Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Bambi Realism




Unless we study the real thing thoroughly, we cannot caricature or animate our characters convincingly.
One of Walt Disney's insightful quotes that makes complete sense. Milt Kahl would add:
"Our characters distinguish themselves from the ones at other studios, because they have real bones and muscles."
I would add: and real weight. 
Once you know the inner workings of a human or any given animal, you can then go to town and do whatever you'd like with that knowledge. Look at Samson, Prince Phillip's horse in Sleeping Beauty.
He walks and runs like a real horse, but his design is highly stylized. The width of his lower legs is so thin, almost down to a single line.
And observing the real thing can be a ton of fun. Studying live footage and sketching Siberian Tigers has been absolutely essential for the title character of Mushka in my upcoming film. There is something wonderful and exciting about this pre-production phase. Like Milt said:"You learn so much about your subject that you don't need the live action (rotoscope) reference any more."

Any tiger scenes left to do on Mushka...let's go! All that studying gives you the confidence to tackle any type of action.

I don't know who drew these terrific studies for Bambi, but as you know, this research paid off big time. The animators were able to turn realistic motion into animated poetry.












Images/Heritage Auctions

13 comments:

  1. The ink drawings look like they might be Rico Lebrun's, they look a lot like his skeleton drawings.
    Bambi doesn't quite look right in that cel, though, maybe it's a real cel of the mother, with Bambi and the rabbits added later?
    By the way, in case you didn't check the comments on your previous post, Jaques Muller was trying to get in touch with you

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    1. That cel doesn't look like a production cel at all. I suspect it's one of those "test cels" they made prior to actual full-scale production.

      By the way, keep up the good work on your YT channel, Mr. Hendry. I'm quite a fan! :-)

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    2. hey Thanks Julian! Do you have a twitter or anything I can follow?

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    3. Hi Marc. I don't have Twitter but I do have Facebook.

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  2. Do you think drawing a character it's really hard Andreas, because I stress it to much and I don't know how to control it of drawing it's because of Internet or video games, how can I to draw with out stressing.

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  3. Beauty and the Beast, and Bambi are my favorite movies because it was set in the 18th century of the history of Europe like Cinderella.

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    1. I'm reasonably sure that Felix Salten's time frame for Bambi's forest was contemporary -- 1920's Austria.

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  4. Bambi remains my favorite film of all time. At first they had two whitetail fawns for live models. Thanks to their diligent study of live deer, the animators correctly depicted deer with their tails tucked most of the time. This makes me quite happy. 8^)

    Thanks for sharing this production art! The lean, sinuous deer in the lower two sketch pages appear to me to have an Eastern flair. The bunnies and the fawn in the cel setup have an early version feel to them. They look more 1930's. The bunnies match the style of the "early bunny sketches for Bambi" shown on page 160 of Walt Disney's Bambi The Story and the Film (by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, 1990). The fawn is similar to Gustaf Tenggren's take. A softer and lighter redraw of a painting by Tenggren of Bambi and Mother in the Thicket became the cover for the picture book Walt Disney's Bambi (Simon and Schuster, 1941). This book contains artwork by several artists, none are credited.

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    1. Bambi is one of my favorites as well. It's great to see some of the sketch studies. I'll have to check out that book, thanks for that.

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  5. The characters on that test cel really don't look right to me. Compared to the final designs, they look downright crude...

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    1. This is a pre-production cel. You have to start somewhere.

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  7. Watched the Masters show on PBS about Tyrus Wong. You can see his influence in these sketches and the cel.

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