Ollie stages Prince John and Sir Hiss

These lovely sketches by Ollie Johnston show scene continuity and staging for the introduction of Prince John and Sir Hiss in the film "Robin Hood". They are based on original storyboards, which were done by artists like Ken Anderson, Vance Gerry and Dave Michener among others.

But before Don Griffith and his layout team would start working on the the background scenery, Ollie took a last look at the story sketches, intending to improve and refine the continuity and bring out  the characters' personality. 

My generation of animators got involved in this stage of production as a group. 

We had long meetings in which storyboards were scrutinized. Present were the directors, key layout and story people and the supervising animators. Everybody was encouraged to come up with ideas that would plus what we saw in the storyboards. After all changes and improvements were made, so called "Work Books" were printed out as a final guide to the animators, layout and background artists.

If you compare Ollie's sketches to the final film, you'll find out that he pretty much stuck with what he had planned out in his "Work Book" pages.

Signed Books

Soon after I started working for Disney, Frank & Ollie published their first book The Illusion of Life.

I purchased a copy of it during a trip to San Francisco on my way to see Milt Kahl. We met up in Sauselito at the Spinnaker restaurant. The photo shows Milt's wife Julie discovering her husband's drawings of Pinocchio on page 221.

Back at the studio I had the book signed by other Disney legends, many of them were still working there. Quite the lineup of signatures. Of course Woolie Reitherman's comment has been very meanimgfulto me. 

This page is from Christopher Finch's epic book The Art of Walt Disney from 1973.

I purchased this copy from a previous Disney background painter. She had it signed by many Disney artists who were around at that time.

I want to share with you page 332 because the comments by Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl are pretty funny. But they also show how under appreciated these two animation superstars felt.

The Prosecutor

…in the Mr. Toad section from the feature "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" was animated by Ollie Johnston. Here he had the chance to explore a villain type character after having animated mostly endearing protagonists. Ollie gave the Prosecutor sharp timing and interesting theatrical gestures.
Definitely a high point in Johnston animation.

The following drawings are by Milt Kahl. I am guessing that Milt was helping out with design issues and that he went over some of Ollie's work. There is also a possibility that  Milt might have lobbied for this character's assignment, as he would do later with Captain Hook, though unsuccessfully.

In any case, these are very strong drawings, and we have come to expect that from Milt. Even the back view with it's ominous shape has personality. This stuff is still so inspiring!

For this film Milt animated scenes with MacBadger, Rat and Mole. I will post some of those roughs soon.

Tytla's Doc

I found these beautiful animation drawings printed in a vintage Disney Animation publication.

They are the work of the "über" talented Bill Tytla. 

Boy, these were done at a time, when moving the character's masses, not lines, was on the animators minds. That's why this squash and stretch feels so dimensional and believable. During this "take" the whole arc of Doc's body is being reversed, his head moves backwards while his belly comes forward.

Tytla drew pretty rough when he got into a character's personality. Strong gut feelings on paper. That meant that his clean up assistant had his work cut out for himself, as you can see in the last image.

There are all kinds of refinements going on here, as well as a few alterations. Fingers needed to be more detailed, the edge of the beard was lowered to avoid tangents with the hands, and even the overall weight was placed on Doc's left leg by adding an s-curve to his belt line.

This assistant knew what he was doing, because he had to keep track of the movement of these changes. Way back these great guys really had to know how to draw on model as well as how to animate.

A lot of unsung heroes, who didn't get screen credit for their important contributions to the Disney Classics.

More Lilo Stuff

Since I was the first animator assigned to "Lilo & Stitch",  directors Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois asked me to fool around with animation designs for the film's cast. (Based on Chris' work).

Here you see a few of my first attempts plus a few odds and ends I found.

I drew these poses without having any idea who Lilo really is. Way too active.

These are based on Chris' design. Nani ended up being animated beautifully by Stephane Sainte Foi.

An early design idea for David.

Remember him?

This wasn't easy, trying to get authentic Hula poses into a baby body like Lilo's.

To get these poses I studied footage of surfers.

The following three pages show research for a Lilo Maquette.

These were part of the model sheet package.

Three first pass poses with Nani and Lilo on the surfboard.

We started out with a kind of a wimpy social worker. That didn't seem to work in the sequence, so I was asked to try a design that would reflect the ultimate authoritative social worker, Cobra Bubbles.

He was animated beautifully by Byron Howard.

Lilo is late for Hula Class...

…but she just had to take a quick photo of a sun burnt tourist at the beach. 

The following key drawings show her turning around and then heading off to school.

Even though her design looks stylized and cartoony, it was very important to me that she behaved and moved like a real girl. So a run like this one needed to have proper weight, overlapping action in her hair etc.. I had a lot of fun with this little scene, and I'm glad we didn't use any live action reference for Lilo.

I remember Roy Disney's wife Patty asking me a question after a screening:"She never really closes her mouth in the film, does she?" I guess Patty wasn't used to seeing an animated character with a broad smile like this one.

These are sketches I made during a recording session with Daveigh Chase, who voiced Lilo so perfectly. I can't imagine a better voice for the character. Daveigh was funny to watch as she read her lines. She would belt out something like: 

"I'M ALREADY IN MY ROOM!" Then she leaned back in her chair, waiting for the directors' comments. 

They would say:"That was great, Daveigh." Her response was always a very shy and quiet "Thanks."

Prince Phillip and Samson

As I mentioned before, Milt Kahl really didn't enjoy animating Prince Phillip.
A handsome dude with a limited range for acting just didn't appeal to him. Of course he still gave it all he'd got to put a descent performance on the screen.

The following drawings are from the scene where Phillip gets on his horse, confident that he found the love of his life, even if his father King Hubert objects.

These are original rough drawings mixed in with copies of clean ups to show the path of action.

It looks to me that this scene was somewhat based on live action reference, but the translation into drawn animation is incredible. Just dealing with the horse turning direction would be a real challenge. 

Assistant artist Dave Suding, who worked on the film, told me once that one clean up drawing with the prince on his horse took one full day. That means a second of final clean up footage would require a whole month! Incredible.

           

Bre Melvin created a pencil test with these drawings:

http://animationtidbits.tumblr.com/post/28208036697/prince-phillip-samson-milt-kahl