Young Kimball

Here is Ward, practically as a kid at about twenty-five, animating rich acting scenes with one of his iconic characters Jiminy Cricket. It is astonishing to realize just how young the Disney crew was when the studio produced its early classic films. 

Just look at one of his rough animation drawings. It's solid, full of life, has a ton of flair and that Disney charm. According to Kimball and the other animators it was Walt Disney, who was able to get his artists to this unimaginable level of excellence, and had them do things they didn't know they were capable of doing. Walt's exuberant passion for the animated medium rubbed off on everybody.

Terrific story sketches like this one served as a springboard for great character animation.

Ferdinand

Disney’s short film Ferdinand The Bull from 1938 is one of of a few gems produced at the studio at the hight of its golden age of animation. It is based on the book by Munro Leaf which was published just a couple of years prior to the film’s release. 

A few interesting facts about the production:

Milt Kahl voiced one line of young Ferdinand, when he was a little bull talking to his mother, who was voiced by Walt Disney. Milt animated both characters.

Walt recognized himself being caricatured as the film’e matador, but animator Ward Kimball denied this. 

Ken Anderson used vibrant colors for the film’s backgrounds in an attempt to interpret Spain’s strong sun light with reflecting light bouncing back on to the landscape. Walt was out of town, he had not seen or approved this new colorful art direction. Ken was warned by staffers that Walt would not like these backgrounds at all, since he usually just asked for pale washes behind his film’s characters.

It turns out Walt was  very enthusiastic about Ken’s visuals, silencing critics instantly.

The photo above shows a beautiful maquette from Joe Grant’s model department.

A couple of cels that were recently offered at http://auction.howardlowery.com/Home.taf

What stunning colors.

These model sheets demonstrate how artists tried to gain control over the bull’s anatomy.

An article from Look Magazine tells the film’s story. 

Bernard Garbutt Animal Sketches

Here are a few pages from Garbutt’s animal sketchbook, around 1940. I love his approach to drawing, he goes right for the essence of the animal. It doesn’t matter wether he is observing a mammal, a bird or a reptile, he tells you something that’s characteristic about this specific animal.

This kind of work makes me want to run to the LA zoo and sketch.

Disney was very lucky to have Garbutt as a teacher for animal drawing during animation’s golden age. With a project like Bambi in the works, these solid but lively sketches influenced the whole crew who worked on that film.

Find out more about about Bernard Garbutt in this earlier post:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/search?q=garbutt

Remembering Aladdin

In my opinion Aladdin was one of the best features my generation of animators came up with. The photo brings back a lot of fun memories. From left to right:

Dave Pruiksma (Sultan), Glen Keane (Aladdin), Duncan Marjoribanks (Abu), Eric Goldberg (Genie), Will Finn (Iago), Randy Cartwright (Carpet) and myself.

Mark Henn (Jasmine) and Aaron Blaise (Rajah) were working at the Orlando studio at the time.

Just a few memories that come to mind:

Eric was the first animator on the movie, his incredible test animation of the Genie set the film’s animation style and standard. Quite intimidating!

The movie’s backgrounds impressed me so much, I sent a note -signed by all of the supervising animators- to the background artists. It said that we think their work is on the level of  “Peter Pan”.

All animators were walking around with a smile on their faces, we loved our assignments.

Jonathan Freeman’s nuanced voice recordings were a tremendous inspiration for Jafar.

We all loved the integration of CG (Tiger Head) with our drawn characters.

We also thought the songs and score were amazing.

Frank and Ollie thought the films’s pacing was too hectic. Marc Davis questioned the contemporary references. Don’t know what Kimball thought of Aladdin.

After Aladdin the animation crew split into two units. One did Lion King, the other did Pocahontas.

It felt like our animation unit could move mountains.

Marc Davis 101 Years Old

…as of yesterday. 101, how about that?

What better occasion than to post a few expressive animation drawings of his farewell character Cruella De Vil from the groundbreaking film 101 Dalmatians. Whenever there is a Top Ten of Disney’s best villains, Cruella is often Nr. One.

These drawings remind us why. Marc went far out on this character, no holding back. She is grotesque and beautiful to watch at the same time. Cruella arguably represents the most successful use of live action reference for any animated character. Marc said that the live action was helpful, but often he had a different take on the acting and told himself, now its time for YOU to create a performance.

Cruella De Vil is a very bold modern statement in her graphic presentation as well as character acting. 

Marc Your Calendar

No, I did not misspell…Marc Davis is the subject of an exhibition at the wonderful Walt Disney Family Museum from April 30 to November 3, 2014. And I feel honored to be given the opportunity to help out putting this show together. 

Here is the Museum’s official announcement:

http://www.waltdisney.org/marc-davis

It will be a very good time to visit the museum, since another incredible exhibition on the art of Mary Blair is being presented until September 2014.

http://www.waltdisney.org/mary-blair

If you interested in the art of Disney Animation you need to see these two exhibitions.

The photo above was taken during production of the Mickey Mouse film The Prince and the Pauper. Joe Grant and Marc gave us notes after viewing the story reels of the film, early in 1990.

And by the way, I wrote a chapter for the upcoming book on the Art Of Marc Davis, which will be available in October!

Happy Birthday, Alice!

The wonderful Alice Davis celebrates her birthday today. The photo shows her at last year’s birthday dinner. I have known Alice and her late husband Marc Davis for many years. Marc enjoyed the company of young artists and so does Alice. There is a reason why Alice has a lot of friends. Everyone loves her unique sense of humor as well as her positive outlook on life.

A while ago I had the opportunity to drive Alice to Anaheim to attend an event at Disneyland. Traffic was very bad, it was slow going on the 5 South. I tell you, I had the greatest time listening to Alice’s stories about Walt and the old studio.

Later, on the way back we had to deal with traffic again,  and the topic of conversation was Mary Blair, who Alice adored and had known very well. They both had worked together on the IT’s a Small World Attraction back in the early 1960s. It was a privilege to find out about Mary’s life, which over the years had its ups and downs.

Alice’s first job for Disney was to produce the dress worn by actress Helen Stanley, who performed scenes for the animators as Aurora for the film Sleeping Beauty. That dress is a marvel, the fabric creates the most graphic looking folds when in motion, and therefore helped to give Marc’s animation so much elegance.

Alice and Marc also worked together on Disneyland’s ride Pirates of the Caribbean.

The Gang

Disney’s top animators got together sometime in 1973 for a photo shoot to promote their latest animated feature Robin Hood. Looks like Woolie just cracked a joke, for some reason only Milt Kahl and Les Clark are not laughing.

Most of the animators were involved in this production except a few. Marc Davis came over from Imagineering, his home since the early 1960s. Ward Kimball and Les Clark were involved in directing a variety of TV and theatrical specials. Eric Larson did a bit of animation on the film, but he started to focus on developing a training program for new talent.

Ollie Johnston loved his assignment to animate Prince John and Sir Hiss, Frank Thomas did not find a fun way to express himself in this film. Milt did beautiful work on Robin Hood and several other characters, but questioned the film’s story structure.

All of them were incredibly gifted artists, highly opinionated and critical. Marc Davis summed it up: ”I think that one of Walt’s greatest achievements was having all of us work together without killing one another.”

In other words they all knew that you had to be a team player in order to make these movies.

A Cool Guy...

…named Milt Kahl would be 105 years old today. This photo was taken during one of my earlier visits to Marin County, where he spent the rest of his years after leaving Disney Studios.

I remember asking him if he was going down to LA to join a Snow White anniversary reunion organized by Disney, but he had no interest. Animation was in his past, now he enjoyed being remarried and seeing his children more often. He was a happy man, and I was happy and grateful that Milt took the time to see me and answer my many question about the art of animation.

Here are a few visual reminders of his extraordinary talent, covering the second half of his career.

There is plenty of Milt’s artwork to see on this blog. Here is the link to my first post on Milt:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/06/milt-kahl.html