Bill Peet's Dumbo

A young Bill Peet sketches elephants at a circus, backstage around 1940.

He ended up doing story work on critically important personality sequences like those playful scenes with Dumbo and his mother. Bill Tytla saw the potential in these storyboards and turned them into animated gold. In the hands of lesser artists, emotional story material like this could have turned saccharine very quickly, but both men approached this assignment with such sincerity that you can't help but fall in love with these characters.

The circus moves during a rainstorm at night. I love this sketch, you can feel the elephant using its weight to push the tiger cage up the ramp on to the train.

Peet came up with the final character design for Dumbo, those are his drawings on the model sheet.

Bill Peet at work at the studio. It's fun to study all the research he assembled.

That's an early model sheet by J.P.Miller on his left.

Peet was brilliant at handling elephants in his story work. That's probably why he chose them so often as main characters in his many children's' books.

Cruella as Medusa ?

During the early development phase of The Rescuers Ken Anderson gave some serious thought to the idea for a Cruella De Vil comeback. He made these sketches to experiment with the concept of Cruella as Madame Medusa.

When I asked Milt Kahl later about this initial approach, he said: " Can you believe how people think sometimes?" He didn't mention Ken Anderson, they remained friends long after Milt left the studio, despite of the disagreement over Milt's final character.

One of the last drawings Milt did of Medusa, as we know her. What a fantastic expression!

This sketch was given to animation assistant Bud Hester, who over the years not only worked for Milt, but all the other Nine Old Men. If anybody knows some scoop about these animation giants, it would be Bud.

Getting to know Milt Kahl

I originally prepared these interview clips as part of a presentation for the 2009 Milt Kahl Tribute at the Academy. This is a series of brief, but fascinating statements which reveal Milt's passion as well as his artistic ego (watch for his comment about the use of live action, priceless).

He reflects on certain character assignments, talks about the genius of Walt Disney, and he even draws a few characters.

It is shocking to watch him start a sketch, he begins with details, as if he sees the complete drawing already on paper.

One thing is clear, this is an artist who challenged himself constantly to raise the standard of character animation. He had no patience for people who didn't try as hard as he did…he called them lazy bastards.

It's a shame he left Disney so early in 1976. As Brad Bird mentioned, at that time he had two or three more pictures in him.

London & Peter Pan

I am writing this post slightly jet lagged, having just gotten back to LA from a week in London (after a few days in Hamburg, Germany).

The weather was beautiful for outdoor activities, so I skipped museum visits this time around.

I decided to look up the bronze statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. 

Walt Disney paid a visit there while working on his animated version of the J.M. Barrie story. Commissioned by Barrie in 1902, the tall statue was sculpted by Sir George Frampton and placed in the park in 1912. There are all kinds of characters like rabbits, squirrels and fairies climbing up the base toward Peter.

Last Sunday a few friends joined me for a boat trip on the Thames, from the London Eye to Tower Bridge and back to Big Ben. How can you not think about Peter Pan as you pass by these incredible sights. It was an absolutely beautiful evening.

I have always liked this attractive illustration which was used for the film's poster as well as other promotional material.

These are key drawings from a Milt Kahl scene which takes place inside Skull Rock. 

"(Psst, Wendy) watch this!"

Milt didn't use any live action reference here, he was more than capable of pulling this one out of his head. The action is a little cartoony, but believable anatomy is maintained throughout.

Woolie Reitherman animated this surreal moment with Captain Hook emerging from inside of the crocodile's mouth. Other animators criticized the scene at the time for its irrational quality.

All I can say is…works for me! And you couldn't portray Hook's scream for Smee any better.

TS Sullivant 8

What an amazing Sullivant cartoon, one of many based on the story of Noah's Ark.

I am off to Germany for the Hamburg Animation Award event, so there won't be any new posts for a week and a half. In the meantime enjoy these Sullivant beauties, scanned from original Life magazine pages.

Gag Drawing

You've probably seen some of those vintage gag drawings that were done at Disney way back. They usually poke fun at something that had happened between animators, occasionally even Walt was portrayed in a satirical sketch. Milt Kahl and Ward Kimball kept huge files of those drawings.

In the 1995 documentary film Frank and Ollie Frank Thomas revealed several gag drawings that involved him and Ollie . Pretty funny stuff.

Perhaps my generation of animators wasn't as quick with gag artwork, but we drew them, too.

Years ago I was one dollar short when paying for my lunch at the commissary. So my buddy Nik Ranieri lent me a buck, I told him I'd pay him back tomorrow. Months later I found this drawing on my desk.

Fred Moore from the Back

As far as I'm concerned there aren't enough photos of Fred Moore around.

This is the guy who changed the look and feel of character animation during the 1930s in a big way.

The photo above was taken in Fred's office at the Disney Hyperion Studio. It looks like Walt is dropping by with guests Leopold Stokowski and Deems Taylor, and Fred is giving a demonstration on how animation works by flipping a scene with Mickey from The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

This was the time when Mickey's design changed, and he was given pupils for the first time.

You can see the character has come a long way since the early black and white films.

There are plenty of graphic cheats going on in this model sheet from 1938, but who cares, there is ultimate appeal in every single sketch!

The next image shows Fred decorating a board with centaurettes. That board served as a backdrop for a filmed drawing class as part of the feature film The Reluctant Dragon. The photo was taken on one of the sound stages of the new Burbank Studio.

Bambi Vis Dev Art

In their 1990 book Bambi, The Story and the Film, Frank and Ollie don't identify the artist who produced these magnificent poetic renderings. They probably didn't remember.

The use of light gives the settings a magical, dreamlike quality. There is subtle shading on the characters, even though the final appearance of Bambi, Thumper and all the others would mostly consists of thin ink lines and flat cel paint. 

Nonetheless these drawings sure helped to establish the mood for one of the most beautiful films ever made.