Archery Tournament Characters

These wonderful character studies for the movie Robin Hood were drawn by Milt Kahl.

Ken Anderson again provided rough sketches first, and Milt refined the designs.

To me these are among the best looking characters for any Disney film from the Xerox era.

The draughtsmanship and charm in these knock me out.

Every one of these personalities has star qualities, something I call magnetism. You can't take your eyes off them. And the way Milt is able to draw wings, pigs' feet or dogs' paws functioning as human hands is astonishing. 

In the words of Ken Anderson: 

"Every one of Milt's drawings is a triumph of brain power".

Jungle Book Pencil Animation

The clip starts right when Baloo sees Mowgli for the first time. He notices the kid sitting on the ground and reacts to something he's never seen before in the Jungle.

This animation assignment represents a strong creative comeback for animator Ollie Johnston, who recovered from an illness in the early 1960ies. There is no doubt whatsoever who this bear is, after only a few scenes Ollie nails the character.  Spectacular body language and brilliantly timed acting.

Frank Thomas takes over when Mowgli turns away from Baloo: "Leave me alone!"

This encourages the bear even more to cheer up the kid and to make him feel better. 

It's time he learned to fight like a bear and roar like a bear. The beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Frank's Baloo feels a little heavier than Ollie's, but the difference is only slight, and audiences would never notice. The acting is so consistently great from one animator to the other that it feels like one mind is behind this sequence.

Milt Kahl gave Frank and Ollie a hand with a few refined drawings that added appeal and helped to solidify the design of both characters.

Long live hand drawn character animation, an art form led by American artists for 100 years. We'll see where this medium will go from here and where it will be cherished and renewed. 

Louie Schmitt

When Cartoon Brew featured an article last year on "The Cute Greeting Cards Of Louie Schmitt And Stan Spohn" I had no idea that Amid Amidi was talking about THE Louie Schmitt. The one who drew this model sheet of the field mouse for the film Bambi.

Here is the link to Cartoon Brew's article:

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/the-cute-greeting-card-artwork-of-louie-schmitt-and-stan-spohn-64338.html

These drawings just kill me. Schmitt is not following any early cartoon formulas, this stuff is based on real life by a super sensitive artist. Each and every pose is interesting and crazy appealing.

Best mouse studies I've ever seen.

And look at the these beautiful Mole sketches.

I believe this opossum is his work as well, but I am not 100% sure.

According to Frank and Ollie's book on Bambi this is Louie Schmitt in the front.
(Behind him are Ollie Johnston and Milt Kahl.)

Now I need to find out what scenes he actually animated in Bambi. After leaving Disney Schmitt ended up working for Tex Avery on some classic shorts, including the hilarious Bad Luck Blackie from 1949.

The Dodo

This character from "Alice in Wonderland" is beautifully designed, sometimes gorgeously animated, but with a completely underdeveloped personality.

There is way too little screen footage of him to get any real sense of who he is and why he would be important to the story.

The Dodo is a very handsome design though, and it's fun to trace back his visual development. 

This rough model sheet, probably drawn by Joe Rinaldi, is somewhat based on John Tenniel's  illustrations for the original book by Lewis Carroll.

Milt Kahl left the wonderfully contrasting design intact, as you can see in this clean up model sheet.

It is made up of tied down animation keys from a couple of his scenes.

Two of Milt's rough animation drawings of the Dodo. It's the character's unique proportions that make him stand out. A huge lower body with a relatively small chest. 

The Dodo advises the White Rabbit what to do with the oversized Alice, who is filling up a whole house: "Pull it out of the chimney!"

White Rabbit: "Yes, yes…go on, go on!"

Dodo: "Who me? Don't be ridiculous! What we need is a …."

Here are a few key drawings from that scene.

Beautifully drawn and acted, the character shows believable weight in the animation. The strong squash and stretch adds a sense of flamboyancy.

It is interesting to compare the way Milt is treating the hands compared to later bird characters.

These are very human like, while Allan-a-Dale and Lady Kluck from "Robin Hood" maintain wings, capable of articulating human gestures.

Mushka Sketch

                                                                         © Andreas Deja

Here is a little vis dev piece for my film Mushka. The bg/layout is by Peter Moehrle, and captures the sketchbook look of the film very well. So this is could be a final frame from the film.

On a different note, I will have a report a little later on the fantastic "Roger Rabbit Academy Event" from last night. 

The film looked great on the big screen, and it was fun to catch up with friends who worked on the movie, wether they were on the panel or in the audience.

We all wished of course that Richard Williams could have been there.

Freddie Girls

For a change of pace, here are a few Fred Moore girls you hopefully haven't seen yet.

Just when you thought you have seen all of them, in books or online, a new auction suddenly offers  brand-new ones. It's obvious why everybody at the studio wanted a drawing of a Freddie girl.

They are full of charm and innocence….most of the time. I have a few, which can't be posted here. I'd have to open an adult only blog, which I won't do.

It really wasn't that unusual for Disney animators to do gag drawings with adult humor. Kimball, Milt, Marc and others exchanged sketches "that were not meant for the public to see" as Alice Davis puts it. 

So in some ways these animation legends were just like regular guys.

An animation drawing from the Donald Duck short "Duck Pimples"

Twenty Years Ago...

…to this day Marc and Alice Davis were hosting a garden party for family and friends to celebrate Marc's 80th birthday. 

As you can imagine I was looking forward to the event, but didn't want to show up to congratulate Marc with a store bought card. So I came up with this illustration in which Jafar invites Maleficent to a dance. I added lyrics from an old song in order to point out that Maleficent had an influence on the way I designed and animated Jafar. Simple, clear lines and shapes, resulting in a stylized design for the character.

The photo shows me presenting the drawing to Marc, who seemed to get a kick out of it. That's animation historian Charles Solomon in the middle.

In this clip from an interview from the late 1980ies Marc talks about how he developed Maleficent.

One thing about his calm and kind demeanor, behind all that is a forceful artist with brilliant judgement and strong opinions. If you asked him a question he would always tell you what he honestly thought, but unlike Milt Kahl, Marc did it with a tone of patience and composure.

Marc, you are greatly missed. Happy 100th birthday!

Marc's Cruella

A great photo with Marc Davis, Milt Kahl and Ken Anderson being interviewed, possibly for a radio program. Marc is doing the talking, but it looks like Milt is trying to get a word in.

These guys are at the top of their game, and the animators couldn't be happier, because for the first time they would see their own drawings on the screen thanks to the new Xerox process.

I cannot even imagine this film being inked, just look at the vitality of the line in this gorgeous scene.

Cruella is facing off with Nanny, who is holding her own in this confrontation.
An incredible composition for these two characters, full of personality in this one frame alone.

Stay tuned for Marc's official birthday post in a few hours!

Moments with Marc

I was working on the Mickey Mouse featurette The Prince and the Pauper, when I got invited to attend a screening of the story reels for Marc Davis and Joe Grant.

I remember that both men had quite a few story notes. Marc told me that if I was going to animate Mickey, to keep in mind that even a little cartoon character like him has an inherent anatomy.

You can squash and stretch him all you want, he added, but it's important to maintain the specific structure that is so typical for him.

Can you tell that I am paying attention to Marc's words of wisdom?

In this photo Marc is giving direction to Jane Fowler alongside director Clyde Geronimi.

Jane is standing in for Eleanor Audley, who voiced the character of Maleficent and provided live action as well. Jane later married effects animator Jack Boyd.

A beautiful sculpt of Maleficent's head by Marc Davis.

This meeting with Walt seems to be going very well. That's sculptor Blaine Gibson on the right, who perfectly captured Marc's designs in three dimensions. 

The Disney ride It's a Small World was created by top notch artists.

The "unforgettable" song was composed by the Sherman brothers, Mary Blair did color and art direction while Alice Davis not only researched all of the folklore patterns for the dolls' costumes, but also supervised the manufacturing of the outfits. 

(We celebrated Alice's birthday earlier this week).

Marc helped with final staging of the many characters, he also developed their motion range.