Thursday, February 6, 2020

Preston Blair's Mickey


 


I love the scenes in the Sorcerer's Apprentice where Mickey Mouse wakes up from his dream, deep in water. He panics and tries to make it over to the fountain where he earlier had instructed a broom to do his chores.
Preston Blair uses a lot of fun distortions here, particularly on Mickey's hands in order to support fast gesturing. It was surprising to find out that a lot of the animation is on twos. This is unusual since this is normally done on ones, so the distortions don't really register to the viewer.
But then again...Bill Tytla did the same thing when animating broad scenes with Stromboli.

I remember distorting King Triton's hand by elongating his fingers as he lifts a hand to his forehead.
Clean up was later instructed to draw a normal looking hand instead of what I had in mind. A fellow animator even quipped: "This is not Roger Rabbit!"

It makes me laugh thinking about this decades later.