"You Old Goat…"

"…if I ever catch you in my kitchen again, I'll…!" yells the Scullery Maid to Merlin, the magician, who just left her kitchen in a complete mess. A short scene with a character, who only has a small part in the film The Sword in the Stone. But leave it up to Milt Kahl to make the most out of this moment. The maid approaches Merlin utterly upset with no fear at all she might become a suspect to the magician's powers. 

I love her walk and the way she she moves her shoulders back and forth throughout the scene. She is voiced by actress Martha Wentworth, who isn't even trying to sound differently from Madame Mim who she is also responsible for. 

The maid's fantastic design is another example of Milt's line of chinless wonders (The Lackey from Sleeping Beauty and Madame Medusa fall in this category as well).

The photo shows an assistant who is in-betweening the scene for Milt. Perhaps Floyd Norman is able to point out who the gentleman is.

To me 101 Dalmatians and Sword in the Stone represent a modern golden age of Disney character designs.

Vis Dev Giants

Here are just a few examples that show the caliber of talent Walt Disney employed to help style his animated movies.

Mary Blair, Eyvind Earle, Walt Peregoy and Ken Anderson all had a huge influence on the look of a number of films. The thing they all had in common was thinking outside of the box. After Snow White and Dumbo, these artists represented new visions for color, design and art direction.

Their gutsy visual experiments helped Disney animation to move on to new horizons.

Paul Jouve's Jungle Book

Paul Jouve illustrated several publications based on Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book stories. The images shown here are from Le Second Livre de la Jungle, 1919, and they were reproduced surprisingly small. About 4 x 2.5".

I love the striking compositions and powerful poses of the animals. These are engravings, by the way. Jouve, as you can see, was an expert when depicting big cats, so naturally he is currently on my radar, because there is a ton I can learn from this guy. 

Go here for a previous post on the great Paul Jouve: (Update: THIS is the correct link)

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/08/paul-jouve.html

Iwao Takamoto

Iwao Takamoto was an outstanding draughtsman and designer, who worked in the animation industry for decades. This photo shows him in 1945, when he just got hired by Disney Studios.

He eventually became Milt Kahl's clean up assistant, and keyed characters like Slue Foot Sue, Brom Bones, the King and Duke from Cinderella and Lady from Lady & the Tramp. During the production of Sleeping Beauty Iwao worked for Marc Davis on Aurora. Since Marc initially drew her a bit younger looking, it was up to Iwao to redraw those scenes, so they would be consistent with her final design.

In this scene Aurora is gently pushed out the door by the Three Fairies, who insist that she go into the forest to pick more berries (even though she picked berries only yesterday). I call these drawings super-designs, and Milt's influence is very evident. This is a man in search of graphic perfection.

The way angular lines work against long flowing lines is astonishing. And look at the control he had over that face with all of those subtleties.

 Aurora is holding a basket in her left hand, which would be added by an effects animator.

Iwao left Disney after Sleeping Beauty to join Hanna-Barbera, where he became one of their top designers. He passed away in 2007. His memoirs were published in 2009 and are available here:

http://www.amazon.com/Iwao-Takamoto-Life-Thousand-Characters/dp/160473194X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389256592&sr=1-1&keywords=iwao+takamoto

Are we all OK with the idea that this kind of integrity and commitment to drawn feature animation is a thing of the past? I am not.

Tinker Bell drawn by Milt Kahl

We all know that Tinker Bell is primarily the creation of Marc Davis. But several other artists explored her character's design as well, including story men like J.P.Miller and Joe Rinaldi.

Milt Kahl drew these poses based on earlier research, and the only differences to the final model I can detect have to do with her hair style and the length of her legs. They are drawn a little shorter in this version.

Marc's definitive model sheet of Tinker Bell shows perfect proportions in her figure as well as her face. By drawing the mouth so low she instantly looks younger and less realistic. The round cheeks add to her pixie appearance, and the lines defining her legs are elegant s-curves. 

A mute character, but so full of life.

Marc's clean up assistant on Tinker Bell was Claire Weeks. He was able to maintain the delicate accuracy found in Marc's rough animation drawings, as you can see in these clean ups.

Milt Kahl's assistant Stan Green told me once that he (Stan) considered Weeks' work too perfect, almost sterile. I don't know about Stan's statement, after all his boss wouldn't pass anything that wasn't perfection. Professional jealousy, I guess.

A beautiful cel set up with Think at the window sill.

More on Tinker Bell here:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/09/tinker-bell.html

and here:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2013/10/tinker-bell-gets-her-own-book.html

Miscellaneous Lilo Stuff

Before starting on production animation with Lilo, I did this little test scene. Chris Sanders' design of her was unique in that her proportions resemble those of a baby's body. I wanted to find out how I could  bring little girl attitudes and poses to that concept. 

Lilo sits bored at a table when she notices a flower on the floor. She slides down a high chair, picks up the flower and puts it on her head. It was fun to do, but quite a few more graphic refinements needed to be made before she could appear in the film.

This was the toughest scene to animate. Chris had done these emotional story sketches. They looked so right on, I didn't know what else to bring to this moment. Lilo asked Stitch about his family and his dreams. She is trying to understand (and forgive) his rough, unfriendly nature.

One of those scenes that got to me.

And this is what happens when two characters from different worlds meet.

A layout drawing for a birthday card.

Last not least a beautiful pre-production watercolor painting by background artist Peter Moehrle.

Milt Kahl's First Shere Khan Scene

This scene is at the beginning of a brilliant sequence from The Jungle Book when Shere Khan interrogates Kaa, the python. Milt animated both characters throughout. The moment when the tiger comes around the tree was the first production scene of him, and it's a beauty!

"It's me, Shere Khan. I'd like a word with you, if you don't mind", he tells Kaa ever so politely. No live action reference here, this came out of Milt's head. He said in an interview: " I learned so much about tigers by studying them that I didn't have to rely on any life action crutch." 

Great perspective walk, and I love the way the tiger lies down, upper body first, then the rear. The way he moves those front feet is worth studying alone. Such great anatomy.

The last pose holds for a while, and Milt kept it alive by adding a few eye blinks on a different level. 

By the way, Walt Disney did see the whole sequence in pencil test before he died. Milt said that Walt liked it and approved it.

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The final pose was inspired by a Ken Anderson design sketch, which was inspired by a Bill Peet drawing of the much cartoonier tiger from the 1945 Goofy short "Tiger Trouble". Milt animated that tiger as well…brilliantly.

In case you missed this earlier post, here is a great pencil test of Shere Khan stalking:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/02/shere-khan-crouches.html