Ward Kimball

Ward Kimball was hilarious.

For the most part his animation differed from the work of his colleagues, it almost seems like once he mastered a certain approach,  he had to change to prevent 

from being bored.  Frank Thomas felt that Kimball's only  sincere character animation was Jiminy Cricket.

 From then on he needed to experiment and explore in order to keep himself entertained. And he always entertained us.

I didn't know Ward as well as the other then living Nine Old Men, but I had been invited to his house on a few occasions, and I even starred in a Disney TV show with him in the mid nineties. 

We had just finished the Mickey Mouse short "Runaway Brain", and the Disney channel wanted to help promote it with a half hour special called  "Mickey reelin' through the Years". It also starred the kid actors from "Home Improvement", who asked us a few scripted questions, and we gave scripted answers.

Except....when it came to introducing me to the kids, Ward had a hard time pronouncing my last name. So it went like, take 11  :  Hia kids, this is animator Andreas Deeeegg.....ohh, sh#@ !!

Somebody finally held up a card board sign with my name spelled phonetically.

That did the trick, and Ward got close enough.

The shooting took all afternoon and into the evening. The kids had finished their parts and gone home, but Ward and I still needed to draw for the camera and comment at the same time. Since it was a getting late, Ward got a little bored with the whole thing.

They wanted him to draw a vintage version of Mickey, so he started and said:

"After I finish a circle for his head, I add two more smaller ones for his ears, Then I draw a line from his neck all the way down to his penis....."

All you heard then was the director yelling :" CUT, CUT, CUT!"

Wards facial expression was priceless, like: what's the matter, anything wrong ?

At the end of the day he gave me his "revised" drawing and signed it.

I have to laugh every time I look at it. 

There are more funny Ward stories for later posts.

Also I need to put together a rough pencil test with one of his scenes from Fantasia.

Below is a beautiful story sketch of Ward, done for the feature "The Reluctant Dragon".

The first photo shows us getting our make up for the TV show.

In the the next one Kimball signs a big board with rough animation images.

I had a bunch of those boards made up to decorate the hallways at Disney.

Then there is the infamous Mickey drawing...which I think is just beautiful.

Following are animation drawings from the deleted Soup eating Sequence,

Jiminy Cricket, Panchito, Donald, Germania from "Education for Death",

the Reluctant Dragon (hysterical animation), Sascha from "Peter & the Wolf",

Tweedledee & Dum, and a cel from "Mars and Beyond".

What a range, what an animator!

Milt Kahl II

A little more on Milt Kahl for now, (there will be much more later).

The two lovely ladies in the photo knew him well, particularly Sybil Byrnes 

on the right.

She is Milt's daughter and says that her dad was not only driven by perfection in his work, but in his hobbies as well. Crossword puzzles, playing chess or fly fishing, he was great at all those things. 

As a child Sybil was popular in school, because she could invite her classmates to

work in progress screenings of films like "Peter Pan".

The other lady is Kathryn Beaumont Levine, who as you might already know, is the voice as well as the live action model for Alice and Wendy. She remembers Milt well, and that he frequently updated Kathryn on how her character and certain sequences were coming along during the production.

The photo was taken at the Academy's tribute to Milt Kahl in April of 2009.

I had the honor of hosting this event. (And boy, was it fun!).

Following are pictures of some Milt's wire sculptures. They are a bit difficult to photograph, because they become two dimensional. Full of grace and beauty

they show again his sense for design and motion.

These pictures were taken by animation historian Robin Allen.

Then we have a bunch of hilarious Marc Davis gag drawings.

Marc and Milt were best friends, but I guess occasional arguments would come up

over issues like the length of Alice's arms. Too funny!

Today I finish with a few design drawings for the short "Lambert, the sheepish Lion". 

Milt didn't animate on it at all, but for the final look of the main character they needed Milt's touch.

I see a foreshadowing of Tigger in the first sheet. Beautiful squash and stretch in his face. Wonderful gutsy drawings.

And again everybody, I do enjoy your comments.

Milt Kahl

I think Milt Kahl was one of the most important and influential artists of the 20th century. As far as the look of the Disney style, there were three main animators who influenced and shaped it. Ub Iwerks, Fred Moore and then Milt Kahl for the longest period. 
Ollie Johnston said that Walt leaned on Milt for for the final look of the Disney characters, because he saw appeal and believability in his drawings.

Even Marc Davis stated : if it wasn't for Milt, the rest of us would look pretty good.

Milt left the field of animation in April 1976 and moved to Northern California.

After having written a fan letter as a student I first met him on a visit to San Francisco in early 1980. Eric Larson had given me Milt's phone number, so I took a deep breath and called him. He proposed to meet up at his condo near Sausalito.

It took a couple of bus lines, then over the Golden Gate Bridge to a specific bus station. I waited a couple of minutes, and there he was, walking toward me.

My heart was pounding so fast, after all I had heard about his volatile temperament, and how intimidating he could be.

Well, you couldn't meet a nicer, happier man. As it turned out Milt had just gotten remarried, and he was totally in love with his wife Julie.

Back at his place he showed me photos of her, and he had a big smile on his face. I looked around the living room while Milt prepared a little lunch, a Waldorf salad.

There were a couple of Picasso posters on the wall, A Fred Moore sketch of three High School girls and a Ken Anderson layout sketch from "101 Dalmatians".

And of course a display of his mesmerizing wire sculptures.

Throughout our conversation I found out that Milt didn't want to talk about his animation technique, he preferred to be more philosophical about his work.

I started to ask him about the balance of straight versus curved lines in his drawings, I swear, he didn't know what I was talking about.

"You need to draw well", that's it. But he did talk about how much he enjoyed developing characters, "Song of the South", Merlin and Mim, Shere Khan and Madame Medusa being some of his favorites.

The photos below show us at later get togethers at the "Spinnaker" restaurant

in Sausalito.

The animation drawings speak for themselves and show a graphic change,

from the round volumes of Pinocchio to the sophisticated lines of Medusa.

Medusa was drawn as a gift to animator Art Stevens on Milt's last day at the studio.

I have a couple of his pencil tests for you, the famous Pinocchio skip, and then

the Sheriff of Nottingham walking toward camera with a lot of weight.

Marc Davis II

Before getting to the next post I just want to address a few comments and questions.

How long would it take Marc to draw one of those Maleficents ?
I really have no idea, to be honest. All those guys could draw and animate pretty fast in general, on "Sleeping Beauty" though the pacing was slower because Walt wanted moving illustration for this film.
I had a chance to talk to a clean up artist many years ago, who helped clean up the personality scenes with the prince on the horse. He mentioned that he was able to do ONE DRAWING A DAY, and that was acceptable, because certain scenes simply needed to look perfect.

How did Marc use live action reference footage ?
Very carefully, would be the short answer.
He told me once that he looked at the reference as a rough animation first pass .
Meaning, something is already there, but it needs to be refined:
Strengthening of the main poses, more contrast in the timing, pushing for more weight, exaggerating follow through on hair and clothing.
Often only parts of the live action are useful, the rest is animated from
imagination.

How do I use live action ?
I worked with  live action video footage for characters like Gaston and Hercules,
as well as for one dance sequence with Mama Odie.
What I didn't work with were photos or photostats. I viewed the footage on a monitor many times, and then made small thumbnail sketches to claryfy for myself, which parts I could use, and which parts I couldn't.
Based on this acting "blueprint" I began animating.

Is anything happening with Marc's book project on animal anatomy ?
Not much at the moment. The original title is "The Anatomy of Motion".
Marc and Alice tried to get it published, but so far it hasn't worked out.

Blog reader Andrew Lee has turned the Maleficent scans into a pencil test.
Check it out, it works beautifully. Thanks, Andrew.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1vObeiRoBM

Marc Davis

Marc was a lot of fun to be around. He and his wife Alice enjoyed the company of young artists, 

and it was always a treat to get invited to their house in the Los Feliz area of LA, very near the location of the old Hyperion Disney Studios.

Marc loved telling the story when he bought the house in the mid fifties and told his boss : 

Hey Walt, I bought a place near the old studio, to which Walt responded:

Hell Marc, we're not moving back THERE !

His home was and still is a museum. He loved the designs of New Guinea artifacts,

and had brought them over from the islands. His own sketches depicted their costumes and rituals.

I thought you might enjoy more animation from "Sleeping Beauty".

Marc had skipped "Lady and the Tramp" in order to focus on two characters,

Aurora and Maleficent.

Both very difficult to animate because of their degree of realism. But by that time Marc had become somewhat of an expert in animating female characters, or Leading Ladies, like he called them. 

Starting with Snowwhite herself, Marc had supervised her clean up look and did a little bit of animation. He later designed and animated Cinderella, followed by Tinker Bell and Alice.

So animating the female form wasn't anything new to him, but Maleficent turned out to be a challenge. Marc would say that she stood around and gave speeches in most of her scenes. 

That means not much is happening physically with the character, so you need to work with facial expressions and hand gestures in a very subtle way.

Frank Thomas thought that a lot of the drawing power in Marc's Maleficent animation got lost in clean up.

Below are scans of a few animation keys. Maleficent is about to leave the prince alone in the dungeon. The raven became a nice "prop" and gave her something to do with.

The pencil test shows Aurora, when she tells the fairies that she is in love.

I can't get over the way Marc designed her hair...Art Deco curls.

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