to do. Medusa's phone is a prop, and she yells into it after she finds out that Snoops has not gotten the diamond yet. Milt said that she treats the phone's receiver as if it were Snoops. She shakes it, before slamming it down. Medusa has another prop, a stick, which she uses later in the film to threaten Snoops.

Before removing her make up, Medusa, being in a bad mood, picks up a stool and repositions it almost violently in front of the mirror. Those kind of props help to punch the dialogue and action Milt said.

Decades ago Cruella smoked, and boy, what a prop a cigarette or a cigar make. Of course that's out of the question today for obvious reasons. But the process of smoking allows for great acting opportunities: The inhale, the exhale, the tipping off the ash etc. 

Eye glasses are great as well. Remember Merlin cleaning them using his long mustache? Soo good!

I am trying to think about my own characters regarding props. Jafar had that snake staff. He used it to hypnotize the Sultan. I remember enjoying animating those scenes. "The princess WILL marry me!"

Mama Odie had the snake Juju, which she used as a blind cane occasionally. God...I never forget, I animated a scene where Mama Odie accidentally bangs Juju's head against a ship bell. The following scene was a close up of the snake with its head vibrating. I needed to draw distorted, cartoony images of the head, and let me tell you, that particular day I couldn't for some reason. Luckily Eric Goldberg's office was next door and "Mr Funny Guy" made a couple of hilarious drawings which helped me a lot. 

Back to Medusa's props. One of Milt's assistant was Bud Hester, who later became head of the animation union. I remember visiting his union office, and behind Bud hang a Medusa ink drawing showing her as she puts on on lipstick (a situation which is NOT in the movie). The staging was impeccable. 

Mark Hester, if you read this, I need a scan of that drawing for my upcoming Milt Kahl book. (Yes, the book is a "thing" now.) :)


Sunday, April 6, 2025

Beauty and the Beast Reunion 2016

I just came across this group photo from a few years ago at the Academy. We had a great panel that night with artists and voice talents to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the film. I guess Beauty and the Beast will turn 35 next year. (Which seems almost impossible to imagine).

There are a few Youtube clips with our discussion and comments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RyxqPT98oM



(Clockwise from Top Left) Producer Don Hahn, director Gary Trousdale, actors Bradley Pierce (Chip), Richard White (Gaston) and Robby Benson (the Beast), animator Mark Henn, actor David Ogden Stiers (Cogsworth), animators Andreas Deja and Glen Keane, actress Jo Anne Worley, key story artist Brenda Chapman, story supervisor Roger Allers and actors Paige O'Hara (Belle), Angela Lansbury (Mrs. Potts) and Jesse Corti (LeFou). 


Saturday, April 5, 2025

Ollie Johnston's Ichabod

I recently found this low res photo online of Ollie Johnston as he is animating a scene with Johnny Appleseed. Behind him, pinned on a board are a couple of sheets showing sketches of Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones. Ollie would work on those characters next, as would his colleague Frank Thomas. 

But it was Ward Kimball who drew these early development sketches. Incidentally I posted scans of the originals way back in 2012.







At that time Amid Amidi, who has been working on Ward Kimball's autobiography, left an interesting note regarding these Kimball design sketches.



Here is a Ichabod drawing from a scene by Ollie.


Here is the link to the earlier Ichabod post:

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/11/ichabod.html