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: