"Where is Mowgli ?"

 

This is easily one of Milt Kahl's best scenes in the Jungle Book. Bagheera heard Baloo calling for him, so he runs toward where the bear's voice was coming from. He is less concerned with Baloo and more worried about Mowgli. 

The first part of the scene is missing here, when the panther steps on the bear. I just love the way Bagheera repositions himself to look for Mowgli in a different direction. Then back to Baloo for further questions about the boy's whereabouts. 

Those are complex, analytical drawings during the transitional motion from right to left and back. It would be just about impossible to draw those positions beautifully, but Milt pulls it off, needless to say. And he maintains a super simplicity in defining the panther's body. Always just a few lines, big cat anatomy boiled down to an essence.

The way Bagheera shakes Baloo's head in frustration at the end is such a human gesture. Done by a lesser animator this could look awful. Great squash and stretch on Baloo's neck!

The whole scene is a joy to watch and to analyze.

Wilhelm M. Busch, Letters M, N, O

 

Be sure to click on the pages in order to see the beautiful sketches oversized!

More Beautiful JUNGLE BOOK Art

 

These gorgeous pieces are not part of the JUNGLE BOOK exhibition, currently at the amazing Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. They were sold at auctions over the past few years. 

It still amazes me how the characters with black Xerox outlines work with backgrounds that are painted in watercolor/gouache with no black lines at all (Only a few BGs have some degree of dark linework).

After Walt nixed a Sword in the Stone approach to the art direction, background painter Al Dempster was called out of retirement to create this softer, more traditional approach to the backgrounds. As much as I love Walt Peregoy's early concept art, I am also very fond of the film's final art direction. It really is comparing apples to oranges. 

Disney Art in Arlington, Texas

 

There are a few days left to visit an exhibition in Arlington, Texas. The title says it all, plenty of gorgeous original art from countless Disney classics. I am one of the lenders to this rare and special exhibit.

If you live in the area, I highly recommend a visit. 

Some of my own personal work as well as character drawings from my Disney career are included in the show. 

Here is the link to the website:

https://arlingtonmuseum.org/disney-art-from-private-collections

London 1987

Back row:  Chuck Gammage, animator - Phil Nibbelink, animator - Don Hahn, animation producer 

Middle row: Ken Ralston, visual effects supervisor - Uli Meyer, animator - me, animator - Chris Knott, animation effects supervisor

Front row: Robert Zemeckis, director - Arthur Schmidt, editor - Richard Williams, animation director - Steve Starkey, associate producer

This was a sequence turnover meeting, where we looked at live action footage and discussed the animation that needed to be added. 

Roger Rabbit, a once in a lifetime experience! The idea behind the film was irresistible.

Vasily Vatagin, The Jungle Book

I recently came across this fabulous Russian artist who worked on several editions of Kipling's The Jungle Book. Vatagin lived from 1884 until 1969. 

These illustrations show not only his knowledge of animal anatomy but also of specific animal behavior. Most of all it is clear to see how much he loved the natural world.

I found these interesting infos online:

Vatagin illustrated a great number of children’s books by Ernest Thompson Seton, Jack London, Vitaly Bianki and others, thus becoming a real live classic of Soviet book illustration. But it was Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” that brought him fame and popularity. Vatagin started his work at the book in 1922 and continued it up to the 1950s. He created an enormous number of illustrations, about 200 in all, and returned to them many times. A book which came out in 1922 included about 100 illustrations. The 1934 edition of the book featured three to four small drawings on each spread, which show the plot development. In the 1965 edition there were fewer but more developed, expressive and finished illustrations. Vatagin made the drawings in black-and-white, with ink and pencil, in the auto-lithography technique. The wildlife here is full of danger, and the combination of black and white conveys the feeling of tension in the jungle (“Maughli Learned to Jump from Branch to Branch”, “The Herd was Already Unable to Stop”, “Hathi Stepped Forward — It Was Clear That He is the Master of the Jungle”). The artist also pays great attention to the details of Indian life. In all, there have been 12 editions of the book with the artist’s illustrations, and readers have loved his drawings just as they loved Kipling's tales

Bambi at 80

 

Disney's Bambi premiered 80 years ago. Originally not a boxoffice success, it now ranks among the most beautiful films of all time. The film's opening multiplane scene through the forest with its haunting musical choir arrangement leaves me speechless each time I watch it. And the character animation is -I said this before- poetry in motion. 

Earlier this week the BBC aired a great interview with Bambi's voice actor Donnie Dunagen. Now at age 87, he still remembers vividly his association with the character and the film. It is well worth listening to:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct34nl

A newspaper scrapbook page from Dunagen's own collection.

In 2011 I had the chance to spend time with Donnie Dunagen, when he was promoting the film's release on Bluray. 

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2014/12/donnie-dunagan.html

More Milt Jungle Book

These drawings didn't make it into the Jungle Book exhibition.  We had so much great material, we could not include all of it. Most of these Milt Kahl "outtakes" are sketches made for other animators.

Colonel Hathi for John Lounsbery, King Louie and Baloo for Frank Thomas and the Girl for Ollie Johnston. 

As Milt proclaimed in an interview:"I was the Disney style!"

Here is a link to a post full of Milt Kahl Jungle Book drawings, from over 10 years ago:

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/07/cast-of-jungle-book.html