Yesterday was Fred Moore's birthday. As Marc Davis said once: "Fred WAS Disney drawing!"
Ollie Johnston talked often about how much he learned from him, while he was Fred's assistant and during the years that followed. Kimball, Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl had nothing but praise for Moore's work. No wonder Walt Disney sent most of his animators to see Fred, in hopes that some of the genius would rub off on to others. And it did. Because of his gutsy use of squash and stretch and his dimensional, appealing drawing style, Moore established what Disney characters (the cartoony ones) were made of: some kind of doughy, squishy substance, that is enormously fun to watch in animation.
I would say that his type of drawing and design influenced Disney's features from Snow White on, to Pinocchio, Fantasia and Dumbo.
By the time Bambi went into production Milt Kahl had taken over the role of the studio's drawing policeman.
http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/09/happy-birthday-fred-moore.html
Oh my goodness these drawings in your blog look so great to discover more about the artists Mark Davis, Milt Kahl, Fred Moore, Ollie Johnston, and Frank Thomas there are great thaye did beautiful artworks of characters so much history of animation.
ReplyDeleteLove his stuff and it's so unique to frame-by-frame drawn animation. I don't think his designs would work at all with different animation techniques
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know, Ollie Johnston didn't want to be an animator when he was working on Snow White. I heard he was doing the clean ups for Fred Moore, also he had to make Fred's and Bill Tytla's drawing look alike. Are there any of those clean up drawings that Ollie did?
ReplyDeleteOne of my personal inspirations in terms of style, I don't think there is a single animation inspired artist who isn't influenced by Fred Moore.
ReplyDeleteHe and Art Babbitt were close friends.
ReplyDelete