Monday, July 2, 2018

Magic Mickey




A beautiful rough drawing by Fred Moore from Fantasia's Sorcerer's Apprentice, just recently offered by Heritage Auctions. Moore was animation supervisor on this short film, I don't think he animated much himself while working on it.
What's interesting here is to observe that Mickey is portrayed with his vintage black oval eyes. You can see it in the pre-production color sketch as well. So sometime during production the idea was discussed to give Disney's superstar eyes WITH small pupils.




And this is what he ended up looking in Fantasia, and pretty much from that time on, as far as eyes are concerned.



The story source material for The Sorcerer's Apprentice was as beautiful as the final film.









A finished cel set up from the film, though it might have been produced for publicity purposes.



A dramatic cel image for a final scene. Sometimes I wonder, what is it about Disney character colors?
They are stunning, just by themselves, without a painted background.
The Disney Color Model department really was the best in the world!



4 comments:

  1. the effects animation in this segment is NUTS, they really did not compromise it in the slightest.
    I think that cel with mickey on the book is a real one, but that the image is flipped horizontally. Also Maybe the layer with mickey is supposed to be beneath the layer with the light blue bubbles and yellow brush smears.

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  2. Hi there, just wondering if you've seen my earlier comments? I was wondering about whether you happen to have any more material on Kaa, the snake from The Jungle Book? I would be really interested to see it

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  3. Those cels and story material are absolute treasures. Does anyone know if Ub Iwerks, or Frizz, or any of the team back from laugh-o-grams ever wrote any art books with their incredible knowledge?

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  4. Hi Andreas. Love the Mickey Sorcerers Apprentice cleanup drawing. What number in the sequence is you drawing? The Fred Moore rough is wonderful as well. Full of motion with all of the lines.

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