Thursday, October 2, 2014

Toot, Whistle Plunk and Boom


Looking at stills or artwork from this 1953 Disney short reminds us just how great the need had become for graphic change at the studio. While quite a few short films from the 1950s showed a  commitment and drive toward experimenting, the Disney animated features would continue the style that was established during the 1940s. It wasn’t until Sleeping Beauty came along in 1959 that a new modern approach toward drawing and animating became evident to audiences. Many Disney fans were disappointed with these flat graphic designs, but the Disney staff needed to go places, and modern art continued to influence the animated films. 
Artists like Ken O’Connor, Eyvind Earle and Tom Oreb would lead the way toward re-shaping the Disney look. While animators like Marc Davis and Milt Kahl were delighted at facing these new challenges, others struggled at the beginning while trying to incorporate strong design into their animation.








11 comments:

  1. Thank you for these. Beautiful art, so simple, but never goes boring to look and study them.

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  2. Lovely blue-skinned woman. It reminds me of Yves Klein's International Klein Blue.

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  3. Among contemporary directors, I'd say Brad Bird displayed a great taste in combining these more stylized graphics (check out the designs Lou Romano created for his movies) with very solid, three-dimensional character design. Too bad he doesn't like coming back to traditional hand-drawn animation soon.

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  4. I've seen scenes from this short in the 1980s videos of "Disney's Sing Along Songs".

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    1. For me, it was seeing the short in music class in elementary school!

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  5. Mr. Deja, I greatly enjoyed Marc Davis: Walt Disney's Renaissance Man and I am very much looking forward to your book that comes out next year on the Nine Old Men

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  6. I always enjoyed this film as a kid.

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  7. I don't get how people can be disappointed with this art. It's gorgeous!

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  8. So thankful Walt was open to the change, even if he didn't agree with it at first.

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  9. Ich liebe das Design dieser Bilder und wünschte mir, ich hätte einer dieser Kurzfilme gesehen! Ich musste grinsen beim Anblick des kleinen Mannes , der nur Teil der Parade ist, um die große Trommel zu tragen! 😄
    Danke fürs Teilen! 😊

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