Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Eric Larson Art



It looks like Eric Larson is being handed what might be a ring from Disney Studio Chief Ron Miller to celebrate an anniversary during Eric's long career as an animator and teacher.
His first feature assignment on a feature film were those very labor intense scenes showing often large animal groups in Snow White.
It is interesting to see that in this drawing all animals are on the same sheet of paper. This means that none of the critters ever came to a stop (which would require a separate sheet to show them in a held position). But doing it like this certainly made it easier to orchestrate the overall motion of the group.





Scenes like this one -based on live action- needed to be scrutinized very carefully, or your characters would float on the screen. Look at how many times Eric altered the follow through on Cinderella's dress.





Great silhouette on these two rough drawings.




From one of my favorite sequences, Cinderella is pleading with the Stepmother, who is firing off orders and insults from her bed.



Eric animated many scenes during the opening sequence from Alice in Wonderland.



A couple of key drawings from a Peter Pan scene, in which Milt Kahl probably had a hand in as far as drawing the character on model.




This still is a publicity set up, but Eric did animate the complicated multiplane scenes featuring Peter Pan and The Darling children as they fly over London toward Neverland.



Peg became one of Eric's signature characters. A flawless performance in the Dog Pound sequence!


Some drawings come from Howard Lowery's auction website:

http://auction.howardlowery.com/Home.taf

7 comments:

  1. Always love seeing these sketches and the beautiful, intricate contributions these men made to the films. Thanks so much for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great early morning inspiration. Great stuff as usual, Andreas.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great early morning inspiration. Great stuff as usual, Andreas.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Last year for my November birthday my sweet wife preordered your book. And I waited for it... and then waited... AND waited. Well, I am happy to say that upon arriving home late Saturday night I discovered that the wait was over! And let me tell you, Sir: IT WAS WORTH THE WAIT! Thank you for this book. It is truly a gift: from my wife to me and from you to the entire community of us who are interested in the animated arts. I hope you have more in the pipeline!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I finally received my long-awaited pre-order and am more happy than I can express in words! It's truly amazing. Here's a link to my review on Amazon.
    https://www.amazon.com/review/R4QMO9W04Y8E4/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

    ReplyDelete
  6. I got to meet Eric as a child. I went to a presentation of Disney Animation at San Diego State in the late 70's. ( I think they were recruiting artists at the time for Fox and the Hound.) He was a very nice man, and was very encouraging. "Call me after you get out of Art School" he said. But, unfortunately, he was gone by then. Frank and Ollie were there talking about the book they were doing., and I believe Marc Davis was there as a special guest. I'll have to ask my father about that. Anyhoo, That was the day I decided to become an animator. It was their love for the craft that sold me. I love your Blog every day. Very Inspiring. I try and do assist on some of the master's keys from here...good practice, and you learn so much that way...Hope yer film is going well....do you guys do x sheets for everything?..just vunderink..

    ReplyDelete
  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete