Saturday, January 7, 2017

Milt's Mr. Toad Drawings



Milt Kahl animated key scenes with characters like MacBadger, Rat and Mole for the Mr. Toad section of the 1949 film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. The scene above is one of those scenes. Even this one frame reveals Kahl's extraordinary strength for clear staging, superior drawing and an overall feeling for contrasting personalities. 
To my knowledge Milt didn't do any scenes with Toad, that character was primarily handled by Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Ward Kimball. But as usual Milt was on hand when it came to improving  the draughtsmanship of scenes done by his colleagues.
Here are three beautiful sketches that he made for his fellow animators.






A few rough animation drawings of Rat from Milt's own animation. He never spoke highly about his work on short films, but as you can see, he always gave his best on the post war "package films".  It's just that he preferred the fuller character development of Disney feature films. For the upcoming movie Cinderella Milt animated the King and Duke as well as the Fairy Godmother.






6 comments:

  1. Where do thay came from the Drawings, do you have some drawings at the studio why not David Hall or Ollie Johnston you can post it but I don't know if you have drawings of Bambi 2 animation.

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  2. I know you are a very busy person Andreas, but did you have some students or fans who come to visit at your studio wen you have time.

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  3. I wonder if they were enjoying doing broader/simpler characters during this period, or if they felt like they weren't matching the standard they'd set with Bambi, Pinocchio, etc.
    I get the impression that the animators had a real blast doing Song of the South, though

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  4. I wish disney would at least do just ONE hand drawn, cell painted/ink film. Ahhh....pipe dreams.

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  5. I wish disney would at least do just ONE hand drawn, cell painted/ink film. Ahhh....pipe dreams.

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  6. Clear staging, solid drawing...just great...everyone in their prime. Thanks for sharing these and all of the others. I study them all, and I'm in my 50's. Never stop learning!

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