Happy Birthday, Milt Kahl!

Today is Milt's 104th birthday.

The photo was taken around June 25, 1974 at his "40th Anniversary with Disney Party" at the studio.

Milt is obviously enjoying goofy gifts from some of his colleagues.

When I started at Disney I remember seeing a long printed panel that was made up for the occasion. It was titled "40 Years of Kahl Characters" and showed many drawings from his long and astonishing career at the studio.

So this is a good enough excuse to post more of his roughs from his last animation assignment, Madame Medusa. Except for the the eyelash scene, all of these drawings are throw aways. The final animation differs just a little from what you see here.

"I was always trying to get the most entertainment out of everything" Milt said, and that intense search for character comedy, inventive drawing and great animation is evident in the these images.

But let's start off with a drawing from one of the first scenes he ever animated for the short "Mickey's Circus" from 1936.

I posted a xeroxed image of this thumbnail page before, but this is a better scan.

Both of these were a offered at auction recently.

Albert Brenet

My rediscovery of this extraordinary French artist frustrates me for a couple of reasons:

First of all, since he passed away as recently as 2005 in Paris, I could have made the effort to meet him, when I was living there. 

Secondly, I love his animal studies, but very little of this work is published or available elsewhere.

Brenet was born in 1903, he showed artistic talent at a very early age, and in 1920 he enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His main focus became animal painting. 

In 1929 his artistic interests changed when he boarded a trade sailing vessel which took him to the West Indies on a seven month journey. He became fascinated with daily life onboard, and started to paint the ship's crew, see ports and people from foreign cultures.

Later his objects were also airplanes, trains and scenes from manufacturing factories.

This is some of his early spectacular animal work.

Bad photocopies, but unbelievable drawings. What power!

This one is a killer - no pun intended. Great inspiration for my film!

These paintings represent a small cross section of his life's work.

The style reminds me of some American Illustrators from Brenet's generation. Confident brush strokes loosely applied give you accurately observed environments and situations.

His paintings often seem to approach photographic realism. 

But just like a John Singer Sargent painting, the result is actually impressionistic.

I still haven't given up on sometime finding more of his great animal studies.

Searching for the Perfect Pose

Ollie Johnston animated this short scene with Pongo, who is trying not to loose sight of Anita and Perdita who are heading for the park. After a brief pause he leaps off the window ledge toward screen right.

What happens then is Pongo's attempt to convince Roger Radcliff to take him on a walk to the park.

It is fascinating to see how many sketches were made by various artists in order to find the perfect pose for the start of the scene. Since Bill Peet's storyboard didn't include a drawing for this moment, it was up to the animators to work it out.

The challenge is portray a dog from from a 3/4 rear angle, who looks out the window down the street with a sort of anxious attitude.

Above is the final frame from the film, but check out all these drawings.

This is how Frank Thomas analyzed Pongo's pose and its staging.

These could possibly be Ollie Johnston's sketches.

Milt Kahl tried a couple of different versions which helped to solve the drawing problem.

It looks like these animators exchanged drawings and asked each other for help more often than I thought. Then again producing a Disney animated feature is one big team effort.