Wildlife Sketches

Now that the weather in Southern California is getting cooler it is time to return to the zoo and sketch!

Here are drawings from a sketchbook dating back a few years. Most of them were done from life, some of them from wildlife documentaries.  As I said before, if you are a newcomer to drawing animals, it is essential to start drawing them from real life. Spending time in front of animals and observing them is the only way to get started.  

But since you don't get wild animal behavior at the zoo, it is equally important to then study footage of wildlife. Freeze individual frames, analyze the motion and pick a frame that informs you about the animal's character. 

Like Eric Larson said, for an artist one of the most important things is: Observation!

Jafar and Scar Roughs

My friend John Ramirez just posted on Facebook a few of my rough drawings of Jafar and Scar. I had not seen any of these since I drew them decades ago. John rough inbetweened for me way back.

In these Scar doodles I was trying to figure out the shapes and forms of his mane. Originally I had thought it might be a tough challenge to track this irregular mass of hair in drawing as well as in motion. But after analyzing this a little, the issue sort of took care of itself. 

Here is the final model sheet:

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These are xeroxes of a few roughs from a scene in which Jafar is pressuring Gazeem, the thief, to find the lamp. He is actually holding that character who was animated by Dan Hofstedt on a different level. Voice actor Jonathan Freeman just nailed the personality of Jafar.

A terrific lion "figurine" I had purchased somewhere, can't remember. But it did help me to visualize a lion's anatomy.

In this scene Scar yells at Nala: "We are not going anywhere!" It almost animated itself. When you work off Jeremy Iron's voice performance, the animation comes easy, and it was a total thrill to bring Scar to life. I can't emphasize this enough. Absolute joy.

The Kley Style

I think many artists at one point or another study works of contemporaries or predecessors. 

A few years ago I "tried out" Heinrich Kley's style of drawing. These are just freehand doodles of my own, keeping Kley's sense for fantasy, anatomy and rendering in mind. Fun exercises. 

Who wouldn't want to have their work at least a little bit impacted by this extraordinary draughtsman?!

I even thought how much fun it would be to try and create a short film in Kley's style.....still thinking about this.

 

Disney Roughs

There have been some beautiful rough animation drawings offered at Heritage Auctions. In about 90% of the times I am able to identify the animator. 

Here is a Captain Hook rough by Woolie Reitherman.  

This is a clean up study by Iwao Takamoto. The draughtsmanship he brought to Lady and the Tramp is unbelievable. 

An rough drawing by Milt Kahl. Alice is straightening out the neck of the flamingo.

Frank Thomas animated Hook here as he is talking to Tinker Bell. Incredible acting.

A key drawing by Eric Larson, who did not mind working off live action reference. He said that there are plenty of things that need to be changed from what you see in the photostats in order to make your scene believable. 

Frank Thomas again. Here he blocks in the best possible staging for a scene with Jock and Lady.

Woolie animated a chunk of the fighting sequence with Peter Pan and Hook. He was certainly a great action animator, but Woolie was also capable of handling great acting scenes.

John Lounsbery almost dominates the film Lady and the Tramp. He animated quite a few characters, all brilliantly. Some of his career's best work.

This is bull in the dog pound. Lounsbery also animated the policeman and the professor in front of the zoo's entrance. And of course those wonderful Italian characters Tony and Joe.

An amazing scene by Ed Aardal. So many things to control in a set up like this. The end result looks totally natural.

This is a Marc Davis scene. He definitely had the drawing as well as animation chops to handle a character with so much realism.

Charming key drawings of Merryweather by Frank Thomas.

Lovely draughtsmanship in this drawing by Ollie Johnston.

I need to look up who animated Peter here as he jumps off the bed. Perhaps Eric Larson.

The early version of Robin Hood by John Lounsbery.

 

The way Frank Thomas handled the animation of the Stepmother is still so inspiring to me. He expressed so much with often very little movement. This character was all about subtleties.