Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Archery Tournament Characters



These wonderful character studies for the movie Robin Hood were drawn by Milt Kahl.
Ken Anderson again provided rough sketches first, and Milt refined the designs.
To me these are among the best looking characters for any Disney film from the Xerox era.
The draughtsmanship and charm in these knock me out.
Every one of these personalities has star qualities, something I call magnetism. You can't take your eyes off them. And the way Milt is able to draw wings, pigs' feet or dogs' paws functioning as human hands is astonishing. 
In the words of Ken Anderson: 
"Every one of Milt's drawings is a triumph of brain power".









14 comments:

  1. It's quite a feat to give opposable thumbs to that many animals.

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  2. Lovely pictures. That half-blind mole going to archery shoot is so great! :D

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  3. Wholly agree! Some of the best and most memorable character designs of that era.... and they were mostly secondary characters! Always humbling and awe inspiring! I soooo covet your collection of drawings good Sir ;) Thanks for sharing!

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  4. These have to be some of the funniest and finest background characters I have seen for any Disney film in terms of design.

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  5. All Milt's art it's just of genious!

    http://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/the-milt-kahl-head-swaggle-80861.html

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  6. What a great range of characters! :D

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  7. Kahl was the answer to how fine art and entertainment could be combined stylistically. Canemaker talked about the secret to the Milt design. It was that there was always a slight sense of humour present, no matter how straight the character. But these are a great example of how he could portray funny stuff, too! The hound dog is my favorite, personally. It is a caricature of both an aging canine and country bumpkin combined.

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  8. There was quite a cohesiveness to the designs in the later films due to his going over them all, compared to say "Pinocchio" which has many different styles going on.

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  9. hi Andreas - I have a little question?
    I see all of those drawings on this blog and I wonder how it comes that there are not much lines into the most of these drawings BUT all of these nice drawings are so alive and vivid. Is that something that can be learned?
    I have no art education - but still I hope someday I can draw like this.
    I see all of this "fancy" conceptartists out there and some of them are making cool stuff but when it comes to real clear drawings. I always fall back on this kind of drawings
    If anybody can help me... feel free to answer

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    1. If your drawings have too many lines and are too rough, just put a new sheet of paper over it and redraw it a little cleaner.
      With practice you will get better.

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  10. The White dog is absolutely adorable! The characters all have such nicely detailed personalities. These drawings feel so full of life!

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  11. There was definitely a certain charm to that era of Disney. A big part of it I think was the designs.

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  12. Even though these drawings were done so long age they are timeless and are still better than most animated charters out there today. In my opinion any way.

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