King Louie & Flunkey

Ken Anderson came up with sketches that defined the relationship with King Louie and the little langur monkey in The Jungle Book.
Louie is annoyed by Flunkey who imitates his own jazzy vocalization. The Anderson sketch shows a simple "shut up" approach. In the final footage, animated by Frank Thomas, there is more of a chase involved as Louie tries to silence the monkey. Frank did animate the Ken Anderson version, but for all I know that footage is lost.

More of Milt's Penny

I created these "model sheets" of Penny scenes animated by Milt Kahl...a long time ago.
Way back when production began on Oliver & Company I started doing experimental animation of the character of Jenny. What better inspiration than a girl character of the same age animated by Milt?
So much to learn from these drawings. When to draw the jaw line all the way to the ear and when not.
How subtle facial features like eyes, nose, lips work in perspective. Hands, clothing, and simplified anatomy in general. There is a lot to love here.

I didn't end up animating on Oliver and Company, (except for a handful of scenes with the dogs, Roger Rabbit was calling), but these sketches still present to me a standard of excellence when it comes to animating a young girl like Sarah in my film Mushka.

More Wilhelm M. Busch

 Can't get enough of the extraordinary work by German Illustrator Wilhelm M. Busch.
The compositions, the intense search for portraying human anatomy in its most fascinating way...
so much to admire. Most definitely one of my favorite artists from the last century.
I so wished I could have met him when I was still living in Germany.
Art that makes you think about your own approach to seeing the world.

Prince and Dragon

I posted about this dramatic sequence from Sleeping Beauty before. Here is some more material showing aspects of the production process.
Actor Ed Kemmer (1921 - 2004) acted out action scenes for animator Ken Hultgren, who drew most of the Prince footage, as he fights the growing thorns and the Dragon.

A number of scenes were animated with a variety of dragon designs, before the final appearance became finalized. Eric Cleworth animated most of the Dragon, but I am convinced that Marc Davis added some graphic strength to this character. Drawing # 21 looks very much like Marc's work.

These are earlier posts on the same subject:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2014/02/dramatic-dragon.html

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2017/05/more-on-cleworths-dragon.html

Words of Wisdom

...from Don Graham, Disney's prime art teacher during the Golden Age of animation. All of the animators valued his classes enormously. This is a magazine article from December of 1940.

Anastasia

A beautiful rough animation drawing by Ollie Johnston. It looks to me that this scene was based on live action footage. Many scenes with the stepsisters in Cinderella were handled in a cartoony way, something Ollie regretted later on. He thought he might have gone too far occasionally portraying them as broad animation personalities. And...I probably agree.
There is a drastic difference between the realism of the Stepmother and Cinderella versus the broad animation of the Stepsisters.
But the two sisters represent much needed comic relief within the story, and they do perform as such beautifully.
Cinderella remains one of Disney's best storytelling. I do love this movie.

Edgar in a Panic

This is the second half of a scene, in which Edgar, the butler realizes that he might be in trouble. After kidnapping the cats he had left behind his hat and umbrella at the scene of the crime.

Milt Kahl surely had some fun animating this close up dialogue scene. His extreme use of squash and stretch adds unique comedy to this character. And that wonderful feeling of loose, moving flesh on his face. Of course he knew when he could go this far, his animation of Madame Bonfamille by contrast is an exercise in subtlety and grace.

The dialogue leading up to this moment: "They (the police) wouldn't find a clou to implicate me. Not one single clou. Well, I'll eat my hat if they...MY HAT, MY UMBRELLA!"

Classic Disney Animation Roughs

Rough drawings from various Disney productions offered at recent a animation auctions.

I always find it interesting to see individual drawing styles by the animators. 

Marc Davis drew Maleficent very clean, as did most everybody on Sleeping Beauty. Because of the specific style in the characters' design the animators didn't trust their clean up artists to interpret their roughs. That meant drawing as clean as you possibly could.

A powerful Woolie Reitherman rough from the rat sequence at the end of the film.Woolie's last animation before becoming a director.

One of Milt Kahl's lovely Wendy drawings. He did not enjoy the assignment, but as usual he did an amazing job interpreting Kathryn Beaumont's live action reference.

Woolie also animated action scenes with Captain Hook and Perter Pan.
John Musker believes that this sequence is John Lounsbery's work. Nope, it's Woolie.

Oh boy, Eric Larson felt so bad about his animation of the prince in Cinderella. He told me he'd like to do it over again.

This drawing is from a Marc Davis Scene. (Not sure about the hand holding the letter.) But overall Marc's animation of Cinderella is breathtaking.

Fred Moore animated the Three Little Wolves in the this 1936 short film. Just beautiful!!

A clean up study by Iwao Takamoto over Marc Davis' animation. Shapes and lines in perfect harmony.

Bill Tylta animated the sequence before and during the "washing up section." Gorgeous animation that needed top clean up artists to finish it off.

A  Fred Moore rough animation drawing. So full of life, and such an intuitive feeling for the character.

  

We are standing on the shoulders of giants!!

Cruella's Last Scene

A couple of drawings from what might be Marc Davis' last scene he ever animated. It is Cruella's last scene in 101 Dalmatians. Her car had collides with Jasper and Horace's truck. Now she gives the two Baduns hell. "You idiots...you fools...etc."

This scene is featured in my 9 Old Men Book (if I may say so), the main key drawings are included in the Marc Davis chapter.

But I think it's interesting to see that Marc drew Cruella full size on 16 field animation paper, before 

the animation was greatly reduced in size to fit in with the scenic layout. 

I still have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that this animator at the peak of his craft left the medium to join WED. It's animation's loss and Disneyland's gain.

Cruella's fur coat with its many sections is a complex thing to track in animation. The heaviest weight is in her lower coat. All these different coat parts have their own way of moving and are timed differently. And then there is the overall design and the fun variety of shapes and volumes.

Like Color stylist Walt Peregoy said: " There will never be a villain like Cruella!"

We'll see....