Prince John Goes Berserk

A beautiful scene with Prince John, animated by Ollie Johnston. The character is very consistent throughout the film -drawing and personality wise- because Ollie handled just about every scene with Prince John. 

Here at the beginning of the archery tournament he says:

"That insolent blackguard...ooh...I'll show him who wears the crown.". 

The film's draft gives the following description:

MCU - Prince John reacting to the mention of Robin Hood's name - slams paw down on arm of chair, which causes crown to bounce off his head and down into position covering eyes.

The action goes great with the dialogue, because obviously he is not wearing the crown very well.

I also love how fast he raises his arms on "ooh", he goes from being upset to severe outrage.

Great overlap on the heavy sleeves.

Did anybody notice that up until frame 60 Prince John has five "fingers", but from then on shows only four?

Fred Moore's Mickey

 

I found this image on the internet a while ago. Whoever the owner is...congratulations, this is a unique Fred Moore doodle sheet. Starting out with red pencil, Fred explores a variety of poses. Then, in usual fashion, he adds black pencil lines on top. Those lines are the ones that matter, the red under-drawing was research in order to get to the final form defining black lines.
There is just one unusual thing going on here.
The red under-drawings show Mickey's eyes with pupils, the "modern" design. The black lines refer back to the "old" eye treatment, solid black ovals.
There is no doubt that these sketches were made during Mickey's eye transition in 1938/39.
It's just that you'd think Fred would draw the old design first, then add the new Mickey with pupils on top.
Curious....

Embattled Drawings

This is a Frank Thomas scene from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow section, which is a part of the 1949 feature The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. 

The animation is gorgeous. Here are just five drawings from this looong scene. Brom Bones is trying to rid himself of Tilda, who seems glued to the town hunk during the dance. 

In order to save money (and paper), the animator's drawings were rubbed down before a clean up artist added volume research in color pencil on the same sheet of paper. The final graphite line represents the last stage in defining the characters before the drawings were sent to the ink & paint department. 

These drawings show the creative battle animators and clean up artists go through in order to achieve the best results on the screen. Correct anatomy is only slightly compromised to ensure fluidity of motion. 

Since Milt Kahl supervised these two characters, he most definitely did key drawings, so Brom and Tilda look the way he envisioned them. But the animation is all Frank.

So much brainwork on everybody's part. Teamwork!!

Read the note on #411, from Amey to Hillary.  Hilarious!!

This scene is discussed in my book on THE NINE OLD MEN. Just thought I bring this up...

Sword in the Stone Vis Dev

Some beautiful visual development art by Vance Gerry and Ken Anderson.  

Ken Anderson art directed The Sword in the Stone, Vance got credit as a layout artist. But as you can see he did much more than production layouts, he created color environments for many sequences, including the one with Merlin and Wart as fish.

When I started at Disney in 1980, Ken was around, but was getting ready for retirement.

Vance on the other hand worked on quite a few more films, including Mouse Detective, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.

Eric

Eric Larson working -obviously- on 101 Dalmatians. I am not sure when this photo was taken. Perhaps during production or after the movie was finished. 

Everybody loved Eric. When interacting with animation students or newcomers to the studio during the 1970s and 80s, he was a very good listener. He wanted to know your background, your history.

His advice was always encouraging. Eric was fascinated by student's individual talents. 

And he always stressed the value of Walt Disney's approach toward entertainment. Bringing audiences up to what they didn't expect. 

When the studio got into TV animation, Eric was heartbroken. He stressed that Walt always wanted top quality, no matter what format. I read between his lines that Walt would have insisted on top quality for the then new Disney Chanel content. The Illusion of life, which it wasn't.

Compromise was not something Eric supported. He loved his old boss and tried to communicate to some of us that superior quality was an excellent business model that would always win.

That kind of philosophy stayed with me ever since Eric conveiged it to us. 

Perhaps I can convince John Musker ( who had great interactions with Eric) to host a full blown Academy Tribute on Eric's animation work as well of his teachings. This is so overdue.

Click's Magazine 1941

Here's a 1941 magazine article that promotes the release of Fantasia. Always fun to read about the current mood and situation during Disney's golden age of animation.

Kley @ kunkelfineart

It's always thrilling to find new art by German artist Heinrich Kley. I google Kley about once a month to find out if any new illustrations have surfaced. Some of the images here have been offered at Heritage Auctions as well as certain galleries. Most of them were or are for sale at Alexander Kunkel's website:

http://www.kunkelfineart.de/gal/index.php/en/gallery/1/35/248

This one is right out of Fantasia's Night on Bald Mountain.

The actor and the critic.

Drawing Sculptures

I drew from these sculptures more than twenty years ago. The late renaissance and early baroque have always fascinated me because human figures in painting and sculpture had this amazing sense of motion. I studied this stuff because I hoped to improve the fluidity in my own work by re-visiting those European masters.
Brush pen and wet finger tip smudges.

King Louie & Flunkey

Ken Anderson came up with sketches that defined the relationship with King Louie and the little langur monkey in The Jungle Book.
Louie is annoyed by Flunkey who imitates his own jazzy vocalization. The Anderson sketch shows a simple "shut up" approach. In the final footage, animated by Frank Thomas, there is more of a chase involved as Louie tries to silence the monkey. Frank did animate the Ken Anderson version, but for all I know that footage is lost.

More of Milt's Penny

I created these "model sheets" of Penny scenes animated by Milt Kahl...a long time ago.
Way back when production began on Oliver & Company I started doing experimental animation of the character of Jenny. What better inspiration than a girl character of the same age animated by Milt?
So much to learn from these drawings. When to draw the jaw line all the way to the ear and when not.
How subtle facial features like eyes, nose, lips work in perspective. Hands, clothing, and simplified anatomy in general. There is a lot to love here.

I didn't end up animating on Oliver and Company, (except for a handful of scenes with the dogs, Roger Rabbit was calling), but these sketches still present to me a standard of excellence when it comes to animating a young girl like Sarah in my film Mushka.

More Wilhelm M. Busch

 Can't get enough of the extraordinary work by German Illustrator Wilhelm M. Busch.
The compositions, the intense search for portraying human anatomy in its most fascinating way...
so much to admire. Most definitely one of my favorite artists from the last century.
I so wished I could have met him when I was still living in Germany.
Art that makes you think about your own approach to seeing the world.