Milt Kahl is showing off model sheets of Bagheera from The Jungle Book to colleague Eric Larson, who seems somewhat less excited than Milt. During the 1960s practically all Disney model sheets were comprised of Milt's rough animation drawings. No turn-around sheets, no character maquettes, just Milt's animation drawings from his first production scenes. Director Woolie Reitherman realized that nobody drew and designed new Disney characters better than Milt Kahl. Milt's drawings were the final word, the standard all other animators looked up to. Their goal was to come as close as possible to these sophisticated designs graphically, but still insert their own approach to the characters as far as acting and performing.
I want to show a high in Milt's career from the golden age of Disney animation to a later high, just before his boss passed away. Both drawing styles are astonishingly beautiful, one round and dimensional, the other graphic and sophisticated. It is so interesting to me that neither Milt, Frank and Ollie, or other animators recognized these two different styles within Disney Animation. I remember asking Eric Larson about the change in approaching Disney drawing, and he just mentioned that the animators drew what was required of them. To Eric there didn't seem to be new approach at all, you drew the characters a certain way in order to get the best results.
Milt's rough animation drawings from Thumper's famous scene: "If you can't say something nice..."
Key drawings from Milt's first few scenes with Shere Khan.
I love Milt Khal's drawings. I love Thumper!
ReplyDeleteI've always found those kinds of model sheets more useful than the static preproduction ones anyway. I guess the animation process demands solutions to drawing problems that the character designer might not have thought of.
ReplyDeleteThese are wonderful Andreas. I remember this one photo of George Sanders holding up a picture of Shere Kahn and had this silly facial expression when he saw the tiger on paper.
ReplyDeleteI am trying to practice hand drawn animation with a couple of notebooks but I think I'm doing it wrong. So do you start on the last page of a sketchbook then work your way to the first page to animate a character?
Yes, if you use a sketchbook. When the scene is finished you flip the drawings from bottom to the top page.
DeleteThank you for clearing that up Andreas. So far I have done the classic ball bouncing around the paper on sticky notes. Do you have any techniques you can recommend trying for animators in training?
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