Brenda E. Spender

I have a couple of books illustrated by Brenda E. Spender, the following images are from "Important People" from 1930.

Her work has a special charm. She observes situations beautifully and her draughtsmanship is tops . Very inspiring!

The sketches look old fashioned , but in the best sense of the word. There is an honesty here, which of course is timeless. She would have made a great animator, her poses are full of character, like good animation key drawings.

I really don't know anything about her life, other than that she most likely was English, because this first edition was published in London.

Maybe some one knows about Brenda E. Spender and can educate us.

I remember Frank and Ollie using her work in one of their lectures as an example

of what to strive for when creating strong animation poses.

Staging Pongo and Perdita

Just returned from A New Year's weekend at Walt Disney World in Orlando.

The parks were packed, but it was still a lot of fun to spend time there.

It sure brought back memories from when I worked at Disney's Florida Animation Studio on "Lilo & Stitch".

Time for another post:

These are staging ideas for a scene animated by Frank Thomas for "101 Dalmatians". Here Pongo is trying to give Perdita some hope that the Twilight Bark

might help find their stolen puppies. It's interesting to see that Frank is analyzing

the direction of movement and feeling through arrows, he even comes up with an abstract doodle on the last sheet, that seems to say: connect these two characters !

That last drawing shows a physical connection as well as a strong emotional touch.
Just compare it to the middle one, what an improvement!
First Frank thinks of the placement of the characters, then he adds real emotion.

As I said before, great staging is not easy. The audience often has only seconds to register what the animator is trying to say. But when the staging communicates like here, the scene becomes a warmhearted story telling statement.

Frank Thomas' Squirrels

Let's stay with "Sword in the Stone" for a moment.

Juan Alfonso asked to see some squirrel sketches from this film, so here they are.

Frank Thomas was very fond of the squirrel sequence, and after he had passed away this section from the film was shown at his memorial.

It is a bitter sweat moment in the movie, when the girl squirrel falls in love with somebody who turns out to be a human. After she flirts with Wart as a squirrel, her disappointment is so devastating when she finds out he is a human. It breaks your heart.

This kind of emotional material is what Frank handled so well, in many films.

By contrast, one day I was surprised to see Frank in his back yard squirting water 

at some squirrels, they apparently were causing a big mess behind his house.

I gave him a hard time about it.

Bill Peet storyboarded this sequence, and with Frank's acting it became another animated masterpiece.

The Sword in the Stone Christmas

Merry Christmas to everybody who celebrates this holiday.

I have always liked this photo of Walt Disney presenting "The Sword in the Stone" at Christmas time.

It would be interesting to find out if this was only a photo shoot or maybe a filmed introduction to the movie.

In any case, this gives me the opportunity to show you a few more beautiful sketches by Milt Kahl for the film. As you might know "The Sword in the Stone" was one of Milt's favorite projects he worked on. He admitted there were some story issues that didn't get resolved, but he thought that the richness of the characters more than made up for that flaw.

He also mentioned that the reason for its lack of success was  the fact that it was released in 1963 as a double feature with "The Three Stooges".

Happy New Year to everyone!

Tigger Pencil Test

I am absolutely thrilled to be nominated for an Annie Award for my work on Tigger in the feature film "Winnie the Pooh".

It was intimidating and challenging at the same time to do this character, who was originally created by "you know who".

Last weekend I had the pleasure to spend time with Milt Kahl's daughter Sybil, and I had to tell her: Can you believe I got a nomination with your dad's character?!

Here is one of two pencil tests I did to apply for Tigger. The scene is a little too busy with excitementI, but he is talking about firecrackers. I hope the directors Don Hall and Steve Anderson know how happy I was to have gotten this assignment. Both guys were just great to work with.

"Gosh, Pluto..."

I got this beautiful Fred Moore drawing at a recent auction, and I love it.

It's from the short "Society Dog Show" 1939. Mickey and Pluto are pretty cartoony

characters, but in this sketch their sad attitudes feel so honest and real.

Can anybody come up with a more uplifting caption for it than:

 "Gosh Pluto, whatever happened to pencil animation?"

Let me know.

What's My Crime?

Remember the great TV parody sequence in "101 Dalmatians" called "What's My Crime?" ?

Even if you have never seen the American TV show "What's My Line", which the animated version is based on, the humor and satire are so strong and enjoyable to watch, way past the 1960ies.

Here are are a few character design sketches by Milt Kahl, no doubt based on story drawings by Bill Peet. They show one of the questioners Miss Birdwell and the Quizmaster himself. 

I can't ever get enough of Milt's graphic abstractions, such as the Quizmaster's hands, fingers interlocked, forming the shape of a bridge or something like that.

Some of you might recognize a drawing influence of Ronald Searle, who's work affected animated projects from many studios in those days.

Early Mama Odie

When designing a new character, it is entirely possible to get off to a false start.

And that's no big deal, as long as you haven't fallen in love with your first attempt.

I almost did this with Mama Odie, before we started production on "Princess & the Frog".

The directors Ron Clements and John Musker had given me some ideas about her character and her role in the film. And they were great :

Mama Odie is 197 years old, she is blind and has a seeing eye snake.

Her home is a boat that got stuck in a tree after a storm.

She is the one who can help the lead characters to return to their human form.

These are sketches I made right after the briefing. It was fun to get started on such an eccentric character, and after a while drawing her became easy and very enjoyable. I got to a point where I thought, this might be the character.

When I showed these sketches to Ron and John, their response was positive, but they pointed out a few things I had missed.

At an age of 197 there had to be a way to show bony limbs, she needed dark glasses (I had avoided them in fear of not being able to show emotional change) and she should be a lot shorter. So I visited our story guys Paul Briggs and Toby Shelton, who were working on Mama Odie sequences. Their story sketches showed an older looking character with a twisted sense of homor. I liked how they drew her, and I was able to use that concept for the final design.

Teamwork!