Friday, March 6, 2015

Pinocchio, Age 75


Walt Disney's film Pinocchio turned seventy-five years old last month. We have come a long way from this type of soulful, personal, compassionate, warmhearted and noble type of animated film making.






10 comments:

  1. Hi Andreas , a small doubt. Can a non professional artist achieve this depth in pencil shading ? Provided he has the basic talents of pencil sketching and shading

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  3. Very thought provoking and well said. It makes me wonder if there is a "path" back to this type of work. Will it ever be done like this again? I certainly hope that there is some sort of awakening in animation and we do get back to this style. These scenes are just so beautiful.

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  4. Hi Andreas, I was wondering if you (Or any of your readers) could shed any insight on a question I had.

    In regards to the very early Disney movies you hear an often repeated fact that the minimal screen presence of the Prince characters (ex. Snow White and Cinderella's Prince) are the result of the Disney animators not yet satisfied with their ability to animate adult men.

    If this is true, what was it about adult men that the early animators found hard to animate? And on the other side of the coin, are female characters 'easier' to animate, and why? Are there still problems that animators like yourself faced decades later when they have to animate male characters?

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  5. Wow 75 years for Walt's second movie. It definitely shows Walt was willing to prove to the world he can make other movies besides making Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. I heard the commentary from the DVD copy of this movie. I could not believe Monstro the whale designed in charcoal medium. I can't imagine how hard that had to be to animate that whale without smearing the Multiplan camera.

    By the way Mr. Deja I wanted to thank you for your posts on Mary Blair. I did my power point presentation on her for my college public speaking class and got a good grade as a result. I'd love to see more of her work on you blog Andreas.

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  6. Thanks for the Pinocchio posting in honors of its anniversary. The first images (the background paintings) are new to me; I've never seen them before. Do you know their history? Were they painted for scenes that were storyboarded but never animated? Are they in the ARL or are they owned by someone? I'm a little embarrassed to say I have a picture file titled "Deja Pinoke Images" that includes all the Pinocchio images you've posted on your site. Thanks for a very informative and entertaining site.

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    1. Or perhaps the backgrounds were painted for a later Pinocchio book?

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    2. Pinocchio was released in theaters when I had applied to work at Disney...Saw it 6 times during that week In Dec.1978 and it remains my favorite...Glad to work, study with and know some of it's creators.

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  7. "Pinocchio" is part of our culture. A wonderful movie experience, yet italians didn't like it very much. After his first italian presentation, for Christmas 1947, it was shown again only for Christmas 1963 and Easter 1977 and 1983. It gained much more popularity with video editions. Still, it's funny to see how the Disney version influenced italian directors that brought (as they said) the original Collodi version to the screen. Just think to Luigi Comencini and Roberto Benigni that both made the Blue Fairy to appear at the beginning of their movies to bring Pinocchio to life. (Benigni even made the Cricket to follow Pinocchio in Pleasure Island).

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