Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Joe Rinaldi



Joe Rinaldi was one of Disney's great story artists. He was a very gifted draughtsman, too, and his boards are a pleasure to study. As I mentioned before, because of the appeal and those confident lines his work often gets mistaken for Bill Peet's.
Rinaldi's first Disney story credit was for Dumbo. He worked on many short films and features up until Sleeping Beauty. 
Born in 1914 he unfortunately lived a short life, he died in 1974 at the age of sixty.

Frank Thomas said once that Joe had a lot to do with what was great about Lady & the Tramp.
So here is a sampling of Joe Rinaldi's story work from that film.














17 comments:

  1. This is so inspiring. It's especially impressive to see how faithfully the animators and layout artists translated these panels onto the screen. Thanks, as always!

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  2. Such charm in his line work. Rinaldi could have been a childern's storybook illustrator like Pete.

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  3. I see the famous spaghetti moment included above, where the two dogs come together. Do you know who/where that idea came from?

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  4. Rinaldi is a favorite of mine along wit Bill Peet, what an amazing artist he was. You can see by his panels that they totally used his staging in the final film.
    Thanks for sharing these.

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    1. I love Tom Oreb's work too. I'd love to see more of his work.

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  5. Hier zeigt sich, dass mit wenigen Linien und einer klaren Idee ganze Geschichten erzählt werden können - ein Genuss für die Augen! Was mich fasziniert ist, dass in so wenigen Zeichnungen der Verlauf der Geschichte festgehalten wird. Wissen Sie, Herr Deja, ob Joe Rinalldi am Entwurf der einzelnen Figuren beteiligt war? Bis auf wenige Details sehen sie den endgültigen Entwürfen ja verblüffend ähnlich.

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  6. Those are wonderful drawings. Were they made after or before the final design was established? Thank you for the post and the inspiration!

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  7. He's one of my Disney heroes! Great post! Thank you! Thank you!

    bob

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  8. Great Stuff! and very close to Peet.You can see what they kept through to the final film.Thanks, as always, for sharing these gems!

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  9. So simple yet completely capturing the moment! Great drawings. :D

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  10. So this is why there was a scene with the Italian restaurant...there was an Italian-American artist giving inspiration in the background! Beautiful story work! And as always, great creativity in the characters. This is the great thing about Andreas's website: I wasn't aware of Joe Rinaldi's work, now I have learnt who he was. Thank you!

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  11. Joe was also a screenwriter too. He worked on the "Babes in Toyland" Disney version in 1961 as I think he and Ward Kimball worked on the best stuff in the movie like the business between Barnaby and his henchmen or the Toymaker between Grumio. This is much better than the other stuff like the not-so-fleshed-out romance between Tommy Sands and Annette Funicello.

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  12. Thanks for this marvelous glimpse into Joe's work at the studio. I used to hear Don and Woolie mention him at times during story meetings and finally went down to the morgue and checked out a lot of his work. He is one of the "unsung" talents of the old studio that at least found some of his voice with your posting Andy, thank you.

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  13. Wow I would have totally mistaken his work for Bill Peet's without your scholarly article, Andreas, thanks!

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  14. Few people said much about Disney's amazing story men back in the day. When I was a kid I would sneak upstairs to see the work of Joe, Ed Penner, Bill Peet, Al Bertino and others. I spent a good deal of time studying their storyboards and much of what I learned about story came from those guys.

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