Saturday, November 17, 2012

Sir Ector




Frank and Ollie said in their book "Illusion of Life" that the humans in Sword and the Stone were animated without the benefit of live action reference, and the results are beautiful.
For the most part Sir Ector , Wart's foster-father, was animated by Milt Kahl. 
John Lounsbery and Eric Larson also did key scenes with the character.
In the scene pictured below, Ector has a few words of warning for young Wart, who claims  to have pulled the sword in the stone: "You're making a fool of us, boy! Now tell the truth!"
This could have been a very ordinary continuity scene, but Milt found ways to add subtle personality touches.
After the crowds laugh in disbelief of Wart's statement, Ector turns his head toward camera, gathers his thoughts for a brief moment before addressing the young boy, who is staged off screen right.
On "Tell the truth" Milt uses a strong head nod, which causes Ector's hat to follow through on the main action. The result is slightly comedic and helps to turn this into a personality scene. 
The way his moustache overlaps during dialogue is pretty nifty, too.








These are key drawings from an earlier close up scene in the film. They show a wide range of rich expressions for this boorish and pompous character.


22 comments:

  1. Thank you Andreas! You sharing these and your knowledge of the art means a lot. Thanks for coming to CTN-X too!

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    1. I had a great time at CTN. I look forward to next year.

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  2. I am a 3d animator and working on a project from Lucas.. I am trying to teach myself classical animation by drawing whenever I get some free time. Do you Think or see if there is still interest in budding animators to learn classical animation today???

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    1. There is still a ton of interest from students who are interested in pencil animation all over the world, even though the industry at this time doesn't support this medium.

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    2. Speaking of which, could you offer a view on the technical process behind Paperman?

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    3. "There is still a ton of interest from students who are interested in pencil animation all over the world, even though the industry at this time doesn't support this medium."

      It's a real shame that they don't Mr. Deja.

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    4. There´s no doubt, that there´s no need for classical animation. I think example in 70 years old animations, character movements still works way better than on todays cgi animation. :)

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    5. I want to do traditional! and a ton of my schoolmates want to also! I'm still in my beginning stages of learning to animate, but When I get very good I want to be able to do hand drawn animation! It's my absolute favorite medium and it always looks more beautiful to me than any other (although other mediums are pretty too)

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    6. Christoph,
      I have seen only a few short clips from Paperman.
      Based on those I have no idea why CG was necessary to bring this story and this look to the screen.

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    7. Thanks for the reply, Mr Deja. Those are my feelings exactly. I kind of could arrange myself with the concept of aping hand-drawn animation that way, but it seems absurd bordering on the counter-productive that so many specialists' efforts, work steps and consequently production funds should be blown on a result a team of ten to twenty skilled people might achieve with just pencils and paper.

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    8. My comment about Paperman is the same.
      but when I saw 'The Legend of Mordu'/bonus in Brave/ I remained without text-in a negative context.

      Teodor

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  3. My favorite gesture of Sir Ector's is when the kitchen is under Merlin's spell and he says very pompously,"Now (*sniff sniff*)...what's all the commotion?" That hand gesture just gets me laughing every time. Milt just knows how to draw and animate hands so well!

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  4. The movement of his mustache is awesome as well. :D

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  5. Milt Kahl is a great actor with a pencil, always taking the most out of a scene. Are those clean up drawings or just the roughs?

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    1. The first set of drawings are copies of Milt's roughs, touched up by a clean up artist.
      The single sheet shows copies of his raw roughs.

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  6. Thanks to share great pics again :). It would nice to browse images, "next"&"previous" style, and i think on Blogger there´s possible to change that style. Called lightbox : "http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1706143"

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  7. I always thought the animation of the humans in Sword in the Stone was outstanding. Best part of the film. Sir Kay's facial expressions are so alive. To think they used no live-action reference simply boggles the mind.

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  8. Here's a youtube clip of the closeup shot on Ector from the single sheet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HJnaXaNzEVg#t=181s

    I feel like sometimes you can frame-by-frame through YT clips, and this one looks like you can. Really nice to step through it and reference the original roughs posted above.

    These are great, Deja. Thanks for sharing!

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  9. So I put those images into Toon Boom and doped them out in the Xsheet according to the charts on the drawings. Running through it, it feels a lot of the body is traced back? Very subtle movement in the arm holding the sword. Am I right here?

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  10. Wow! Seems like only yesterday. I worked with Milt on scenes with Sir Ector and his son, Kay. We were doing, "Touch up" back then. It was cool working with a master like Milt Kahl. What an opportunity for this young artist in the sixties.

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  11. Good memories. I love this movie. I also liked how his mustache and belly worked like. Thanks for the post!

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  12. The fact there was no reference filmed really speaks to the talent of these guys.

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