The Collie

The Collie in 101 Dalmatians was animated by Julius Svendsen and voiced by actor Tom Conway who was the brother of George Sanders (Shere Khan).

Milt Kahl drew these beautiful designs to explore the final look of the Collie.

It isn't an easy thing to humanize a dog like this one, the long snout makes it difficult to portray a smile. The edges of the mouth need to move close to the eyes, which could look awkward.

But if anybody could pull it off it would be Milt. He had to deal with a similar challenge on characters like Bambi's mother, Prince Phillp's horse Samson and Frou Frou in The Aristocats.

TS Sullivant 6

Another reminder that shows how brilliant Sullivant was with his unique style for caricaturing animals and humans.

Feast your eyes!

Jafar Pencil Tests

I finally got around to putting a reel together with my Jafar rough animation.

It was strange looking at this footage again after so many years. 

Some of the scenes don't hold up as well as others. To give you a couple of examples:

The line "Your Majesty certainly has a way with dumb animals" needs a juicier acting approach. There is something in Jafar's attitude that I could have milked more.

On the other hand, the close up scene "I think she took it rather well" still comes off pretty good. (So does the preceding sequence with Jafar and Jasmine.)

I had a blast animating this character. As I mentioned before, he was a relief after Gaston's realism.

The reel shows scenes in various stages, from first rough pass to tied down inbetweened footage. There are also a couple of versions of a cleaned up scene that was eventually cut from the film, you'll find it.

The first clip was cut as well, the second one is an experimental scene.

Sometimes the sync is a little off, which was fixed for the final version (I hope it was, anyway.)

Any Iago acting scenes were animated by Will Finn, and Jasmine was drawn by Mark Henn, both beautifully done.

As far as I know everybody had a great time working on this film under the direction of Ron Clements and John Musker. We did receive some criticism though from some of the Nine Old Men, they thought that certain scenes and the contemporary dialogue would date the film.

If so, I think it is dated in a beautiful way.

Here is a link to some Jafar development art from a recent post:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-evolution-of-jafar.html

The Art of Sleeping Beauty

You don't hear or read much about Les Clark in regards to the production of Sleeping Beauty.

That's him in the photo, examining a color model cel with various poses of Aurora, held by Grace Bailey, who was then head of the ink & paint department.

Les directed the enormously complex opening sequence of the film with endless crowds of well wishers approaching the castle. (Ruthie Thompson, who did scene planning on the sequence said recently that this was the most difficult and involved work she ever did at the studio.)

Below are a couple of sheets showing sketches of Aurora by the very talented modernist designer Tom Oreb. They date back to April and May of 1954. Oreb was a huge influence, as the Disney style underwent a transformation from round dimensional imagery to flat and graphic sophistication.

Marc Davis used these inspirational sketches and made the design his own.

Amelia & Abigail Gabble

In June of 1969 these concept drawings by Ken Anderson were photographed and reproduced as reference for any artists who would be working on these two geese sisters in story and animation.

The movie was The Aristocats, and the script called for a couple of English geese, who are on a walking tour of France. These two are easily amused and tend to laugh at their own jokes. Their main purpose in the story is to accompany the cats on their way back to Paris.

Milt Kahl was next in line to  add his touch to the visual development of these characters. 

I can't quite figure out the following two sheets, who show a completely different conceptual direction for the geese. The drawings are hilarious, though these sketches look somewhat like ducks. The dishevelled attitudes remind me of Uncle Waldo, who almost got marinated in white wine at Le Petit Cafe.

Perhaps Uncle Waldo was an Aunt at one point, and that's what Milt explored here. Beautiful drawings!

And then Milt just hits a slam dunk! These are among my favorite Kahl exploratory  sketches.

Now this is a goose!!

With a fantastic facial caricature of the animal. The body is bottom heavy and bow-legged.

I have looked at this sheet for hours.

I see a goose in France, I can almost taste the Foi gras, the proportions are exquisite.

A little masterpiece in design development.

Ollie Johnston looks at Milt's ideas, but looses something as he redraws the poses.

The longer neck is fine, but this is a skinny goose. And the head doesn't have that perfect simplicity.

As Ollie explores the proportions more, he eventually ends up adding the body bulk that makes for a good goose design.

By the time he gets into animation, his drawings become more solid, and the acting is terrific.

These are Ollie's motion studies based on looking at live action footage.

The sequene of the goose walking toward camera is worth taking a look at. 

You have the foot contact, then the body's weight shifts toward that side, while head and neck counterbalance. Of course all this needs to be exaggerated in the character animation.

Here is a photo from a magazine article, showing Ollie and Milt holding cats, while director Woolie Reitherman and Frank Thomas watch John Lounsbery, as he tries to put a bonnet on a goose.

But what's Mickey doing there?

Realism and Abstraction

For most Disney animated feature productions the research that helps to get the best results on the screen seems endless. Before animation begins storyboards are drawn and redrawn, various styles are being explored in order to achieve the right look for the film, and often live action is shot to help animators with their acting choices.

For the movie Peter Pan a lot of live action footage was filmed, and the super talented animators knew just how to use it. If the acting was inspired, why not incorporate it into your animation?

Usually timing and staging needed to be altered, because graphic animation has its own rules. Broader action, more squash and stretch and a clear silhouette.

I just love looking at these vintage photostats that were made available to the animators.

You can see what motivated them and how they translated the footage into graphic motion. Sometimes they would ignore the live action and create a different performance on their own. But as Marc Davis said, it was often helpful to be able to look at something instead of starting with a blank sheet of paper.

I myself worked with live action reference for Gaston and Hercules. We did it the same way by filming the actors wearing somewhat crude outfits, and by using the simplest of props to create some kind of an environment for the scene.

Sometimes those on the set were laughing so hard at how ridiculous (yet useful) the footage came out. If the studio could only make that footage available to you guys, you would laugh you head off.

Artists like Mary Blair preferred to present sceneries, characters and colors in an almost abstract way. With a strong focus on lighting, emotional color choices and simple staging these studies were the inspiration for the final artwork. Sure, the production backgrounds have a more realistic stage set feel, but Mary's influence is very apparent.

Eywind Earle took a similar approach for Sleeping Beauty and so did Walt Peregoy for 101 Dalmatians.

In the end this and other films landed somewhere in-between realistic and abstract influences.
And I do believe that's one reason for their greatness.

Underwater Santa

This is a Christmas card I sent out in 1989 after we had finished work on The Little Mermaid.

So today I am recycling the image to offer everybody who celebrates this holiday my best wishes and to all of you, have a happy 2013.