Sunday, November 25, 2012

Brom Bones



Singer/Actor Bing Crosby visits Milt Kahl, and he brought his four sons along, Dennis, Phillip, Gary and Lindsay.
Crosby narrated the Disney film The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which made up half of the 1949 feature film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. 
Milt animated the introduction of the town's bully Brom Bones as well as his big song number at the Van Tassel party. 
He is a rich character, full of confidence and full of himself. Milts animation shows just the right amount of dash and bounce. Although the style of the film is pretty cartoony Brom Bones' physique required careful and somewhat realistic draughtsmanship in terms of anatomy.
Milt was just perfect for this kind of an assignment. No live action reference here, that's why the animation feels so wonderfully loose.

This was great inspiration for myself, when I started work on Gaston in Beauty & The Beast.
Although I did end up using some live action reference, I tried to avoid rotoscoped looking animation.
Brom Bones and Gaston have a few things in common such as an overbearing personality, and they are both after one girl. Then again Brom ends up with Katrina while Gaston fell to his death…or did he?


A Vis. Dev. character line up of Brom Bones and his buddies.




Milt explores staging ideas, showing Brom Bones frustrated during a scene at the party.




These are copies of Milt's key drawings, the clean up was done right over his roughs.
During this song Brom is intimidating and scaring Ichabod Crane.
Beautifully timed to the rythm of the music with a daring perspective shot at the end.
Dial. : "He swears to the longest day he's dead!"















Blog reader Henry created this pencil test:

21 comments:

  1. Wonderful stuff.
    Was it the standard approach to do clean up on the same sheet as the animators' drawings? It seems like an awful lot of material would be used if there was the animators' drawings, the clean up drawings, and the painted cels, all on individual sheets.

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    1. The touch up technique was the exception in the early days.
      From the early 1960ies on it became more of a standard.
      Animators needed to draw a little tighter though, and on model, so the clean up artists didn't have to make changes.

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    2. This is incredible! I can see that Milt Kahl has had so much influence, Andreas! And why not? He's a great animator & so are you! Jafar is my favorite Disney villain! What are you working on next?

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  2. Love this movie...I can see Peter Pan stylings in here too. Not surprising, right around the same era. I'm trying to remember: I believe Milt was the lead for Peter Pan, as I remember him being bored with him after a while, based on an interview with him on youtube...As always, thanks for sharing!

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  3. Looks like a few Disney staff caricatures made their way into that rough character line-up. I suspect all of Brom's cronies are animation crew, as the first one is most certainly meant to be Wilf Jackson. And the fellows on the left and right of the bottom row sure do look like Frank and Ollie!

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  4. Thanks for posting these, Andreas. Sleepy Hollow is such a gem. It would be fascinating to see Milt's planning for other Brom scenes - the Ward Kimball-esque "saucer eyes" shot (was he parodying the other animator there?) and the running on the barrel shot. I also like that Brom rides a large dark horse, just like the headless horseman at the end. A clue, kids?

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  5. Apart from the cosy autumn atmosphere, cartooniness and meticulous animation, what I like best about the Ichabod segment is how ambivalent the characters are. Ichabod is a quirky, amiable fellow but rather selfishly focused on his own gain. Brom is good-looking and ostensibly a better fit for Katrina but also a bully and a jealous lout. As for Katrina, well, she seems a sweet girl but is ultimately a tease. Add to that the ending which leaves Ichabod's fate and the Horseman's identity open and you get a short which is perfectly balanced between moods and handicraft.

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  6. Everybody had their own clean up approach. Some key assistants liked to rub down the animator's drawing with a kneaded eraser while others would use a clean sheet of paper. When we moved to "touch up" in the sixties, I worked right over Milt's drawings.

    Scary as hell.

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  7. Love this blog, the best insight into Disney animation. Does anyone know who animated the robin hood scene where Wart meets Madam Mim. Was it Kahl?

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    1. Which movie are you talking about?
      Mim meeting Wart was animated by Kahl.
      That movie was called The Sword in the Stone.

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    2. Thank you Andreas. Sorry, I should have said Sword in the Stone. I've been trying to find the answer to that for many years. That is one of the best animated scenes ever. It's one of thing be able to draw like Kahl did, but to be able to act like he did - wow! There's one other Disney scene I don't know the author of, (my favourite, second only to Wart and Mim) It's the Aristocats. It's the night scene, Lafayette and Napolean are sleeping and Edgar comes back to get his shoes/hat, especially the part with the fishing rod. Is that Kahl again? Pure genius. Someone has to write a book about this guy.

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    3. Th Aristocats sequence you are talking about is the work of Frank Thomas.

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    4. Wow! Thank you very much Andreas. All this time I thought it was the hand of Milt Kahl. Sometimes I think the other old men got a bit overshadowed. For me Raphael has just appeared at the side of Michelangelo!

      If you do write those books about the nine old men, it would be great to have list of who did what in what film. Sometimes it can be like visiting an exhibition of masterpieces, but where no one has signed the paintings!

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    5. I may be mistaken, but I thought I had read somewhere that Eric Cleworth was set to do that second sequence with Lafayette and Napoleon, and Frank Thomas swiped it from him. Anybody know if that's true?

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  8. What a strong perspective on the pointing finger! Amazing!

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  9. I like this foreshortening. The anatomy of the hands to be awesome! Congratulations by your blog! It is very, very good!

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  10. I really like the anticipation he gets on frame 50.Pushing that finger way back to emphasize the point forward. I love the rhythmn of the animation to the beat of the song. My favorite Brom bit is when he is "along for the ride" with the dancing girl. all of that overlappy stuff in the round is amazing!! Thanks again, for sharing these gems!!

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  11. Hello,
    This post is very cool. I like this movie very much. But what I also think is incredibly cool as a fan can be close to their idol. It's amazing to think that this might Andreas Deja reading what I'm writing. Andreas Deja animated Scar, Scar. We're used to seeing you in the comments and bonus DVDs or Blu-rays as gods. It's amazing to read a post from Floyd Norman I saw he on a blu ray extras yesterday. The other day I saw a post by John Musker, and I was thinking, my god they actually exist. I am Brazilian and I love Disney and the Disney animators, you know I grew up watching the works of art that you did. You guys are really amazing ...

    I apologize if I have made ​​mistakes in the writing, my English is not very good and I used google

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  12. Saw Legend of Sleep Hollow recently and it was fun to see how Gaston had been inspired by Brom, both big braggarts putting on a musical display intended to intimidate.

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  13. Another great post Andy and I particularly love the picture of Milt with Bing and kids. I've never seen that one.

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