Saturday, August 18, 2012

"Up You Go!"


These are three stages in the making of a little scene from Jungle Book.
The story sketch is by Bill Peet, Bagheera is asking Mowgli to get up this tree to spend the night.
Milt Kahl animated both characters, and you can see how Peet's pose of the panther was an inspiration to Milt. The final animation shows Mowgli entering the scene in profile instead of from the foreground. Also, Mowgli's attention is still with Bagheera. 
It takes a few more scenes before he lifts his head, in a close up, to examine the enormous tree in disbelief.
Next time you watch the film, look at the animation frame by frame. Mowgli's walk as well as Bagheera's leap into the scene are beautiful, full of weight.
I don't know who painted the background, but I think that the whole night time sequence looks stunning.




14 comments:

  1. Andreas, could you post somethings more about this scene? That is one of the best animated shots ever to me!

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    1. I will post a few key drawings from the scene later.

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    2. Thank you Andreas, I'm animator here in Brazil and my first Job 13 year ago was with Sandro.
      He showed me some Milt's treasure, so I'm a big fan of his work!

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  2. I remember Brad Bird on the making The Incredibles DVD instructing his animators to study Milt Kahl's work on this scene from Jungle Book to better understand animating gravity and weight.

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  3. I'll never get tired at looking at Milt's drawings... *o*
    By the way, I noticed in your profile it says you are working on your own short films! I hope that it's all going well!! n.n

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  4. Hello Andreas:

    I just found your blog...and stayed up the other night reading through all of the older posts. I love how you show the production process and the stories behind it. Milt Kahl was a brilliant draftsman. I don't know if saw my comment about the "No Carrots" scene...but that is one of my favorites in Sleeping Beauty....a few years back I picked up a mulit-cel setup right around yours and I love the way Milt animated Philip to bring another side to his character out while interacting with Sampson....it just plain animated fun.

    The Bagheera set you have here is a fun way of showing how it all comes together....I love Bagheera's paw on the tree. I am sure that background setup is stunning in person!

    -Sean Monico

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    1. Sean, this is only a frame grab from the film. But it helps to illustrate the making of a scene.

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  5. When you guys are looking at and studying other animator's scenes (now or as students), what questions do you ask yourself?

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    1. Whenever I watch a great scene, I need to find out how it was done in order to understand why it looks so great. Those scenes usually include beautiful drawing and acting as well as strong entertainment.

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  6. Again, I love seeing the step-by-step comparisons from sketch to final. :D For some reason, it makes me kind of... giddy? ';)

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  7. One curiosity for me...

    In Milt's drawing we can see the registration marks where characters interact with background. The assumption therefore being that Milt at least had access to the initial 'approved' background layout. This makes me wonder if, as a general rule, animators always wait until they have that layout until they commit to their final animation. Or is that more into the realm of the Cleanup artists?

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    1. The animator almost always works with the clean up layout.
      You just have to have that information, so your animation works with the given perspective and all the background elements.

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  8. Mowgli's face expression in Milt's drawing is amazingly detailed and beautiful. A part of it seems to be lost in final, inked version. The main part of the expression is caught perfectly, but original drawing has nuances that beatifully add to it.

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  9. I remember this scene well. I was right down the hall from Milt while he was animating it. I remember hearing that damn track over and over again. "Up you go!"

    Anyway, I had avoided working on "The Jungle Book." I was taking a break from Disney features. Little did I know that Bill Peet was about to quit the movie and my adventures in story would soon begin.

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