Ollie & Frank on Pinocchio

Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas talk about animating Pinocchio in this clip from a 1988 UK TV show on the life of Walt Disney. They discuss acting issues as well as technical challenges.

Valentine Greetings from Milt Kahl

Somehow this wedding scene with Robin Hood and Maid Marian reminds me of Milt and his late wife Julie. When I met Milt for the first time in Marin County near San Francisco he had just gotten married to Julie. He was very much in love with her, and even told me how they met in a library, love at first sight. Here was this titan of an artist showing his tender side. Originally Julie had no knowledge of Milt's background at all, she just loved him for who he was. 

They both enjoyed going to the San Francisco ballet, as well as watching movies including the Disney classics in theatrical re-runs. Julie was unfamiliar with most of them. During one of my visits  she mentioned that they had just watched 101 Dalmatians, and how much she enjoyed Marc's Cruella De Vil. Milt responded with a smile: "Now, honey, you haven't seen Medusa from The Rescuers yet."

The two would spend ten happy years together before Milt passed away in April of 1987.

The Bambi Lollipop Story

This is young Frank Thomas showing an animation sketch to an onlooker, who I believe worked at the studio as well.
They both look very serious, yet in those early days at Disney the working atmosphere was pretty casual with plenty of time for practical jokes and silly activities.

Animator Milt Kahl remembers this episode (from an early 1980s interview):

"Frank had one of these big candy suckers with a big piece of doweling for the stick. It was wrapped in cellophane with a ribbon. And I told him that I would just love to smash that thing down on his work table and find out what would happen to it, you know.
It might be disappointing where it would just break up inside the cellophane or what ?
And so when we finished with Bambi we decided that I could break his sucker. And I took this thing, and his work table was just the right height, and I swung this thing down with a lot of force. It must have hit it absolutely perfectly flat, because a sharp, loud report…and there was nothing there but the stick. And actually this thing, it was back in all of the shelves. There was a drawing thumb-tacked on a wall, it looked like one of these transparent easter eggs. Sugar coating like on glass, you know, the drawing was just coated…and it was back in the drawers and in the cuffs of Frank's trousers, and mine.
Then when you walked on the carpet, when you lifted your foot, it would go klack- klack- klack.
It was hard candy, but it was amazing , this stuff is just like glue, and it was just terrible.
It took a long time to get that all out of there. We had the janitors busy for a while, because it really just disintegrated, it was like an atom bomb."

Another Tigger Outtake

Here are two versions from a discarded scene that a I animated for the feature film Winnie the Pooh.

First the rough pose test, then the in-betweened rough animation. 

Tigger is standing on Winnie the Pooh's belly, and he is impressed to find out how much Pooh knows about Tiggers.

Bambi Art

Your guess is as good a mine, as far as who drew the beautiful sketch above. Perhaps Frank Thomas, but I am not sure. Doesn't matter, it is obvious that the artist had a lot of affection for these characters. As did everyone else who was involved in the production.

Milt Kahl drew these appealing studies of Thumper, and I think that a couple of poses represent the cutest application of squash and stretch ever.

Just like the films that preceded Bambi, there were a number of art directors involved in creating the look for the movie. And they all shared one thing with Rembrandt, a mastery of the use of light. Absolutely breathtaking!

This is a magazine article from September of 1942 that promotes the film by showing mostly sketches. Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl created layouts for some of the illustrations. (Young Bambi meeting Feline is a Marc Davis drawing).

You can see some of those original layouts in this previous post:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/12/bambi-book-layouts.html

Walt Peregoy's Jungle Book

Here is another gorgeous visual development piece by the cranky, but enormously talented Walt Peregoy. As I said before, this type of jungle would have worked for The Jungle Book as well, but the other Walt (Disney) envisioned lighter, more airy backdrops for the characters. The production of this wonderful film saw two casualties: Story man Bill Peet and Walt Peregoy, who both left the studio in a huff, because of their artistic disagreements with where the movie was headed. 

Peregoy has a way with blue/greens and a touch of purple. You can see a lot of that in The Sword in the Stone. And I love it!

Here is a previous post on Peregoy's Jungle Book:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/11/early-jungle-book.html

Wilhelm M. Busch 1950

More tiny Busch spot illustrations for a novel by Ernst von Salamon titled "Glueck in Frankreich" (Happiness in France). The reason why I love these drawings so much is because of their economy of lines. Just like in a Milt Kahl drawing, every line counts to communicate an idea in the simplest way possible. Anything that isn't essential to telling the story is left out! You only get the bare bones.
Busch is also able to create real space with so little. Just amazing!

Leaving things out is a marvellous thing, anybody can render an image to death. But presenting only the bare essentials makes for a fascinating artistic statement.

Ollie & Milt team up on Robin Hood

Ollie Johnston did a ton of animation for the film Robin Hood. His work includes the final section of the tournament. Ollie studied the storyboard, then reworked continuity, framing and personality business. 

Here the stork has just been identified as Robin Hood, who gets arrested immediately to be executed. When Maid Marian begs Prince John for forgiveness, he sympathizes for a moment before angrily calling for Robin's head. 

All the characters wee animated by Ollie, but when it came to drawing Robin Hood, Ollie had a few of his keys redrawn by Milt Kahl, who supervised the character.

Milt drew these couple of beautiful drawings for scene 332.

Robin Hood reacts to Prince John's verdict in scene 336.

In scene 337 Milt tackles interesting, but tough to draw head angles.

Milt of course didn't have the time to key all of Robin Hood's scenes. There are some inconsistencies in the way the character looks throughout the film, even Milt's own animation shows some irregularities due to model changes. 

You might want to revisit Milt's extraordinary designs for the archery tournament characters:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2013/04/archery-tournament-characters.html

Robin Hood & Little John in Drag II

I have posted some material on these two characters dressed as gypsies before, but I have more to show. The doodle sheets above and below were drawn by Milt Kahl. He is trying to find entertaining solutions to the problem of fitting a dress on the body of a fox and a bear.

Beautiful sketches!

This model sheet includes most of Milt's key drawings from a scene in which Little John reacts to the arrival of Prince John's royal coach:  "Now how about that for luck! It's only a circus, a peanut operation." During the dialogue the bear is tying the bonnet's strings into a knot, which is a lovely piece of business. At the end of the scene he turns to Robin screen left.

Ollie Johnston tries a different costume arrangement.

Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl research ideas for interesting looking outfits.

More of Milt's designs. At one point he attempted to keep the ears in the open, but their shapes interfered with the front bow. 

Here is the link to an earlier post about these two characters as gypsies:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2013/05/robin-hood-little-john-in-drag.html

Groupshots

I have had these prints for a while, I hope you enjoy them.

Woolie Reitherman, Ken Anderson, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas meet up with some of the Robin Hood Disneyland characters outside of the animation building. I would guess 1973.

Below are a couple of pics taken on April 9, 1978.

The University of Southern California chapter of the Delta Kappa Alpha National Cinema Fraternity recognizes the "Nine Old Men" with the "Pioneer in Film" award.

From left to right:

Les Clark, Eric Larson, Ollie, Ken Anderson, Woolie, Ward Kimball, Frank, Marc Davis and the boss.

(John Lounsbery had passed away in 1976, and Milt Kahl had moved to San Francisco).

Singer Peggy Lee attended the event, here she is congratulating Ollie.

(Eric Larson animated the character Peg from Lady & the Tramp to Lee's voice more than two decades before)

I believe this photo was taken at the restaurant on the upper floor of the animation building, early 1970s. From left to right:

Ken Anderson, Milt Kahl, Card Walker (Disney top executive) and John Hench (Disney background painter and Imagineer).