Saturday, August 7, 2021

A Ward Kimball Talk

 


Here's a publicity pic of Kimball when he was involved with the cat sequence in Lady & the Tramp. In the end his animation footage was considered too wild to fit the overall film. And wouldn't we all love to see those scenes that were cut. Wild or not, I am sure they were brilliant.

On August 6 and 20, 1956 Ward gave a talk to upcoming animators (I presume at the studio) on various topics of character animation. Everyone in class is being asked to produce a 28 foot long test scene...which is extremely long, considering these were junior artists. 

I got a copy of these notes from Dick Williams way back during my Roger Rabbit days. It's interesting that Kimball covers technical as well as philosophical aspects. I'm sure he was a tough teacher to please. But that goes for any of these guys.