Marc Davis talkes about Bambi

Here is a clip from another UK TV show, this time from the early 80ies.

Marc is in his home studio, where he explains how he achieved human expressions on a realistic fawn. 

Frank Thomas told me once that the animators couldn't have come up with he same results if it wasn't for Marc's thorough and extremely useful research.

Characters like the ones in Bambi could easily look overly sweet and kitschy, but when you have artists involved with Marc's caliber, that's not going to happen. Instead the film's cast is portrayed with unparalleled elegance and beauty. 

Victory Through Air Power

For this most unusual of all Disney animated feature films Marc Davis storyboarded the fight sequence between the eagle and the octopus. The drawings date back to 1942/43.

What a change from his story work on Bambi, which delicately showed  the poetry of nature and animal characters in the forest. Here Marc pulled all the stops in order to portray these action scenes in the most dramatic way. These story sketches were so effective that the powerful staging, color and lighting made it into the final film intact.

Marc had established himself as an artist who could handle any kind of material. Wether character styling, story sketch or animation, he excelled at all of these.

Incidentally, it was the Bill Tytla who animated the sequence, and I believe this was his last assignment before leaving Disney.

Marc and Tytla stayed in touch and remained friends for the rest of their lives.

A final film frame from the sequence.

Countdown to Marc Davis' 100th Birthday

This March 30 marks the 100th birthday of Marc Davis.

I thought it might be a nice idea to post material relating to Marc's career until then.

The photo shows a very young Marc Davis. It was most likely taken sometime in 1939.

Some of the rough model sheets on the wall date back to 1938 and early 1939.

This means that the location isn't an office at the then new Burbank Studios, but a much smaller temporary studio for the Bambi unit on 861 Seward Street in Hollywood.

It's always fun to have a look around and see what you can find and identify in photos like this one.

It looks like Marc is holding a fly swatter, and he is pointing at a print of the Michelangelo painting The Holy Family (perhaps a fly had just landed on it). I don't recognize the artist of the print next to it.

Love the vintage radio, and what looks like a lunchbox on the left.

The illustration with a flock of birds Marc is working on is probably a story sketch. For inspiration he has a stuffed woodpecker in front of him. 

There is a sheet of paper just for sharpening pencils, but I also detect a Mickey Mouse doodle from The Sorcerer's Apprentice on it. That's unusual since Marc didn't work on that film.

Below are scans of a few of Marc's model sheets you see in the photo.

Some of Marc's bird studies for Bambi. All of these look so solid, because of his thorough understanding of birds' bone structure.

Happy Birthday, Milt Kahl!

Today is Milt's 104th birthday.

The photo was taken around June 25, 1974 at his "40th Anniversary with Disney Party" at the studio.

Milt is obviously enjoying goofy gifts from some of his colleagues.

When I started at Disney I remember seeing a long printed panel that was made up for the occasion. It was titled "40 Years of Kahl Characters" and showed many drawings from his long and astonishing career at the studio.

So this is a good enough excuse to post more of his roughs from his last animation assignment, Madame Medusa. Except for the the eyelash scene, all of these drawings are throw aways. The final animation differs just a little from what you see here.

"I was always trying to get the most entertainment out of everything" Milt said, and that intense search for character comedy, inventive drawing and great animation is evident in the these images.

But let's start off with a drawing from one of the first scenes he ever animated for the short "Mickey's Circus" from 1936.

I posted a xeroxed image of this thumbnail page before, but this is a better scan.

Both of these were a offered at auction recently.

Albert Brenet

My rediscovery of this extraordinary French artist frustrates me for a couple of reasons:

First of all, since he passed away as recently as 2005 in Paris, I could have made the effort to meet him, when I was living there. 

Secondly, I love his animal studies, but very little of this work is published or available elsewhere.

Brenet was born in 1903, he showed artistic talent at a very early age, and in 1920 he enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His main focus became animal painting. 

In 1929 his artistic interests changed when he boarded a trade sailing vessel which took him to the West Indies on a seven month journey. He became fascinated with daily life onboard, and started to paint the ship's crew, see ports and people from foreign cultures.

Later his objects were also airplanes, trains and scenes from manufacturing factories.

This is some of his early spectacular animal work.

Bad photocopies, but unbelievable drawings. What power!

This one is a killer - no pun intended. Great inspiration for my film!

These paintings represent a small cross section of his life's work.

The style reminds me of some American Illustrators from Brenet's generation. Confident brush strokes loosely applied give you accurately observed environments and situations.

His paintings often seem to approach photographic realism. 

But just like a John Singer Sargent painting, the result is actually impressionistic.

I still haven't given up on sometime finding more of his great animal studies.