Sunday, September 8, 2013

Marc Davis Roughs



Last year I posted some of Marc Davis' color designs for the unproduced feature Chanticleer.
Here are a few of Marc's rough character designs and staging ideas for certain story situations.
Two things are worth pointing out:
I can totally see Marc's Fine Art sensibility in some of these sketches. There are unusual abstractions taking place that go beyond standard Disney drawing. Just like the edgy avant garde design of Cruella De Vil, these drawings show a search for new graphic representations of Disney personalities.
Secondly it is SOO reassuring to see that Marc worked hard at his compositions. There are often several versions of the same image. I guess, that makes him human after all.
These drawings give you an idea of Marc's creative process. He took the challenge of shaping new animated animal characters very seriously. They are anthropomorphic representations of their species, but all of them are based on thorough knowledge of actual anatomy.
I know that the cancellation of the project was quite a blow to Marc's enthusiasm for animation, but in the end it resulted in Marc's transfer to WED, and what would the parks be without the his rides?!

By the way, I could post more of Marc's work on Chanticleer if you are interested.





















21 comments:

  1. Seeing these dogs with shotguns really makes me wonder how they're incorporated into the plot.

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  2. -B-

    Thanks for sharing those Mr.Deja.
    And YES, please more of Mr.David's material on Chanticleer!

    -Amir

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  3. Thank you for posting Marc's great artwork Mr. Deja!

    Of course we would like to see further artwork from Chanticleer, we would be very grateful for it :)

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  4. >>By the way, I could post more of Marc's work on
    >>Chanticleer if you are interested.

    Mr. Deja

    Are you kidding me ?

    Everything you post is great.
    I would love to see more Chaticleer works.

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  5. These are absolutely gold! But I wonder, what happened to the bat? Was he in the film? I am working on an animated bat character myself and these drawings are great reference to moving and stylizing bats.

    Post more Chanticleer!

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  6. Oh my goodness, his work is so lovely....I could study his sketches all day!!! Very "fine art" infused with Disney.....too cool. Wonderful compositions and movement.

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  7. I'm particularly loving the evolution of the mole. His pose increases in appeal and clarity in every sketch.

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  8. Please more Chanticleer. Also, do you have any sketches from the America Sings show from Disneyland? Thanks again Andreas

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    1. I do not have any America Sings sketches, but I believe some of Marc's final illustration are somewhere online, scanned from the record album.

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  9. I thought the first sketch was an early version of Smart Ass from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Heh.

    It's a shame we never got this film. The animals look marvelous. I'd like to see more of Marc's drawings for Chanticleer.

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  10. More Marc Davis artwork to post? Yes Please!

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  11. Please post more Chanticleer! It's very inspiring!

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  12. Love always to see sketches. Encourage me to learn to draw better, when even masters doesn´t draw "perfect" every drawing. :)
    Yes please, more Chanticleer, sounds very interesting and i haven´t heard about it very much.

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  13. More from Chanticleer, do! It's one of my favorite undone projects, and a massive influence on my own projects.

    It enthuses me to see how much these resemble Rico Lebrun. ^^ He really did absorb artist's influence.

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  14. again,marc's,drawings always are amazing!!!!! andreas-thanks.

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  15. Hi I really like your blog. I'm currently very interested in traditional animation and I would like to know a bit more a bit more about it. Do you know anyway where I could learn it? I've recently made a 12 seconds animation, pretty amateur, nothing special, but is there anyway you could see it and give me an opinion? Really enjoy your artwork (:

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    1. Hugo,
      there are so many good books on traditional animation, starting with "The Illusion of Life". Also "The Animator's Survival Kitt".
      Maybe you can take a class in animation. So many ways to learn it. Learning how to draw well is really important for 2D animation. You can leave a link here for your 12 sec. animation, I'll take a look at it.

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  16. Ich kann hier wirklich eine Vielzahl von interessante Figuren erkennen. Die Fledermaus hat es mir genauso angetan wie der jonglierende Geier und dann erst die Eule auf der Leiter. 👍😊Schade, dass ich ich nie herausfinden werde in welchen Zusammenhang die Figuren stehen ...

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