Monday, July 2, 2018

Magic Mickey




A beautiful rough drawing by Fred Moore from Fantasia's Sorcerer's Apprentice, just recently offered by Heritage Auctions. Moore was animation supervisor on this short film, I don't think he animated much himself while working on it.
What's interesting here is to observe that Mickey is portrayed with his vintage black oval eyes. You can see it in the pre-production color sketch as well. So sometime during production the idea was discussed to give Disney's superstar eyes WITH small pupils.




And this is what he ended up looking in Fantasia, and pretty much from that time on, as far as eyes are concerned.



The story source material for The Sorcerer's Apprentice was as beautiful as the final film.









A finished cel set up from the film, though it might have been produced for publicity purposes.



A dramatic cel image for a final scene. Sometimes I wonder, what is it about Disney character colors?
They are stunning, just by themselves, without a painted background.
The Disney Color Model department really was the best in the world!