For the film The Aristocats individual assignments were given to each of the supervising animators. Milt Kahl developed the relationship between the movie's human characters like Madame Bonfamille, her lawyer George Hautecourt and Edgar, the butler. Ollie Johnston drew key scenes with Duchess and her three kittens, and Frank Thomas animated O'Malley's song as well as the two dogs in the countryside, Napoleon and Lafayette.
John Lounsbery was put in charge of designing and animating most scenes featuring O'Malley's jazzy musician friends. It was Ken Anderson's idea that the five of them would be from different ethnic backgrounds and speak with individual accents like Russian, British, Italian etc.
Here are a few of Lounsbery's character doodle sheets, in which he explores a variety of shapes and proportions for the cats, as well as props that might link them to their respective country.
http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/06/john-lounsbery.html
In that first sheet exploring the British Cat, there's a profile drawing that looks like Geppetto.
ReplyDeleteJohn Lounsbery is my favorite Disney animator and never really seems to get the same recognition as Frank, Ollie, and Milt. I love everything from his drawing style to his character performances. Thanks so much for your efforts to showcase him Andreas. The other three seem to get most of the accolades, but for me, John Lounsbery is the epitome of Disney animation.
ReplyDeleteJohn is definitely one of the most unsung Disney artists and aniinmators! I've always been drawn to his work. Thanks for posting these Andreas! Beautiful :)
ReplyDeleteI love how well he animated the bull dog in Lady and the Tramp. John is a true caricature artist.
ReplyDeleteOk, I'm not usually a big John Lounsbery fan, but these drawings are fantastic. I really liked the drawing of the English Cat on the fourth sheet.
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