Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Big Cat Staging

This story sketch showing how Shere Khan extends his claws in front of Mowgli is by Vance Gerry.
Its gets a little tricky when a four legged big cat needs to act human like with its front paws.
The pose tends to look unnatural and even off balance when the acting is shown as a full body shot.
Milt Kahl knew this. So whenever Shere Khan rubbed his paw against his chest or clapped in applause, he chose a medium close up in his animation. 
The animal character becomes human for a few moments, and it looks more believable in this type of fielding. 
This is a general rule and there are exceptions. Earlier when Shere Khan first approaches Kaa, he pulls the snake's tail down to the sound of a door bell. It's a funny gag, and the tiger is shown in a full body long shot.







I became aware of this staging issue when animating certain scenes with Scar.
Here he is talking to Simba about a "Father/Son......Thing".
I animated his left paw rotating as if Scar is looking for a certain word: "Thing".
On that word he flicks his paw, to show a sense of banality and slight disgust.
I love working this kind of stuff out.
This scene wouldn't have looked right if we had chosen to show his full body.



6 comments:

  1. This is very informative, thanks!

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  2. I agree with Puneet's comment. This is very informative! Thank you so much for sharing these gems with us.

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  3. Hey! Just wondering if you got anywhere finding some Kaa material to share? Would be very grateful

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  4. very instructive, the only blog page I regularly follow, thanks deja

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  5. very interesting thx

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