I recently found this low res photo online of Ollie Johnston as he is animating a scene with Johnny Appleseed. Behind him, pinned on a board are a couple of sheets showing sketches of Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones. Ollie would work on those characters next, as would his colleague Frank Thomas.
But it was Ward Kimball who drew these early development sketches. Incidentally I posted scans of the originals way back in 2012.
At that time Amid Amidi, who has been working on Ward Kimball's autobiography, left an interesting note regarding these Kimball design sketches.
Here is a Ichabod drawing from a scene by Ollie.
Here is the link to the earlier Ichabod post:
https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/11/ichabod.html
Wow! What a fascinating discovery, and what an intriguing situation! It never ceases to amaze me!
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you've already seen it, but I recently came across a photo of Ward Kimball at his animation desk, working on The Reluctant Dragon, with what I think is his assistant animator David “Bud” Swift next to him.
Thank you very much for these always inspiring shares!
https://storage.canalblog.com/08/76/520839/60898771.jpg
Ooooh, ouch. "Too well designed." 😆
ReplyDeleteI still say you can get great acting out of pushed designs like the Brom shown above, as long as the eyes, mouth, and hands and flexible. But if Walt wanted a more handsome Brom, if only to make sense of how he could charm Katrina, the more naturalistic take that wound up on film makes sense.
First of all, Mr. Deja, I'm a big fan of your work and the work of your fellow collaborators whom you worked with at Disney. You all gave me a wonderful childhood growing up with those shorts and feature films from the Disney Renaissance. I also find your blogs to be very educational.
ReplyDeleteRecently, I discovered the blogs of Hans Perk. I learned so much from his blogs. I learned who animated what on which Disney cartoon features. I learned that Milt Kahl animated the three funniest moments in The Jungle Book: Kaa getting thrown off the tree and getting a knot in his tail, Baloo accidentally yelling "BAGHEERA!!!" in the panther's face, the introduction of the vultures ("Gee, Flaps, what are we gonna do?"/"I don't know. Whacha wanna do?").
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the blogs did not include animator drafts for Bambi, The Aristocats, Robin Hood, Bedknobs & Broomsticks, Pete's Dragon, or anything that came after The Fox and the Hound. That's a shame because I wanna know more now that I've learned so much. Oh well. The information is included somewhere.