The dog characters in Lady & the Tramp were drawn extremely carefully. The design style called for dimensional realism like the film Bambi, years earlier. This is one of the most iconic scenes in Disney animation, and one of the most beloved. Many of you know that Frank Thomas animated this masterpiece. Two dogs falling in love while eating spaghetti with meatballs. It turned out to be one of those Thomas scenes that shows a kind of life that becomes detached from the animator. These characters live on their own, it seems no artist conceived any of this.
It is interesting to find out that the scene's overall brilliance was the result of teamwork. No question, this is Frank Thomas at his best, but he did get some drawing help from a couple of artists.
Iwao Takamoto had been Milt Kahl's assistant for a number of years, and he was able to absorb some of his boss' master draughtsmanship. On Lady & the Tramp he was put in charge of Lady, making sure that differing drawing styles by a number of animators would be unified in clean up, Iwao was not an animator, but he knew animation principles, and became a perfectionist when it came to bringing a character "on model". He paid insane attention to eyes, eye lids, eye lashes, and the raised volume around eye brows. Iwao's contribution to Lady's appealing look is immeasurable.
He made these drawings over some of Frank's keys as a guide for final clean up. I talked about sculpted drawings before, that's what these are.
Milt Kahl drew a few keys over Frank's roughs such as this one below. Ultimate appeal.
One of Frank's animation roughs for the iconic scene.
Walt Disney very much encouraged this type of team work in order to get superior results.
More about Iwao Takamoto and his work on the following feature Sleeping Beauty
in this post:
http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2014/01/iwao-takamoto.html
I really enjoy your blog. Thank you for everything you have done at Disney and for everything you share. I love Lady and The Tramp. I love seeing these types of things for the movies I love!
ReplyDeleteI heard an interview with Willie Ito that one of his first jobs at Disney was assisting Iwao cleaning up Lady in this scene!What an introduction to the business!
ReplyDeleteAlles Gute zum Geburtstag, lieber Andreas, weiter so ... !
ReplyDeleteEven in these still images there's so much life and animation. I'm also amazed by how on-model the two Tramp drawings are, before Iwao worked on them! (I shouldn't be so surprised, considering it's Milt Kahl and Frank Thomas, but still)
ReplyDeleteIwo only worked on Lady.
DeleteFor this scene Milt Kahl did for Tramp what Iwo did for Lady.
There's something about Frank Thomas' animation that comes alive like nobody else's
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing these beautiful original production drawings of Lady and the Tramp. I love that movie, it's so beautiful and unique. <3
ReplyDeleteHey andreas can you answer me a doubt i had?
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday, Andreas! Wishing you a fantastic day, an amazing year ahead and tremendous success with Mushka! Thank you always, for sharing your wealth of knowledge, inspiration and incredible talents. =0)
ReplyDeleteThese are great. Thanks for posting, Andreas!
ReplyDeleteI'm studying the 6th one in Photoshop (doing a draw-over), and that line defining the muzzle under her screen right eye is just so subtle! So delicately describes the form of her cheek. Really inspiring stuff.
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday Andreas, you are a great entertainer, hopefully a good time and the best
ReplyDeleteI think it shows a splendid amount of humility that Frank Thomas was willing to allow Milt Kahl to aid him with these key poses. These men would do anything to get the best product on the screen.
ReplyDeleteI don't see any clean ups hear but insightful reading.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Andreas, for this beautiful post!! You are the BEST!!!
ReplyDelete