These gorgeous pieces are not part of the JUNGLE BOOK exhibition, currently at the amazing Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. They were sold at auctions over the past few years.
It still amazes me how the characters with black Xerox outlines work with backgrounds that are painted in watercolor/gouache with no black lines at all (Only a few BGs have some degree of dark linework).
After Walt nixed a Sword in the Stone approach to the art direction, background painter Al Dempster was called out of retirement to create this softer, more traditional approach to the backgrounds. As much as I love Walt Peregoy's early concept art, I am also very fond of the film's final art direction. It really is comparing apples to oranges.
I really like how it looks when they only use BG lines in the areas where the characters are.
ReplyDeleteAlso could you imagine if they could restore the film to look as sharp as these cel scans? I can only dream
Wait a minute!! About Al Dempster....didn't he work on the films that preceded "Jungle Book" like "Sleeping Beauty", "Dalmatians", "Sword in the Stone" and "Mary Poppins"???
ReplyDeleteHe had retired , and Walt asked him to come back.
Delete(As related to me by Floyd Norman.)
Oh ok.
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