Quite a few years ago I got a call from Ollie Johnston, and he asked me if I could swing by his home and bring a few Fred Moore drawings with me. (I had purchased those from Ollie a while back.)
This was for a special occasion: Fred Moore's granddaughter would visit the next day to film an interview with Frank and Ollie about her grandfather Fred Moore. And Ollie wanted her to see some of Fred's sketches to show how great of an artist he was.
She arrived with a student friend of hers from Santa Barbara, where both studied fashion design at the local university. And this is what she was wearing that day. A printed T-shirt with one of Fred's girl drawings. She said that she owned this sketch and a few others. But on the whole her family did not have much of Fred's art.
It turned out to be a fun afternoon, listening to Frank and Ollie as they told stories about how much Fred meant to them. I would love to see that video recording today, if it still exists.
Last week Saturday was a special afternoon at the Walt Disney Family Museum. All three of Woolie Reitherman's sons, Bruce, Richard and Robert presented an amazing keynote about their dad.
His upbringing, art school, early Disney, his time as a pilot during WWII, his comeback to Disney animation, his astounding career as an animator as well as a director and producer.
They also talked about working with their dad as voice talents for films like The Sword in the Stone, Winnie the Pooh and The Jungle Book. And, what Woolie was like as a father.
Honestly, I wished you all could have been there, this was a truly historical event. The life of Woolie Reitherman was EPIC!
OK, so I have done things with my life...but after this presentation I couldn't help but ask myself: Shouldn't you have done more??? Are you living up to your potential?
I remember attending an Academy event during the early 1980s, when Woolie Reitherman talked about his career and his boss Walt Disney, and how he carried on after his passing.
Newsflash: I am helping Bruce Reitherman with a terrific project about Woolie. Details to come later.
Here are a few highlights showcasing Woolie's career as an extraordinary animator and director.
Here is the link for more infos about the exhibition:
https://www.waltdisney.org/directing
I don't know exactly when, but at one time during Walt's travels to Europe, he purchased complete sketchbooks as well as individual illustrations by German artist Heinrich Kley. I am also not sure wether Kley's widow Emily sold Walt the artwork or if he bought the pieces at art galleries.
But the fact is that today this unique, never published Kley inventory belongs to the Disney family.
During my recent visit to the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco I was thrilled to discover that visitors can now browse through a couple of oversized printed sketchbooks from the collection. There is a small Kley set up near the Museum's reception area.
Here are a few gorgeous sample pages.
Like many animators Marc Davis would occasionally draw character sketches for fans, even after his career in animation was in the distant past. Sometimes these sketches showed a different drawing style than the original character concepts. After all Marc dad not drawn these characters in decades. But there is still a charm and appeal along with the essence of their personalities.
Maleficent locks the door to the dungeon cel in which she holds Prince Philip prisoner. Here are the two main rough key drawings by Marc Davis that define this particular piece of action. You can see her hand turning the key, while the rest of her body moves very little as not to distract from the subtle motion.
Both hand positions for the key turn are perfectly chosen. What impresses the heck out of me is that in the second drawing Marc shows a slight flexing of the character's lower arm muscle called brachioradialis (I had to look that up.) This is not something he would have gotten from studying the live action reference because of its minuscule nature. This is something Marc KNEW from studying human anatomy his whole life. When an arm turns THIS happens.
As an animator the more you know about anatomy and motion range, the more you can apply that knowledge to your work and make it that much more believable.
A lesson from Marc Davis brought to you by.......
These absolutely stunning design drawings by Fred Moore depict a Cuban bird character that never made it to the big screen. He would have been the fourth caballero for one of Disney's South American feature films. This is Moore at his best! Here is a great write up on this character by the late Jim Korkis, animation historian:
https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/the-cuban-cabellero/
