Middle row: Ken Ralston, visual effects supervisor - Uli Meyer, animator - me, animator - Chris Knott, animation effects supervisor
Front row: Robert Zemeckis, director - Arthur Schmidt, editor - Richard Williams, animation director - Steve Starkey, associate producer
This was a sequence turnover meeting, where we looked at live action footage and discussed the animation that needed to be added.
Roger Rabbit, a once in a lifetime experience! The idea behind the film was irresistible.
I recently came across this fabulous Russian artist who worked on several editions of Kipling's The Jungle Book. Vatagin lived from 1884 until 1969.
These illustrations show not only his knowledge of animal anatomy but also of specific animal behavior. Most of all it is clear to see how much he loved the natural world.
I found these interesting infos online:
Vatagin illustrated a great number of children’s books by Ernest Thompson Seton, Jack London, Vitaly Bianki and others, thus becoming a real live classic of Soviet book illustration. But it was Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” that brought him fame and popularity. Vatagin started his work at the book in 1922 and continued it up to the 1950s. He created an enormous number of illustrations, about 200 in all, and returned to them many times. A book which came out in 1922 included about 100 illustrations. The 1934 edition of the book featured three to four small drawings on each spread, which show the plot development. In the 1965 edition there were fewer but more developed, expressive and finished illustrations. Vatagin made the drawings in black-and-white, with ink and pencil, in the auto-lithography technique. The wildlife here is full of danger, and the combination of black and white conveys the feeling of tension in the jungle (“Maughli Learned to Jump from Branch to Branch”, “The Herd was Already Unable to Stop”, “Hathi Stepped Forward — It Was Clear That He is the Master of the Jungle”). The artist also pays great attention to the details of Indian life. In all, there have been 12 editions of the book with the artist’s illustrations, and readers have loved his drawings just as they loved Kipling's tales
Disney's Bambi premiered 80 years ago. Originally not a boxoffice success, it now ranks among the most beautiful films of all time. The film's opening multiplane scene through the forest with its haunting musical choir arrangement leaves me speechless each time I watch it. And the character animation is -I said this before- poetry in motion.
Earlier this week the BBC aired a great interview with Bambi's voice actor Donnie Dunagen. Now at age 87, he still remembers vividly his association with the character and the film. It is well worth listening to:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct34nl
A newspaper scrapbook page from Dunagen's own collection.
In 2011 I had the chance to spend time with Donnie Dunagen, when he was promoting the film's release on Bluray.
https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2014/12/donnie-dunagan.html
These drawings didn't make it into the Jungle Book exhibition. We had so much great material, we could not include all of it. Most of these Milt Kahl "outtakes" are sketches made for other animators.
Colonel Hathi for John Lounsbery, King Louie and Baloo for Frank Thomas and the Girl for Ollie Johnston.
As Milt proclaimed in an interview:"I was the Disney style!"
Here is a link to a post full of Milt Kahl Jungle Book drawings, from over 10 years ago:
https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/07/cast-of-jungle-book.html
Milt Kahl sent this magnificent drawing of Bagheera to one lucky person called Emil. Probably in 1965. In studying the sketch I think this might be an outtake from an actual scene. Remember when Bagheera gives Baloo a hard time, who just announced that he is going to take care of Mowgli and teach him all he knows? This pose is from that section of the film. Milt added the branch and a personal note, folded the drawing, and off to lucky Emil...
I just received an advance copy of the catalogue/book about the Jungle Book exhibition at the Walt Disney Family Museum. 192 pages. It couldn't have turned out better. I am very thrilled with the printing quality and page layouts.
What can I say...I highly recommend it!!
A while ago I posted about an Ollie Johnston scene featuring the snake Sir Hiss. I find the depiction of a snake acting like a human utterly hilarious. At least when it is done in such a clever way:
https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2014/02/best-snake-gag-ever.html
Frank Thomas did the same with Kaa from The Jungle Book. Mind you, the animator can't get all the credit for the comedy in scenes like these. A story artist will have given the scene some thought long before the animator gets his hands on it. The story sketches already provide the main idea for a personality gag. But the animator of course is responsible for the scene's final comedic acting, timing, staging and draughtsmanship.
At the Jungle Book exhibition we show a few key drawings of Kaa during a conversation with Shere Khan. Suddenly he realizes he said something he shouldn't have. In a case like this a human would raise the shoulders and cover the mouth with one hand. Well... a snake doesn't have any of those human extremities. But Frank turns this moment into a completely believable -and entertaining- piece of character animation.
A beautiful sketchbook page by German illustration genius Wilhelm M. Busch. I would date these drawings to the 1970s, early 1980s. There are a handful of artists whose work I admire to a point where I love everything, and I mean everything they ever created. Busch is one of them. Every new sketch or illustration I discover is a gift, and an adventure to study. Here's to artistic idols that continue to inspire way beyond their lifetime!
When The Jungle Book premiered in Germany in 1968 I had to have the merchandise that came along with the new Disney release.. One of my favorite items was the Jungle Book View Master. I thought those 3-D scenes were produced beautifully. Did you know that the View Master sculptors actually checked their maquettes with director Woolie Reitherman and the animators for approval? A photo of such a meeting is included in the exhibition catalogue/book.
We had originally planed to give the View Master (enlarged) images some space in the exhibit, but we ran out of room.
The Walt Disney Family Museum opened on October 1, 2009. Here is a pic from one of the opening ceremonies. Museum founder Diane Disney Miller greeted every single guest. It was at this event when Diane told me:"We should talk Mickey sometime." A few years later I ended up curating the exhibition: Mickey Mouse, from Walt to the World.
That's Roger Viloria on the left, and photobombing in the back is friend and author Mindy Johnson.
How about this great idea for entering The Jungle Book exhibition at the Walt Disney Family Museum? I knew we were somehow going to use the image of the book from the film. Then Marina, the exhibit's designer, suggested that we cover one of the front doors. It adds a nice, whimsical touch.
This scene in which King Louie is offering Mowgli "two bananas" was animated vertically on 16 field paper. It makes sense, because the camera moves from a medium close up down to the feet, as they shoot off one and then another banana toward Mowgli.
I love King Louie's facial expressions, You can see on some of the in-between drawings that his eyes used to be a lot smaller, and he was almost bald. As I mentioned before, Walt asked for those changes. According to Dave Michener, who assisted Milt Kahl on Jungle Book, Milt was not in the mood to take care of these alterations. He told Dave:"You do it!"
I also really like the way King Louie's feet squeeze the bananas and turn them into fruity projectiles. The Jungle Book is full of these kinds of personality gags.
