Dwarfs

I have had color xeroxes of these beautiful rough animation drawings on 12 field paper for a while. They feature a few of Snow White's dwarfs drawn by three animators at the time of production.
The first batch is unmistakably the work of the ridiculously gifted Fred Moore, who was in his mid 20s when he worked on the movie. I call him a terrific freak of nature. Even before Snow White Fred had helped transform the early rubber hose Disney style into a medium that presented flesh and blood, living, breathing characters.
Ollie Johnston stated that Walt Disney gave Fred tons of notes during sweatbox sessions. Walt knew that this kid was just right to head up the "Dwarfs unit", but he wanted to see acting and entertainment on a superior level. So with Walt's input Fred ended up with animation that was overflowing with personality...and charm.

In this pose Dopey is anticipating a kiss from Snow White. Perfect staging!

Occasionally Fred worked on a pose intensely to get a result that felt right to him. Sure, most of the time his drawings have a light touch, but when a scene required to dig deeper in order to carve out the right emotion, he was perfectly capable of scribbling intently until the character's personality communicated clearly.

What a master at distortion, when it comes to broad motion. Tytla, too, animated loose, fleshy skin on  Grumpy, and later on Stromboli.

These are among the roughest drawings by Fred Moore I have seen. This is tough brain work, but at the same time there is confidence and fearlessness.

Many of Bill Tytla's drawings, like these two featuring Grumpy, are not as "pretty" as Fred's work. His pencil strokes are short, and the poses seem less solid. But when seen in motion the power of a super animator surfaces. A single drawing meant very little to him, he knew that only a series of sketches will bring something to life. And in his case in the most vigorous way.

Ward Kimball's soup eating sequence was cut from the final film, but not because of his outstanding character animation. Kimball took Moore's appealing draughtsmanship and applied it to his own way of character acting. He made every dwarf slurp down the soup in a distinctive and inventive manner.
Another child genius.

Ollie Johnston...20 Questions

I don't know who asked Ollie to answer these questions, but this questionnaire is currently available on ebay. Other artists from the field of entertainment did the same, such as Jane Russell and Carol Burnett.
This sheet seems trivial at first, but you do find out about Ollie's hobbies, his favorite TV show and his favorite animators.
It is actually a little puzzle piece in trying to figure out what made one of Disney's greatest animators tick.

More Busch Circus Sketches

These beautiful, spontaneous sketches by Wilhelm M. Busch date back to 1984.
 Drawing from life really doesn't get any better than this. Within seconds Busch scribbles down characteristic poses of animals, and his overall compositions are equally impressive.
The power of great draughtsmanship!
I love the last two drawings with the lion and lion tamer. There is a real relationship that comes through in just a few pencil lines.

For more on Busch's circus sketches go here:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2014/12/busch-circus-elephant-sketches.html

Roger Rabbit Scenes

As I mentioned before in a previous post, the scene above was the first one I animated on Who Framed Roger Rabbit ? I had never worked on animation/live action scenes before. It was pretty scary to get started.
The ostrich was less of a problem, since we don't see her feet contacting the ground. Frames later the full figure frog does show that contact, but luckily the pattern of the floor tiles gave me something to register him to.
The following, very long scene turned out to be the most difficult one (technically). A lot of characters involved, starting with the brooms from Fantasia holding on to real brooms, which had been manipulated by puppeteers. All on ones, and to the beat of the music. Then this crazy pelican postman shows up on a live action bicycle, loosing control. He zips of screen with a fish in his beak, before the camera catches up with him on the ground after he crashed, flying mail all around him. That part was animated by Dave Spafford.
Bob Hoskins then bounces into a Fantasia Hippo. He proceeds with his walk on the Maroon Studio's backlot. There is a cattle call, starting with a sort of Preston blair kind of a cow, then Clarabelle Cow and so on.
A big pig head enters the scene, walking in the opposite direction. He was fun to do, just this happy, big guy, minding his own business. There are more characters Hoskins encounters like the goons from Sleeping Beauty, but I didn't do those. At the end of the scene we catch up with the Hippo, who is getting ready to have lunch, but as she sits down the bench crashes, sending a man flying.

All this was pretty labour intense stuff, so we were all shocked to find out that the live action photostats for the scene had been printed with the wrong fielding. The actual live action footage showed the camera a little further back with more image around the frame. For the love of God, we thought...now what?? My animation just did not fit into the live action. There was talk that I might have to redraw the whole scene over, in proportion to properly sized photostats.
Luckily another solution was found. ILM, who did all of our final compositing, zoomed into the live action footage a little to compensate for the mistake.
So when you watch the scene again, keep in mind that there was more scenery in the shot, but we don't see it. The drama of filmmaking!!!

Milt Kahl venting in Dallas

A lovely portrait of Robin Hood and Maid Marian from the ending of the movie. As so often with his characters, Milt drew Robin ever so slightly cross-eyed, which for some unbeknown reason actually adds appeal.
I am posting a 1973 newspaper article from the Dallas Times Herald, which originally appeared on Chris Sobienak's blog. So here Milt is in Dallas promoting the film, and talking to a bunch of journalists.

Writer Susan Barton doesn't quite know what to make of this outspoken Disney animator. For starters she confuses Milt's Tigger with Kellogg's Tony, the tiger...hysterical!
But as usual Milt speaks his mind about issues he faces at the studio, like the use of live action and a new book that had just been published, in which Walt Disney is portrayed in an unflattering light.
You can tell from his comments, that Milt had the utmost respect and admiration for his boss.

And where are those character drawings now...?

Saludos Amigos

This month seventy-three years ago Disney's Saludos Amigos premiered. Two years later in 1945 the second of the South American features The Three Caballeros opened.
Frank Thomas was the only animator who travelled with Walt Disney and other artist, known as El Groupo, to several South American countries in order to study and sketch local folklore.
Frank drew this early design for a feature then named Carioca Cocktail 1941, featuring an armadillo and a monkey, characters that didn't make it into the final film.

James Bodrero's sketches for the El Goucho Goofy section were used as publicity material for the film. I love these, Bodrero's work has so much life.

 

 Woolie Reitherman animated most of the footage with Goofy and the horse. Look at the insane detail on both characters. We are talking twenty-four of such drawings per second!!
And Woolie really worked the positions over and over to achieve just what he wanted to see on the screen.

 

Beautiful character and background studies for the Pedro section.

Another scene that does not appear in the film.

 

A great page for the magazine Good Housekeeping. Beautifully drawn and staged, based on Milt Kahl's animation for the Lake Titicaca section.

An early concept drawing of Jose Carioca by Herb Ryman.

A spectacular sketch by J. P. Miller depicting Mary Blair interacting with locals.

If you want to find out more about Disney's research trip to South America, watch this great documentary by Ted Thomas and Kuniko Okubo:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003TVTRYC?keywords=walt%20and%20el%20grupo&qid=1454999783&ref_=sr_1_1&s=movies-tv&sr=1-1

A Blast from the Past

I was surprised to see some of my earliest character designs for The Black Cauldron being offered at Van Eaton Galleries. I haven't seen these sketches since I made them, around 1981.
Boy, if this doesn't take me back to my early days at Disney. I loved working with felt pen and magic marker colors.
Other things come to mind: LA was very smoggy in those days during summer, my English wasn't very good,  and I rode a bicycle to the studio from my apartment in North Hollywood. (Didn't have a driver's license yet.) I remember ignoring a traffic light and making a swift right turn on my bike from Magnolia Blvd. on to Buena Vista St. without stopping. A policeman saw this and yelled after me. I thought, this is it, I am going to get deported.
Funny, the things you remember..

Here is the link to Van Eaton Galleries:

http://www.vegalleries.com/newart.html