Another Kley

A beautiful composition featuring two satyr type characters admiring a lady, who seems displeased at being starred at. I like the muted color choices, browns against blues. I am dying to animate those kind of characters. I even have an idea for a short film...but that's way in the future, after I finish my film with the girl and her tiger.

Jose Carioca

Just a fun comparison between an early version of Jose Carioca (possibly drawn by J.P. Miller during the El Groupo trip to South America) and his final appearance in the 1943 film Saludos Amigos.

Fred Moore finalized the design and animated numerous beautiful scenes with this character.

More on Fred's work for Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros here:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/11/freds-flair.html

Frank Thomas goes Wild

 

There are many hilarious moments in Disney's 1949 film The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl animated scenes during the classic dance sequence at Van Tassel's party.

Brom Bones tries desperately to get close to Katrina, but the overly enthusiastic, love struck Tilda stands in the way. Frank Thomas goes to an exhaustive routine in which Brom Bones tries everything in his powers to rid himself from this energetic, clingy girl, but to no avail. 

Animation drawing # 331 shows a type of exaggeration seldom seen in Thomas' work. He gets the idea across that Tilda is "glued" to her reluctant dance partner. For one frame only Disney realism goes out the window, as B. Bones' finger elongates illogically, but to great effect.

This long scene is a comic masterpiece, beautifully timed and drawn exquisitely. Milt Kahl helped Thomas by contributing numerous tie down sketches in order to maintain solid anatomy during these wild movements.

A lot more key drawings from this scene are published in my NINE OLD MEN book on pages 232 through 235.

Merryweather Pencil Test

I haven't posted a vintage Disney pencil test in ages. The main reason for this is, they take a lot of time to put together. 

This scene featuring Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty was animated by Frank Thomas. This is his rough animation, drawn much cleaner than on other productions. Everyone who animated on Sleeping Beauty drew tighter because of the demanding character designs. The animators did not leave any drawing issues for the clean up artists to solve, the unique graphic quality needed to be in the rough animation. 

Merryweather wants to turn Maleficent into a hop toad. During her dialogue she jumps up and down to simulate a toad's action. The scene is beautifully analyzed and animated, a real Thomas gem!

The little splash of tea that Frank added was unfortunately eliminated in the final color scene.

The key drawings from this scene are part of the Frank Thomas chapter in my book THE NINE OLD MEN.

The Three Caballeros

Wouldn't it be great to resurrect this type of film making? Finding a great story that needed to be told with hand drawn animated characters as well as live actors. I am not talking Roger Rabbit II, I would prefer brand new material. There is just something wonderfully nonsensical about combining these two worlds. And when done well, completely magical. 

Here is a Popular Science article from September of 1944 about how Disney made the then upcoming feature The Three Caballeros.

The vintage writing style cracks me up, you'll see what I mean.

Last Tuesday in SF

I had an amazing time in San Francisco last week.
My exhibition at the Walt Disney Family Museum is so well put together and designed by the amazing Marina. I feel flattered beyond belief. It was great to see Ron Miller along with his daughters Joanna and Tamara. A once in a lifetime experience!

One wall was entirely dedicated to Mushka. There are plenty of character sketches as well as Vis Dev art by the amazing Peter Moehrle.

That's Sybil Byrnes in the middle, daughter of Milt Kahl. She came with her granddaughter Zoe and her mom.

As you can see it was a glorious day in SF!!

"And besides...I don't have any claws!"

This whole tree climbing sequence from The Jungle Book has always been one of my favorite pieces of animation. The storyboard sketches suggested basic ideas for action and acting, but Milt Kahl went to town with this material, and really got the most out of it in his brilliant animation.
In an effort to climb up a tree to spend the night, Mowgli ends up hanging on to Bagheera, as he continues to move upwards. There is so much entertainment packed into these scenes. The way the boy hangs on to the panther, Mowgli planting a foot into Bagheera's face and so on. Sublime anatomy. Animated gold!

Check out how incredibly graphic Milt's drawings had become. Yet when seen in motion you believe you are watching three dimensional, believable characters performing a comedy routine.

I added a frame from the preceding as well as one from the following scene, to remind you of the action's continuity.

Milt's birthday was on March March 22. The day before this blog had almost ten thousand visits! Perhaps some of you were expecting me to post some Milt Kahl art.
Consider this post a celebration of his life's work.

Reminder

I will give a presentation for members of the Walt Disney Family Museum on Tuesday, March 22, at 4pm.

Gaston in "Real Life"

I saw Bill Condon's Beauty and the Beast a week ago, and was very happy with Luke Evan's portrayal as Gaston. A role like this one could be overplayed in a cartoony way very easily, but Evan's performance is nuanced and entertaining. Check out the film!

My previous posts on Gaston's 1991 cartoon version:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2016/08/gaston-model-sheets.html

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2016/08/more-gaston.html

I had great help from these terrific animators:
Joe Haidar, Ron Husband, Dave Burgess, Alex Kuperschmidt, and Tim Allen.

Mushka Research

I remember gearing up for my film Mushka. For a while it was all about tigers, and adding to the knowledge I already had about these magnificent cats. The sketch above was done at the LA zoo, at the time they had an exhibit with a tiger mom and two cubs. Lucky me!!
I sketched them as the cubs grew in front of my eyes over a period of a few months. I also took footage to study at home frame by frame. TV nature programs were useful as well. I even studied tiger cub "appearances" on late night shows, David Letterman etc.
They showed me that restless quality of a tiger cub when held by a human. That definitely made it into the film. You find yourself studying your subject wherever you find interesting tiger behavior.
YouTube is wonderful for this. Before animating Mushka yawning, I checked and found five or six extremely useful video clips of a tiger yawn. There is much more to it than the mouth just opening wide and closing. I love studying this stuff.

Below is a sketch I made for a possible poster, announcement or whatever. I might use it later or not.

Disney on TV

I didn't grow up in the US, where millions of kids grew up with Walt Disney's regular TV shows.
Walt was still alive when I was a young kid in Germany, and I remember vividly watching him on very rare occasions during German Disney TV programs. Of course Walt spoke German fluently, thanks to his dubbing voice, actor Friedrich Schoenfelder.
Naturally I was particularly fascinated when the show's content was about animation. The world's master magician telling the audience about past achievement or what he was planing to do next.
Nirwana!

Here is a magazine article featuring Walt's history with Mickey as shown on TV.

The ultimate program for me was when Disney artists were introduced as they worked on various animated feature films. Here is Milt Kahl animating the introductory scene of Tramp From Lady & the Tramp.

In this TV episode Disney animators study human movement in preparation for Sleeping Beauty.
The model is Helene Stanley, the animators are Marc Davis, John Lounsbery and Milt Kahl.

Ollie Johnston is getting ready for his close up in a mock office, put together on one of the Disney sound stages. The filmed segment starts out with Ollie animating Merryweather and leads to the topic of model trains, a hobby he shared with Walt. See framed photo on top of his desk.