Woolie's Gaucho Goofy

Woolie Reitherman's animation of Goofy as a Gaucho in Saludos Amigos, 1943, is astonishing!

In this slow motion scene the audience is supposed to find out about the gaucho's hunting technique on horseback.

These are clean up drawings over Woolie's roughs. You can see clearly how the animator "messed" with his animation. Multiple color passes, erased positions and re-timed numbering.

The end result is broad, highly comical motion that somehow remains believable because of solid drawings based on real anatomy.

A masterpiece!

Click on the images 2x. For some reason they become sharper that way.

A Pinocchio Story Problem

I remember years ago when I had a conversation about Pinocchio with Frank Thomas.

As usual I was gushing over the film and its animation.

Frank recounted certain sequences he was involved with in terms of animating the title character.

When it came to the section where Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket returned home after escaping treasure island, Frank got suddenly agitated.

He really disliked the way the two characters were informed about Gepetto's absence and his whereabouts.

They re-introduced the Blue Fairy as a dove, dropping a written message right in front of them, Frank remembered. "I thought that was a terrible idea" he complained. 

It didn't work for him way back, and it didn't work for him still.

I had seen the film numerous times and never questioned this story issue, but I realized Frank had a point. 

How else this information might have gotten to Pinoke and Jimmy I won't even try to elaborate on.

Here are a couple of Frank's rough animation drawings from that sequence, followed by their corresponding film still.

Another Great Marc Davis Sketch

I forgot how long Marc Davis worked on story for Bambi. He told me once, I think it was about five years. Marc skipped Pinocchio and Fantasia in order to focus on the challenge to develop sequences with realistic but expressive animal characters for Bambi. 

In this particular sketch it's Thumper who just kills me. What an appealing, gorgeous, all around wonderful caricature of a rabbit.

I this photo, years later, Marc is pretending to work on Lady And the Tramp.

As a matter of fact, he skipped this film as well, so he could do designs for the next Disney film Sleeping Beauty. Marc created endless characters for crowd scenes, but as you all know, focused on Aurora and Maleficent.

Marc Davis Bambi Research

A few sheets with beautiful development drawings for Bambi by Marc Davis were recently offered at S/R Labs auctions.
They remind me of what Frank Thomas once said, that without Marc's thorough deer studies quality character animation would not have been possible.
Marc found just the right balance between realistic anatomy and human expressiveness.
He developed appealing designs that could be animated.
Animated by only a few artists who were willing to take on this challenge of studying the heck out of deer anatomy, then adding subtle caricature and acting.

Steps in the Making of the Jungle Book

Disney created educational panels like these off and on to help promote a new upcoming animated feature. They were hung in the main hallway of the animation building, ground floor, or at the movie theatre where the film premiered.

I recall seeing Steps in the Making panels for Sleeping Beauty, The Aristocats and The Rescuers.

For The Jungle Book the character of King Louie guides you through the animation process. 

Sketches by Ken Anderson, storyboards, and animation drawings by John Lounsbery and Frank Thomas help explain how Louie makes it from early development to final cels on to the screen.

All pretty basic stuff, but still lots of fun to follow nevertheless.

Milt Kahl is featured in the photos, and yes, I do own his animation desk.

Jungle Encounter

An absolutely charming and unique T. S. Sullivant illustration. And as usual full of surprising poses, expressions and textured line work. A visual treat!

More Black Cauldron Designs

Heritage Auctions is again offering never before seen animation art, including a few more of my early character designs for Taran and Princess Eilonwy from The Black Cauldron. 

I remember having a conversation with Glen Kean about the idea for designs that reflect a mix of the drawing styles of Milt Kahl and Fred Moore.

These sketches are an attempt to achieve this. Seems like 100 years ago when I drew them.

Black felt pen and Magic Markers.

Mickey Mouse: From Walt to the World

I am thrilled to announce that a new important exhibition is coming to the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco.
I had the honor and pleasure to guest curate MICKEY MOUSE: FROM WALT TO THE WORLD.
This is a huge exhibit covering Mickey's animation career in film and on TV. Other areas we explored are Mickey merchandise, Mickey comics, Mickey overseas and Mickey's voice actors (that will include the boss of course).
His inspiration on fine art, Mickey's key animators and "How to Draw Mickey".
This is just the tip of the iceberg, there is so much more.

For infos about the exhibition go here:

https://www.waltdisney.org/press-room/mickey-mouse-walt-world

There will be a gorgeous catalogue/book featuring the essence of the exhibit.

It was none other than Diane Disney Miller who asked me a few years ago to get involved in this undertaking. What an honor, what a thrill.

Another Frank Thomas Masterpiece

Frank Thomas' animation of Bambi and Thumper on the ice is legendary.

This story sequence was almost cut from the film, Walt Disney questioned its importance within the overall plot of the film.

Marc Davis had sketched the storyboards, and Frank got all excited over the possibilities for personality animation . In order to convince Walt that this might be a highly entertaining part of the movie, Frank posed out the whole sequence for Walt to see. The rest is history.

What a great contrast between the characters. Thumper is so comfortable on the ice, he is a champ skater with his low center of gravity. Bambi is the opposite. His long legs prevent him from balancing his body. 

It's animation business galore.

I noticed that Frank drew Bambi with solid, sometimes bulky legs. Milt Kahl was already in the business of stylizing a deer's anatomy with much thinner legs. (A trend that would continue with Prince Philip's horse Samson as well as Pongo.)

Our Planet

Go to NETFLIX and watch Our Planet. Incredible animal footage to study. From the folks who brought you Planet Earth.

As gorgeous as this documentary series is, it does inform you about frightening statistics in terms of disappearing wildlife on earth. There is some hope for creatures like this Siberian tiger, for other species it looks dismal.

Magician Mickey Roughs

The year is 1937. Walt Disney Productions releases SEVEN Mickey Mouse short films. Magician Mickey opened in February, Snow White would be released in December.

In this short Mickey puts up a magic show while constantly being interrupted by Donald Duck.
Consequently Donald becomes a part and a victim of Mickey's magic acts.

Heritage Auctions offered this amazing collection of rough animation drawings a while ago.
I really don't know who drew these, but animation credits from this film include Johnny Cannon, Ed Love, Les Clark, Bill Roberts, Isadore Klein and Riley Thomson.
Fred Moore most certainly was still busy animating dwarfs.

This kind of artwork is extremely rare as rough animation drawings were considered not suitable for archiving. I love all of these expressive, vaudeville type poses. Great clarity and staging.

Talking amount Mickey Mouse: I had the pleasure of guest curating the next big exhibition at the Walt Disney Family Museum. 

MICKEY MOUSE, FROM WALT TO THE WORLD.

More on this in my next post.

James H. Dowd

I am still a big fan of the drawings by James H. Dowd.  Full of life, beautifully observed and virtuoso draughtsmanship. I posted some of his artwork a few years ago, but I remember mis-identifying the artist's actual name. 

Anyway, Frank and Ollie were very impressed by his spirited illustrations. And of course they were.

The overall philosophy is very Disney-like. Personality, movement, everyday life poses...depicting the ordinary in an extraordinary way.

I found this info about Dowd online:

James Henry Dowd was born in 1884. He worked as a draughtsman, etcher and painter. Dowd was a regular contributor to the The Daily Graphic and in 1906 began to have his work published in Punch Magazine. As Mark Bryant points out: "He (Dowd) was also the magazine's first illustrator of film criticism, continuing in this post for more than three decades and also drew theatre caricatures."

Dowd also produced drawings for The Bystander and The Strand Magazine. He also designed posters for London General Omnibus Company and London Underground Electric Railways. According to one critic he was "one of the early pioneers of the vital expressive line that seems to be part of the subject, instead of merely illustrating it."

Dowd provided the drawings for several books including the highly acclaimed Important People (1930) and People of Importance (1934).

James H. Dowd died in Epsom on 16th March 1956.