Bambi Art

Your guess is as good a mine, as far as who drew the beautiful sketch above. Perhaps Frank Thomas, but I am not sure. Doesn't matter, it is obvious that the artist had a lot of affection for these characters. As did everyone else who was involved in the production.

Milt Kahl drew these appealing studies of Thumper, and I think that a couple of poses represent the cutest application of squash and stretch ever.

Just like the films that preceded Bambi, there were a number of art directors involved in creating the look for the movie. And they all shared one thing with Rembrandt, a mastery of the use of light. Absolutely breathtaking!

This is a magazine article from September of 1942 that promotes the film by showing mostly sketches. Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl created layouts for some of the illustrations. (Young Bambi meeting Feline is a Marc Davis drawing).

You can see some of those original layouts in this previous post:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/12/bambi-book-layouts.html

Walt Peregoy's Jungle Book

Here is another gorgeous visual development piece by the cranky, but enormously talented Walt Peregoy. As I said before, this type of jungle would have worked for The Jungle Book as well, but the other Walt (Disney) envisioned lighter, more airy backdrops for the characters. The production of this wonderful film saw two casualties: Story man Bill Peet and Walt Peregoy, who both left the studio in a huff, because of their artistic disagreements with where the movie was headed. 

Peregoy has a way with blue/greens and a touch of purple. You can see a lot of that in The Sword in the Stone. And I love it!

Here is a previous post on Peregoy's Jungle Book:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/11/early-jungle-book.html

Wilhelm M. Busch 1950

More tiny Busch spot illustrations for a novel by Ernst von Salamon titled "Glueck in Frankreich" (Happiness in France). The reason why I love these drawings so much is because of their economy of lines. Just like in a Milt Kahl drawing, every line counts to communicate an idea in the simplest way possible. Anything that isn't essential to telling the story is left out! You only get the bare bones.
Busch is also able to create real space with so little. Just amazing!

Leaving things out is a marvellous thing, anybody can render an image to death. But presenting only the bare essentials makes for a fascinating artistic statement.

Ollie & Milt team up on Robin Hood

Ollie Johnston did a ton of animation for the film Robin Hood. His work includes the final section of the tournament. Ollie studied the storyboard, then reworked continuity, framing and personality business. 

Here the stork has just been identified as Robin Hood, who gets arrested immediately to be executed. When Maid Marian begs Prince John for forgiveness, he sympathizes for a moment before angrily calling for Robin's head. 

All the characters wee animated by Ollie, but when it came to drawing Robin Hood, Ollie had a few of his keys redrawn by Milt Kahl, who supervised the character.

Milt drew these couple of beautiful drawings for scene 332.

Robin Hood reacts to Prince John's verdict in scene 336.

In scene 337 Milt tackles interesting, but tough to draw head angles.

Milt of course didn't have the time to key all of Robin Hood's scenes. There are some inconsistencies in the way the character looks throughout the film, even Milt's own animation shows some irregularities due to model changes. 

You might want to revisit Milt's extraordinary designs for the archery tournament characters:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2013/04/archery-tournament-characters.html

Robin Hood & Little John in Drag II

I have posted some material on these two characters dressed as gypsies before, but I have more to show. The doodle sheets above and below were drawn by Milt Kahl. He is trying to find entertaining solutions to the problem of fitting a dress on the body of a fox and a bear.

Beautiful sketches!

This model sheet includes most of Milt's key drawings from a scene in which Little John reacts to the arrival of Prince John's royal coach:  "Now how about that for luck! It's only a circus, a peanut operation." During the dialogue the bear is tying the bonnet's strings into a knot, which is a lovely piece of business. At the end of the scene he turns to Robin screen left.

Ollie Johnston tries a different costume arrangement.

Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl research ideas for interesting looking outfits.

More of Milt's designs. At one point he attempted to keep the ears in the open, but their shapes interfered with the front bow. 

Here is the link to an earlier post about these two characters as gypsies:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2013/05/robin-hood-little-john-in-drag.html

Groupshots

I have had these prints for a while, I hope you enjoy them.

Woolie Reitherman, Ken Anderson, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas meet up with some of the Robin Hood Disneyland characters outside of the animation building. I would guess 1973.

Below are a couple of pics taken on April 9, 1978.

The University of Southern California chapter of the Delta Kappa Alpha National Cinema Fraternity recognizes the "Nine Old Men" with the "Pioneer in Film" award.

From left to right:

Les Clark, Eric Larson, Ollie, Ken Anderson, Woolie, Ward Kimball, Frank, Marc Davis and the boss.

(John Lounsbery had passed away in 1976, and Milt Kahl had moved to San Francisco).

Singer Peggy Lee attended the event, here she is congratulating Ollie.

(Eric Larson animated the character Peg from Lady & the Tramp to Lee's voice more than two decades before)

I believe this photo was taken at the restaurant on the upper floor of the animation building, early 1970s. From left to right:

Ken Anderson, Milt Kahl, Card Walker (Disney top executive) and John Hench (Disney background painter and Imagineer).

Line, Shape and Form

…all of those in a magnificent balance for this moment from the film 101 Dalmatians. 

"Melody first my dear, and THEN the lyrics."

So many graphic lines are directed toward the main business of Roger's finger touching Anita's nose. Her long neck, the lines in her hair and the curve of her nose clearly point to the subtle contact about to happen. Roger's whole body leans forward toward Anita's face, and every line, from folds in the fabric to his basic anatomy, leads the viewer's eye to the specific area of interest.

Then there is the background's layout. Look at how those lines defining the wooden edge of the sofa seem to move upward toward the characters' heads. 

(I love the perspective change of the sofa's right side, it's flat and dimensional all at the same time!)

There is an absolute unity between the shape language in the background and in the characters. It feels like ONE artist is responsible for the entire image. 

We all know that Disney animation is about family entertainment, but vintage stuff like this is also high art.

Milt Kahl animated both characters in the scene. Below is an out-take rough drawing of Roger. 

One of Milt's countless masterpieces. 

The Reluctant Dragon

I was thrilled to discover the other day that NetFlix has started streaming a beautiful HD version of Disney's Reluctant Dragon. This is the whole feature, which includes the Robert Benchley backstage tour as well as the Goofy short How to Ride a Horse and The Reluctant Dragon.

The photo below shows John P. Miller, who storyboarded the famous Baby Weems section of the film. It looks like Miller is still at Disney's Hyperion studio, working on designs for Pinocchio and Dumbo.

Here is a link to a previous post on Baby Weems:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/06/john-p-miller.html

A couple of Miller's charming story sketches.

Baby Weems meets Albert Einstein in this Miller sketch and the maquette from Joe Grant's character model department.

Ward Kimball is featured in this story sketch for his live action appearance.

A poster from the 1941 movie.