Milt Kahl's Great Granddaughter has Talent

Her name is Zoe, and it sure looks like she inherited some of her great grandfather’s artistic ability.

I met Zoe in April of 2009 when she and her family visited Disney Animation (a day before the Milt Kahl Academy event). At the end of the tour I gave her an oversized stuffed toy of Disney’s Bolt. She loved it.

Later I received a thank you note and this lovely drawing, Zoe was 4 1/2 at the time. 

For a little while we exchanged drawings through the mail, and when I sent her a copy of my animal sketchbook, Zoe created her own and mailed it to me.

What charming drawings, I love the way she paired animals on one page. Beautiful colors, too.

About a week ago Zoe emailed me these more recent drawings, that clearly show her artistic progress at 9 1/2 years old. Her love for animals comes through in these well observed sketches. 

It’s interesting that Zoe also chose a Diet Coke can as a drawing object. It reminds me of art school assignments. Beautifully done. 

I think we can all agree that Zoe has a big future as an artist!

And I know that her Great Grandpa would be very proud.

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.