Wednesday, October 14, 2015

The G#+x!! Prince



As I said before, Milt Kahl despised an assignment like a Prince character. As a young animator on Snow White he animated complex scenes involving all the forest animals surrounding the title character. "But I also got stuck with the clean up job on the Prince" he stated in an interview. The fact is that Milt drew over tracings of photo stats and therefor is credited with animating the Prince as well. In the drawing below Milt only focused on defining the Prince's head, the overall roto tracings were done by an assistant.




To  my knowledge, Milt had nothing to do with Prince Charming in Cinderella. He was animated by Eric Larson, who confessed to some of us newcomers that he felt kind of embarrassed about the stiffness in his performance.



Milt ended up designing Prince Phillip for Sleeping Beauty, and he animated all of his personality scenes. This prince had a little more screen time as well as potential for better acting than his predecessors. It is amazing to see how clean his "rough" animation drawings are. The cel inkers could have worked off Milt's fine lines, but the Disney system at that time still had clean up artists trace these already precise drawings on to a new sheet of paper.





The action scenes were handled by other animators like Ken Hultgren. But Milt felt he still needed a hand in the final depiction of Phillip, as the great drawing below demonstrates.



One of very few close up scenes given to Prince Phillip.


More on Prince Phillip here:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/04/no-carrots.html

8 comments:

  1. I absolutely adore Prince Phillip design- and animationwise!
    Do you know how much Kahl relied on the maquettes made by the sculptors at the studio for the characters? Milt Kahl had this incredible capacity to draw everything from any perspective, I don't think he NEEDED any reference, but especially with realistic human characters, the ability to turn around the features is of the essence...

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  2. Wow, those Philip drawings are beautiful! Just curious-why "the G#+x!! Prince"?

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    1. Because Milt Kahl called him that. I should have made this a bit more clear.

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  3. I just want to say thanks so much for keeping up with this blog for all of us animation geeks :) How is Mushka going? There hasn't been an update in a while. I hope its going well because it looks beautiful and can't wait to see it. Your drawings are gorgeous so thank you for posting them! also I found this wire sculptor, David Oliviera who did some really nice lion sculptures and made me think of yours. Thanks again so much!

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  4. their work on Princes improve with the years. Philip is more vivid than prince charming of 1937.

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  5. Hi Andreas!,

    These are amazing drawings of prince Philip!! I've always thought that he's a cool Disney character!! By the way Andreas, I'm kinda a beginner animator, I want to become one for Disney, and I was wondering if you had maybe some tips for beginners and if I could maybe show you some of my animations and get critiqued? I've always wanted to become an animator for Disney ever since I saw Scar and Hercules on the screen! I really like how you designed and created those awesome characters! If you have some tips, you can reach me at hsiverson98@hotmail.com.

    Thanks, Hayden

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  6. Phillip is my favourite Disney prince. Thanks for the pix.

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