Lady & Tramp Mix

Actors Barbara Luddy and Larry Roberts pose in front of storyboards drawn by Joe Rinaldi. They voiced the title characters in Disney's 1955 CinemaScope film Lady and the Tramp. 
Roberts was famous during the 1950s for his TV roles and his performances as a stand-up comic.
Luddy would later provide voices for Disney, including Merryweather in Sleeping Beauty, Kanga in the Winnie the Pooh films and the Church Mouse in Robin Hood.

Singer Peggy Lee had a major influence on the film. She wrote songs and was the voice of Darling, both Siamese Cats and of course the showgirl dog Peg.

Peggy Lee visits the ink & paint department.

A still from a TV program in which Lee explains how she recorded both voices for Si and Am.
That's song co-writer Sonny Burke next to her.

A couple of story sketches from the romance sequence.

A magazine ad featuring Tramp promoting dog food.

Raymond Sheppard

A while ago, when I was looking for artists who might inspire me as far as depicting tigers, I came across Raymond Sheppard. His work is solid, accurate, "no nonsense". Beautiful old fashioned animal drawing in the best sense of the word.

Wikipedia says:
Raymond Sheppard (1913–1958) was a British artist and illustrator of books for children and adults. He wrote books on drawing techniques, but is best known for his illustrations of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and the works of Jim Corbett.

Here is a sampling of his work.

Much more on Raymond Sheppard on this terrific blog:

http://raymondsheppard.blogspot.com

Drawn Water

It is beyond me how Disney effects animators controlled all that massive line work from drawing to drawing when it came to animating water. Imagine looking at two of these drawings from Pinocchio on your animation disc, and then trying to create an in-between.
Yet they did it with stunning results. Scenes like these might look realistic to you, but in reality there are no graphic lines in the ocean. These moving drawings are imaginatively designed and timed to give you the illusion of water.

Beautiful art deco ripples appear as the crane takes a drink. From Fantasia's removed sequence
Clair de Lune. This short appeared years later in Make Mine Music with different music.

Bambi has incredible effects animation throughout, including water.

When I started at Disney way back, a friend asked me: Will we ever see water again like in Fantasia?
These effects artists were experimenting feverishly.

The Disney xerox films shared similar design ideas for water. Simple, economical, but still beautiful.

I believe the water's transparency was achieved through double exposure, I don't think they used transparent paint at that time.

We had some great looking water for Lilo & Stitch. The roundness of the character design is reflected in the wave patterns. And that's how it should be, special effects need to be specific to the overall design of the film.
Did I mention that this film was a ton of fun to work on?

Drawings, Heritage Auctions.

Aristocats Mix

A few images from behind the scenes of Disney's 1970 animated film The Aristocats.
Here story artist Vance Gerry is presenting his storyboard of the "boy meets girl" sequence to director Woolie Reitherman and animator Frank Thomas. Frank animated the beginning of this section, Ollie Johnston did the second half, and Milt Kahl drew a few scenes in the middle.
You can see the sequence in pencil test form here:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/08/aristocats.html


A sketch of Madame Bonfamille and her cats from a deleted song sequence. I believe Vance Gerry drew this one.

A vis dev piece by Ken Anderson. He created an enormous amount of character as well as environment visuals for the film.

Milt Kahl ended up animating Mme Bonfamille. In this scene she discovers that her cats have disappeared. It's a nice scene, beautifully drawn, but...lightening is going to strike me...her hands are a bit too large.

A couple of press photos showing the characters of Napoleon and Lafayette, along with their voice actors Pat Buttram and George Lindsey.
Frank Thomas and Eric Cleworth animated these guys. I love the feeling of loose skin on these dogs.

The Bonfamille household used to have a butler and a maid, but she didn't make the cut.
Drawings by Ken Anderson.

Another story sketch by Vance Gerry, followed by the final film frame. Ollie Johnston animated this sequence, and as soon as I locate his staging/thumbnail sketches in my inventory I will post them.

Nottingham Wolves

A while ago I posted a few sheets with rough drawings by John Lounsbery showing his early design approach for the henchmen wolves from Robin Hood. 
As always Milt Kahl came up with the final refined designs, shown here. I think they look terrific. The way their hoods often obscure the eyes makes them look dangerous, but a little dumb at the same time.
When you break up the proportions from the hood, then the torso to the skirt part, they are all different lengths. Milt knew instinctively that even proportions result in boring, uninteresting designs.
This philosophy is evident in any of his character designs.
Great drawings!

Here is the link to Lounsbery's earlier versions of the wolves:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2016/07/lounsbery-wolves.html

A Ken O'Brien Scene

There is very little information about animator Ken O'Brien online or in books. This is a screen grab from a short 1986 interview, which was posted on youtube by Jerry Beck. Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jIGKFbl0Zw

What strikes me is that Ken in his demeanor and speech reminds me so much of Marc Davis.
Kind of serious, confident, with the occasional chuckle during his answers.
He mentions working with Fred Moore (among others), and I can clearly see that influence in terms of clarity and fluidity applied to key poses for this scene depicting Jim Dear from Lady and the Tramp.
At the end of the film Jim Dear takes a photograph of the new dog family. The old fashioned flash light explodes, resulting in smoke filling the room. Here he makes a run for the window, before opening it in order to clear the air.
O'Brien is in full control of animating this realistic design convincingly. The overall body rhythm reads simply and clearly. There was live action reference involved, but O'Brien always altered his animation drawings to get more dynamic results.

A final frame with effects from the scene.

Check out this previous post on Ken O'Brien:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2015/02/ken-obrien.html