"But you were singing to someone..."

Shere Khan intimidates Kaa, the python, in this scene, after the snake just stated: "I was just curling up for my siesta."

Before reaching out for Kaa's neck, animator Milt Kahl has the tiger scratch his upper muzzle. It is a terrific piece of acting, which reveals Shere Khan's arrogant confidence as well as a bit of boredom.

Milt pulls the mouth way down in order to create a clear space for the scratching action. The elongated face should look strange, but it doesn't. Milt's master drawings actually expose character comedy.

These are copies of his key drawings for the scene. I grabbed them from a model sheet, so the images aren't hi res, but still fun to study. It's interesting to see Milt indicating stripes only here and there, the rest was left to assistant Dave Michener. 

Jungle Monkeys

A number of animators drew scenes with King Louie's monkey gang for The Jungle Book.

Those crowd shots are a lot of work, since each monkey's movements need to work as a single character as well as within a group.

I am not sure who is responsible for these action studies on a model sheet, but I sure like the life in them and the attitudes. (I don't think it is Ken Anderson's work.)

The final designs were set by -you guesses it- Milt Kahl. Again, his superb sense for simplifying complex anatomy is evident in every pose. But there is personality coming through as well.
These mischievous monkeys can be trouble.

What's Marc drawing...?

Marc is flipping one of his scenes with the flamboyant Cruella De Vil. It is scene 66 from sequence 2, which features Cruella's introduction. Here she is talking to Anita:"Poor Roger is your bold and fearless Sir Galahad...ha, ha, ha!"
This is a copy of the very drawing that you see on Marc's animation disc.
According to the Pan American calendar, the year is 1959. (101 Dalmatians premiered in January of 1961).

Before Cruella Marc had finished animation on the villainess as well as the heroine for Sleeping Beauty.
Maleficent proved somewhat difficult for him to bring to life, since - in his own words- she was a "speechmaker". Her movements were minimal and nuanced. A powerful character nevertheless.

Princess Aurora came to life because of Marc's genius, he had a knack for interpreting and translating live action references into elegant graphic motion.

It is astounding to find out that during production on movies like these, Marc still found the time to poke fun at his colleagues as well as himself. I remember Milt Kahl kept a thick folder filled with Marc Davis studio gag drawings.
In the sketches below Marc is making fun of Ward Kimball.

More on Maleficent here:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2014/12/maleficent.html

And on Cruella here:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/10/cruella-de-vil.html

Dumbo Art

I noticed recently that I rarely put up a post on Disney's Dumbo. That doesn't mean that I like the film any less than other Disney classics. There really isn't a lot of art work from Dumbo around. For example I have never seen sizable numbers of rough animator's drawings offered for sale.
The movie's plot is as perfect as you can get. It is a short feature film, and the simple story line allows  for rich character development with deep emotions. I remember watching Dumbo for the first time when I was a teenager, and during the Baby Mine sequence my thoughts were: Oh boy, they are really overdoing the tear jerking thing here. How corny and sappy.
I have since then changed my mind.

A beautiful early character model from Joe Grant's department, when the designs weren't finalized yet.

Some of these drawings explore gags involving Dumbo's oversized ears. I don't know the artists, but later Bill Peet and Bill Tytla would refine the juvenile elephant's design.

Definitely a Bill Peet story sketch.

Pink Elephants on Parade, a dream sequence that set the bar for visual experimentation within the Disney animation style. Absolutely incredible!!

Pages from a 1941 Coronet Magazine article. Just by looking at a few main visual beats, you can't help but thinking: What a masterpiece of a film!

Milt's Aristocats Drawings

Another post on Mit's work for The Aristocats.
I love the drawing above, which I believe was done for an Ollie Johnston scene during a time when O'Malley's fur was supposed to show a striped pattern. Beautiful feline pose, nice weight and contact of the cat's soft body against the hard ground surface.

Milt did the drawings below over keys from a Frank Thomas scene. As with Bagheera earlier, terrific economy of lines.

Milt didn't like the way the film's story turned out, but he mentioned repeatedly that he enjoyed animating Edgar, the butler as well as George Hautecourt, the lawyer. He found them to be characters "you can get your teeth into".

The horse Frou-Frou gave Milt problem's as far as character design. He said that he felt he had run out of ideas on how to design a horse in a new way.
I love the animation, particularly the dialogue scenes.

Milt claimed he didn't get his teeth into this character assignment. From the beginning Madame Bonfamille had been thought of as being a nice lady who was fond of her cats. "Then again" he said, "it doesn't hurt to do a straight job once in a while".

A couple of previous posts on Milt's Aristocats work:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/08/aristocats.html

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2013/03/after-tango.html

Cinetopia

Just got back from Cinetopia Film Festival, which took place in Ann Arbor. I was invited to introduce a couple of films along with the one and only Leonard Maltin.
The first film was: Tyrus Wong, Brushstrokes in Hollywood. This is a new documentary about the life and art of Tyrus Wong, who as many of you know, had a lot to do with the styling of Disney's Bambi.

You can find out more about this terrific film here:
http://tyruswongthemovie.com

The second film was Bambi, on the big screen. For many people in the audience probably for the first time.

I also gave my presentation on Disney's Nine Old Men, followed by a book signing. Leonard, who has authored many important books over the years about animated as well as live action films,  signed copies as well. We had a great time!

Here are more publicity illustrations from Bambi, plus a couple of dynamic story sketches.
Let me tell you, Walt Disney's classic animated films age beautifully. The audience was in awe watching Bambi.

On a much sadder, angry note, the past weekend was overshadowed by the horrific news out of Orlando. Today I am finding myself at a loss for words. Prayers to the families and loved ones of the victims. 

Celebration

Monday night at the Hollywood Bowl! The Little Mermaid in Concert! What an incredible evening.

Before the performance began, some members of the film's creative staff were asked to enter the stage for a bow, and I was thrilled to have been included. Then there was a pre-show with Susan Egan, Darren Criss and many others. 

The complete movie was shown on gigantic screens, only interrupted when a song was about to start.

The songs were interpreted by various artists such as Rebel Wilson, who performed Ursula. 

Much has been written about this event, which covered shows on three nights. Here is just one link:

https://www.timeout.com/los-angeles/blog/the-original-ariel-and-90s-nostalgia-make-for-a-grand-final-night-of-the-little-mermaid-at-the-hollywood-bowl-060716

An entirely different reason that calls for celebration is the fact that this blog started exactly FIVE years ago on the 11th of this month. Over 5 mill. page views! And the recent surge in viewers tells me that there still is a lot of love for the art and culture of pencil animation.

Here is a beautiful celebratory drawing by Heinrich Kley depicting Bacchus on his long suffering donkey. 

The blog will be updated again on Monday. In the meantime you might want to visit some of my favorite posts:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/06/john-lounsbery.html

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2014/06/how-they-felt-about-each-others-work.html

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/03/kathryn-beaumont.html

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/10/ken-andersons-robin-hood.html

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2014/07/disney-tigers.html