Roquefort

This sympathetic mouse character from the 1970 Disney film The Aristocats was animated by my mentor Eric Larson. Eric enjoyed one of his last animation assignments, before focusing full time on training new people joining Disney during the late 1970s.
Milt Kahl came up with this early design concept above, heavily based on Bill Peet's earlier concept for the character of Amos from the 1953 featurette Ben and Me. 

As much a I like Milt's drawings, Eric created a new mouse for Disney Animation, which was certainly a challenge, within a medium full of mice characters. Eric remains one of the most underrated animators. No matter what the assignment, animal crowds on Snow White, the cat Figaro in Pinocchio, Flying Horses in Fantasia, Eric performed these characters  believably and beautifully.
He was a Master animator!!

Nobertine Bresslern-Roth

Nobertine Bresslern-Roth was an extremely gifted Austrian painter and graphic artist. She lived from 1891 until 1978. She was an expert in depicting animals either in portraits or in dramatic situations like the one above. I can't believe I just recently found out about her astonishing work. Her main medium was the linocut, but she was also comfortable with oil and watercolor.
In 1928 she traveled to North Africa, a trip that stimulated her talent as an animal artist.
What can I say...only superlatives are in order to describe her work justly. Her knowledge of anatomy, her compositions, her color...everything is top notch! What an inspiration!!!

I believe these images which show a considerable amount of rendering represent her earlier work.

Animated Elegance

Here is another post featuring Madame Bonfamille from The Aristcats. I sort of have a thing about the film's opening sequence, which introduces the main human characters. Edgar, the butler, George Hautecourt, the lawyer, and Madame, all animated beautifully by Milt Kahl. 

Disney's earlier film Sleeping Beauty was labelled as "Moving Illustration", well, so is this sequence.

Character acting and draughtsmanship are so sophisticated, and because of black Xerox, all that great drawing is in your face (in a good way.) Milt enjoyed animating the butler and the lawyer, less so Madame Bonfamille. But her portrayal is so elegant and charming, I can't take my eyes off her. 

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy crazy Tex Avery type animation just as much, but I can also appreciate subtle, realistic animation concepts, particularly when done so brilliantly.

As part of the Disney animation Training Program during the late 1970s, xeroxes were made of several Milt rough scenes. These served as a teaching tool for clean up assignments. I have a number of those xeroxed scenes, and will post them in the near future. Here Madame is looking at her reflection in the mirror before the arrival of her old friend George Hautecourt.

The Vis Dev color sketch is by Ken Anderson.

More posts with this character here:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/05/madame-bonfamille.html

and here:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2013/03/after-tango.html

Sketchbook St. Pauli

St. Pauli is is a region in Hamburg, Germany that includes the city's red light district. This sketchbook by Wilhelm M. Busch was published in 1987, the last year of his life, but I don't know exactly when these drawings were made. In any case, Busch's masterful draughtsmanship comes through in every sketch featuring a dicey subject matter.