Christmas Cards

Many animators like to send out Christmas cards, because they can draw them themselves.

Lounsbery, Kimball, Marc Davis, Frank and Ollie, they all sent out drawn holiday greetings over the years. Not Milt Kahl. 

Remember, he said: I only draw when I have to.

In the early 1980ies I sent Milt this card with a self caricature to wish him and his wife Julie Happy Holidays.

Julie told me later, Milt doesn't do Christmas cards, but she had asked him to send me one in return.

I treasure this card. Milt picked this store bought card with a graphic image of Santa, and the open invitation to see him and Julie is very special to me!!

Runaway Brain

This short film was produced right after Lion King, but not at the Burbank studio.

A group of very talented artists in Paris/France had completed work on The Goofy Movie for Disney, and the plan was to have this terrific French studio be part of Feature Animation's films.

To start out it was decided to do a short with Mickey. Endless ideas were thrown around, but nothing seemed to stick. Then story man Tim Hauser had the idea to do a satire on the old Frankenstein story. I had too much fun sketching little Mickey monsters, like the ones above, before animation.

I was lucky to be sent to Paris along with a small group of supervisors. My job was to animate but also help supervise the animation as a whole.

Let me tell you, there was no hand holding necessary on my part, the French animators were fantastic. They were Bohlem Bouchiba, Uli Meyer (from London), Chris Bradley (from the US),

Dominique Montrey, Sylvain Deboissy, Sergio Pablos, Patrick Delage, Catherine Poulin, Marc Eoche Duval, Yoshimichi Tumara and Stephane Sainte-Foi.

I ended up animating a few opening scenes with Mickey and Pluto, the introduction of mad scientist Dr. Frankenollie and other shots here and there. 

One scene was a bit challenging, but a lot of fun.

Minnie is hugging Mickey because she mistakenly thinks they are going to Hawaii on vacation.

Mickey, shocked over this misunderstanding, pronounces the word "Hawaii" silently.

It was an unusual bit of acting for him, but I think it communicates.

These are a few of my rough animation keys from the opening scene. I remember animating the cord coming from Mickey's remote control, something that normally an effects animator would take care of. I really enjoy doing effects work once in a while.

The short was art directed by Ian Gooding and I think it looks beautiful.

A couple of pages from the Disney book "Mickey Mouse, My Life in Pictures".

Soon after the release I got my hands on a cool looking toy figurine from Japan.

This was the back of our crew jackets.

I wore it once while visiting Disneyland Paris, when suddenly a Disney sales person commented on the image, which she found outrageous. I tried to explain about the movie, but she insisted I shouldn't be wearing something like this in the park. She thought it was a counterfeit product.

Adorable…the way she was defending Mickey's image!

By the way, at the time I thought director Chris Bailey paced the film a little too fast, but watching it now, it feels just right.

You can find it on the Walt Disney Treasures DVD Mickey Mouse in Living Color, Volume Two.

Staging Pongo and Perdita II

Storyman Bill Peet drew this story sketch of Pongo and Perdi enjoying a peaceful moment together just before their lives would change with the upcoming visit of Cruella De Vil to the house.

For animation Ollie Johnston considered a different type of staging, more of a downshot of the two dogs through the window.

Frank Thomas referred back to Peet's staging, but simplified the silhouettes by hiding the dog's legs.

He also changed Perdita's head angle which makes for a better contact with Pongo. Even in this very rough sketch Pongo's muzzle reacts nicely to the hard surface of the windowsill.

Milt Kahl started out be defining Pongo's  appearance more clearly. It seems like he wasn't entirely happy with this version.

So he redrew it and referenced Frank's muzzle shape. Milt also felt that leaving out the dog's legs would simplify the staging, and guide the viewer's eye to the center of the frame, the Dalmatians' heads contacting.

There is also an abstract quality to the composition. The contour of the dog's bodies looks like an idyllic landscape with little hills and valleys. (The calm before the storm).

Milt did this sort of thing intuitively, he could never explain it.

There is no photo of Pongo's voice actor Rod Taylor working at the Disney studio to be found.

He either was photo shy or he chose early on not to promote the film.

Here is a picture of co-director Clyde Geronimi showing actress Lisa Daniels a story sequence.

Lisa voiced the character of Perdita. (Not to get confused with Lisa Davis, who voiced Anita.)

Atlanta, Georgia 1946

I did a little research to find out what's going on in this vintage photograph.

Posing behind this very impressive car are Disney artists, from left to right story man Bill Peet, unknown, background stylist Claude Coats, art director Ken Anderson, director Wilfred Jackson and directing animator Milt Kahl.

If you look closer you see a Song of the South sticker taped to the windshield. The car to the right has one, too.

These gentlemen are attending the world premiere of Disney's Song of the South, a film that mixes live action and animation footage. 

"The animation in Song of the South was a high for us"  Milt Kahl reminisced years later.

I would add that the film has some of the richest characters ever that were animated with razor-sharp timing. 

Incidentally Walt Disney and his wife Lilian were driven to the premiere in this car as you can see in this great picture from the Library of Georgia State University.

A beautiful Ken Anderson illustration for the title sequence of the film.

The Evolution of Jafar

I was thrilled when I got the assignment to supervise the animation of Jafar, the villain in the film Aladdin. I had just finished work on Gaston, who had to be handled with a certain amount of realism.

I remember thinking: Not with Jafar!

Here was a chance to design and animate a character who belonged in a graphically stylized world.

Animator Eric Goldberg had already done some incredible test animation of the Genie, which helped to set the style for character designs. Inspired by the fluid lines of famous caricaturist Al Hirschfeld combined with the voice of Robin Williams, Eric created a Genie for the ages and set the bar very high for the rest of us.

But how would I handle Jafar's personality against the uber entertaining Genie and the rest of the cast? Should I go along and give him plenty of lively gestures or should I downplay his acting and look for contrast instead?  

I found out the more I held back and showed him thinking and plotting, the more evil and interesting he became. Sure there were scenes when eccentric acting was called for such as when Jafar turns into a beggar. The attitudes here show a hunger for power as well as extreme frustration.

All those scenes were animated beautifully by Kathy Zielinski.

Other animators in the Jafar unit were Nik Ranieri, Ken Duncan, Ron Husband and Lou Dellarosa.

Many different design ideas were floating around early on, before animation began.

A fun drawing by designer/story artist Daan Jippes.

This sketch by director John Musker showed just the right attitude to go along with Jonathan Freeman's voice recordings. 

A couple of my early drawings with extra evil eyebrows. Didn't feel right though.

I order to loosen up I scribbled many facial expressions to explore the range of his facial features.

Setting Jafar's mouth very low on his face allowed me to create bizarre but interesting mouth shapes. 

My attempt to tie down some of those rough faces.

How realistic or how cartoony should his hands look like? I knew I wanted hands you wouldn't want to touch.

Premature cleanup studies. The right type of personality is emerging, but his face has way too many angles and planes. Too complicated to look at and not in line with the style of the film.

Jean Gillmore drew these expressive poses. 

I tried to minimize the line milage in the design. Still not stylized enough.

After one more pass I was comfortable with these animatable shapes.

This is the design directors Ron Clements and John Musker approved.

Clean up artist Kathy Baily creates the fine line look for the character.

An oversized drawing of Jafar with a cut out Iago provided by animator Will Finn.

I don't particularly enjoy drawing model sheets, it's all about measuring the components of the character and being consistent. They are important though because they explain the character "graphically" to your animation and clean up crew.

A cool design for Jafar's staff. We decided to close the snake's mouth though to save line mileage.

It probably saved the film's budget, too :)

A couple of my more or less typical roughs.

This is a clean up drawing from a scene that was cut from the movie 

Jafar is muttering the magic word to make the gigantic tiger head appear in the desert.

That magic word was the name of our layout supervisor: Rasoul Azadani

Jonathan Freeman voiced the character perfectly, He loved being Jafar, and I loved animating to his inspired vocal performances.

Tiger Lily

Tiger Lily is a unique character in the Disney film Peter Pan.

Just like Tinker Bell she doesn't have any dialogue in the movie, but her emotions and attitudes are always clear. She is one courageous young lady. By resisting Captain Hook and not telling him about Peter Pan's hiding-place, she risks her life.

Milt Kahl came up with the final design for the character. He did the drawing above for Ken O'Brien, the animator responsible for most of Tiger Lily's scenes.

These model sheet drawings were done by James P. Miller during the early 1940ies, when Peter Pan was in early pre-production. Actually the final design doesn't differ that much from Miller's beautiful concept.

A couple of stunning animation roughs by Ken O'Brien, who is one of those unsung animation heroes. 

This spirited Tiger Lily dance alone makes him a top animator, and his work over the years deserves further investigating.

A frame from the film shows Tiger Lily next to her father, the Indian Chief, and Peter Pan.