Friday, April 26, 2013

Beauty and the Beast Outtakes


I was looking through my files and found these design drawings I did way back for the early version of "Beauty and the Beast". The scans are xeroxes colored with markers.
At that time we had Maurice's sister in the story. She was part of the household and insisted that Belle marry the wealthy Gaston, so the whole family -especially herself- would benefit from the marriage.
It created an interesting dynamic, but everybody felt that a selfish, cruel character like her would draw parallels to Cinderella's stepmother.




This design was based on a sketch by Jean Gillmore.




Various ideas for Maurice.





I was asked to base one design on the actor Jack Lemmon.



Gaston was already vain and full of himself, but not like the outdoorsy type from the final film.
This guy lived the good life. He wore expensive clothes, had servants and never worked a day in his life.
He sort of looks like a young Marlon Brando, which was unintentional.



I don't think these are particularly good drawings, but they show you that we went into different directions at the beginning of production.

16 comments:

  1. After "getting to know" the final characters for so many years, these drawings are quite an interesting surprise! Especially the range in chin shapes. :D

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  2. Those are amazing drawings. By this time you were already studying Brom Bones? I said it because of the hands. Which were your inspirations for those designs? Thank you for the post!!

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    1. I hadn't thought about Brom Bones yet, that came later.
      Except for the Jack Lemmon sketch, these were not inspired by anyone in particular. I was just trying to explore certain types.

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  3. I remember seeing these pinned up at Purdum's old studio a lifetime ago.

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  4. -B-

    Mr. Deja,
    Any chance to post pencil test or key poses for Belle's room:
    http://one1more2time3.wordpress.com/2008/10/25/historic-cg/

    (Mr. Hans mentioned that: "andreas deja animated the keyposes of beauty for the whole move...")

    -Amir

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  5. Pretty sweet. Maurice reminds me of Edgar Balthazar.

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  6. amazing blog!
    Can breathe history of the animation

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  7. Interesting, I remember hearing that Don Bluth was planning to adapt Beauty and the Beast as well earlier on, but dropped the idea after he heard Disney was working on it.

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  8. thanks for sharing!! love this place.

    jriggity

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    1. I have some questions about this early version of Beauty and the Beast:

      1) In the early presentation reel on the Platinum Edition DVD, there are two identical women wearing powdered wigs featured in some of the sketches who look as though they could be Belle's vain sisters from the original fairy tale. Were they included in the story at one point?

      2) In that same presentation reel, there are some sketches of a man with a feathered hat, green coat, long black hair and a moustache. Who in regards to the story was this man?

      3) The presentation reel also features a sketch of a short guy clad in a suit of armour with a horse loaded with metal-looking contraptions, as well as a sketch of an array of soldiers. Was Maurice a former soldier at one point? If not, how did the soldiers fit into the story?

      4) In Purdum's opening storyreel's, Belle asks Maurice for a rose as a replacement gift for her mother's music box. Did the story use the "Beast gets mad at Maurice because he steals his rose" plot?

      4) Finally, in some thumbnail sketches for the climax of the film by Mel Shaw that were featured in another post, Maurice is seen yelling at his sister. What did Marguerite do? Also, what happened to her in the end? Did she mend her ways?

      It. would be greatly appreciated if you answered my questions as best you could.

      Thanks

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  9. This is awesome! Beauty and the Beast is one of my favourite Disney cartoons, and it is really interesting to have a glance on the development of the characters..thanks for sharing this!

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  10. Deja, you're missing a couple outtakes of Belle & the beast.

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  11. I think these are pretty nice sketches but maybe not great. That's interesting what you said about Geston, but left off the bad step mother and sisters, cause it might look to much like the other Disney film Cinderella.

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  12. Your right it looks like Lady Tremaine i hate this character she looks old at 50 or 57 selfish and crule she care about her self.

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  13. What type of pen did Jean used to create those sketches?

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