The Sheriff of Nottingham

The process of visual development for a Disney character during the 1970ies involved only a few steps compared to much earlier Disney films.

For productions like Snow White, Pinocchio and Fantasia many artists, who were part of Joe Grant's Model Department, contributed endless designs, sculptures and rough model sheets that eventually led to the final look of the characters.

After the completion of Sleeping Beauty a lot of artistic personal was let go in order to streamline future productions and to save money. By the time the 70ies came around, the animation staff had gotten even smaller. There were only FOUR supervising animators, who carried a lot of weight and responsibility.

Ken Anderson would start out with rough character designs such as these marker sketches above and below.

Once a certain personality type emerged, Ken's drawings went straight to Milt Kahl's desk.

Milt then polished the design 'to make it animatable" as he put it. Putting his own personal stamp on to the look of the character didn't make things easy for other animators, because nobody could draw like he did. 

Model sheets were made up of drawings from Kahl's early animated scenes…and that was it.

No construction sheets, no head or body turn arounds like in the old days.

The Sheriff of Nottingham has always been a sort of enigma to me.

I love the way he moves and acts, and his personality is interesting….it's just that he doesn't resemble a wolf, he looks like a huge rat. His soldiers are caricatured wolves, but not the sheriff.

These Milt Kahl sketches show how he developed the character based on Ken's work.

A few roughs from a scene in which the Sheriff argues with Friar Tuck.

"Now take it easy, Friar. I'm just doing my duty."

Beautiful stuff!

Bre Melvin created this pencil test:
http://25.media.tumblr.com/9bc3a5830d537c16f6d4edb8f66c9e62/tumblr_mgmkv01NSa1qdbhwwo1_r1_500.gif

Young Lady

This lovely story sketch was drawn by Joe Rinaldi, whose work is frequently mistaken for Bill Peet's.

Both artists show a lot of confidence and flair in the lines they put on paper.

They were also able to get the essence of a situation into one sketch.

While Lady & Tramp was in production, Peet developed story sequences for Sleeping Beauty.

The drawing below from the opening sequence of the film is Rinaldi's as well.

Animator Ken O'Brien was inspired by live action reference for the scene in which Lady is being presented as a Christmas gift. The actress in the photo is Jane Boyd, who was an artist in the effects department. (When I started at Disney in 1980 Jane was doing effects for The Fox & the Hound.)

As you can see, O'Brien did beautiful work on the film's human characters. There is a nice cohesive and rhythmic quality to his drawings.

This article from Look Magazine talks about singer and songwriter Peggy Lee's involvement with Lady & Tramp.

The Collie

The Collie in 101 Dalmatians was animated by Julius Svendsen and voiced by actor Tom Conway who was the brother of George Sanders (Shere Khan).

Milt Kahl drew these beautiful designs to explore the final look of the Collie.

It isn't an easy thing to humanize a dog like this one, the long snout makes it difficult to portray a smile. The edges of the mouth need to move close to the eyes, which could look awkward.

But if anybody could pull it off it would be Milt. He had to deal with a similar challenge on characters like Bambi's mother, Prince Phillp's horse Samson and Frou Frou in The Aristocats.

TS Sullivant 6

Another reminder that shows how brilliant Sullivant was with his unique style for caricaturing animals and humans.

Feast your eyes!

Jafar Pencil Tests

I finally got around to putting a reel together with my Jafar rough animation.

It was strange looking at this footage again after so many years. 

Some of the scenes don't hold up as well as others. To give you a couple of examples:

The line "Your Majesty certainly has a way with dumb animals" needs a juicier acting approach. There is something in Jafar's attitude that I could have milked more.

On the other hand, the close up scene "I think she took it rather well" still comes off pretty good. (So does the preceding sequence with Jafar and Jasmine.)

I had a blast animating this character. As I mentioned before, he was a relief after Gaston's realism.

The reel shows scenes in various stages, from first rough pass to tied down inbetweened footage. There are also a couple of versions of a cleaned up scene that was eventually cut from the film, you'll find it.

The first clip was cut as well, the second one is an experimental scene.

Sometimes the sync is a little off, which was fixed for the final version (I hope it was, anyway.)

Any Iago acting scenes were animated by Will Finn, and Jasmine was drawn by Mark Henn, both beautifully done.

As far as I know everybody had a great time working on this film under the direction of Ron Clements and John Musker. We did receive some criticism though from some of the Nine Old Men, they thought that certain scenes and the contemporary dialogue would date the film.

If so, I think it is dated in a beautiful way.

Here is a link to some Jafar development art from a recent post:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-evolution-of-jafar.html

The Art of Sleeping Beauty

You don't hear or read much about Les Clark in regards to the production of Sleeping Beauty.

That's him in the photo, examining a color model cel with various poses of Aurora, held by Grace Bailey, who was then head of the ink & paint department.

Les directed the enormously complex opening sequence of the film with endless crowds of well wishers approaching the castle. (Ruthie Thompson, who did scene planning on the sequence said recently that this was the most difficult and involved work she ever did at the studio.)

Below are a couple of sheets showing sketches of Aurora by the very talented modernist designer Tom Oreb. They date back to April and May of 1954. Oreb was a huge influence, as the Disney style underwent a transformation from round dimensional imagery to flat and graphic sophistication.

Marc Davis used these inspirational sketches and made the design his own.