Scar lives on...

Who knew? You never know what you come across when browsing the internet. I had no idea about this.

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/the-lion-kings-scar-gets-his-own-disney-villains-comic-from-dynamite/

Sword in the Stone Publicity

These are four "mini stand up posters" that were displayed in windows of movie theaters when The Sword in the Stone premiered in 1963. Beautiful compositions for this unusual format, as well as terrific character depictions and gorgeous color. This is some of the best advertisement art for any Disney movie. It is interesting to see Bill Peet's story credit here.

I believe the artist might have been Al White, who also illustrated a Golden Book featuring the film's story. Years ago I had the opportunity to see the original book illustration/paintings over at Disney Publishing. Let me tell you, they took my breath away. Absolutely stunning!

Early Pongo

These rough animation drawings show the early design of Pongo with a larger muzzle. 

See previous post on this topic here:

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/01/pongo-muzzle-issue.html

Ollie Johnston animated this section from the opening sequence of 101 Dalmatians. After spotting Anita and Perdita from a window sill, Pongo is in a hurry to leave the house. In this close up scene he realizes that it's not time yet for his daily walk with his pet Roger Radcliffe. What to do?

This is one of the first scenes Ollie animated on this film. Milt Kahl had designed the character with a rather large muzzle, and Ollie followed Milt's early sketches of Pongo. The scene would later be redrawn with the final approved character design.

Final frame 

Lounsbery's Robin Hood

These rough animation drawings of Robin Hood show how John Lounsbery handled the character early on in production. To me he looks more like a comic sidekick than the hero type Milt Kahl turned him into afterwards. Lounsbery's rough lines are fluid and less designy.

These drawings are currently available at Wonderful World of Animation:

https://www.animationartgallery.com/category-s/18715.htm

Wilhelm M. Busch, Circus Letters S, T, U

Buzzie

In this Milt Kahl scene Buzzie is starting to loose his patience with the other vultures while discussing plans for what to do next. "Oh blimey, the same notes again!" 

Milt Kahl's challenge here was to find interesting ways to portray boredom. When you are bored you don't move very much at all. But these four buzzards have just enough interaction to pull off a very entertaining sequence. 

As they sit still, one of them would burst out an idea for what to do, which almost freaks out the other ones. For a few frames they turn into "feathery fluff balls" before settling into their normal appearance.

I love all that stuff.

 

The exhibit WALT DISNEY'S THE JUNGLE BOOK, Making a Masterpiece at the Walt Disney Family Museum is closed during February. It will reopen next month and run through March 4.

In the meantime have a sneak peak on Youtube, posted by a visitor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a20gFJcBXo

Patrick Mate

 

Patrick Mate is an extraordinary artist, who works in the animation industry. He has worked for a variety of studios and is mostly known for his outstanding skills as a storyboard artist and character designer. The image above is his recent tribute to The Jungle Book. 

Patrick is also a master caricaturist. He painted these portraits of British character actress extraordinaire Margaret Rutherford, who played Miss Marple in four MGM movies during the early 1960s. I absolutely adore those films, my favorite being "Murder at the Gallop" from 1963. Amazon Prime offers pristine HD versions of all four movies.

 

What a great caricature of the one and only Greta Thunberg, as she tries to get her important message across with the help of a friend.

For much more on Patrick's outstanding work, go to his blog:

http://patrickmate.blogspot.com

Merry Christmas

 

The exhibition "Walt Disney's The Jungle Book, Making a Masterpiece" is still open at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco until January 8. Treat yourself!

The exhibit's catalogue/book is just one click away.

Skywalker

 

What can I tell you? We just spent the most amazing week at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch. This was all about final sound for MUSHKA. And boy...what an experience. These artists take your film to an entire new level. Through sound they plus your storytelling and add environmental atmosphere. I am in awe, these guys are magicians. 

And of course you get the Skywalker tour through the expansive property. It is still sinking in...but we are DONE with MUSHKA. And I enjoy finding out that the Skywalker crew loved working on our film.

French Magazine

If you live in France you can pick up this magazine, which celebrates the "Renaissance" of Disney Animation. My friend Matthieu Saghezchi interviewed me for this edition, he also created three stunning illustrations for the interior.

Check it out!

Hibernating

 

At the beginning of the 2013 documentary "Growing up With Nine Old Men" film maker Ted Thomas pulls this sketch out of a cabinet. He doesn't give an explanation for the image or who the artist might be. Looking back at the drawing now, I am 89.573 % sure that Milt Kahl drew this during production of Bambi. You remember the scene from the film with Thumper's line about hibernating.

Bambi is a caricature of animator Frank Thomas, Thumper is Milt, and Flower is drawn as Marc Davis, who drew most scenes with that character. 

Perhaps Frank and Milt had caught Marc taking long naps after lunch.

By the way, the entire documentary has been uploaded in HD on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NY0tu69G8k&t=670s

Roughs from Bedknobs & Broomsticks

 

I couldn't resist to do a post on the soccer game from Bedknobs and Broomsticks, 1971. As I am totally enjoying many of the current World cup Games. All these unpredictable scores so far...

I believe these rough animation drawings are by Fred Hellmich, with some help from Milt Kahl.  Hellmich started at Disney in the mid 1950s and stayed through the 1970s until picking up work from other studios. 

The scenes with the gorilla goalkeeper (Team Dirty Yellows) are so great. Way back I had the soccer sequence on Super 8 film, and I loved studying the animation frame by frame.

Does anyone have any interesting infos about Fred Hellmich? There isn't a whole lot about him online. 

Here is a previous post with Milt Kahl's stunning character designs for the sequence:

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2014/07/soccerfootball.html