MUSHKA Holiday Dinner

What an incredible evening! 

Last Sunday I hosted a holiday dinner party for our main MUSHKA crew.

Animators, background painters, song writers and so on. 

And Doris, our dog, who sneaked into the set up. With apologies to folks, who contribute to the project off and on. I only had 14 seats at the dinner table. We will have the big blow out with everybody next year, when the film is done and in the can.

Of course we had an updated screening of MUSHKA,  I am sooo thrilled to report that the Shermans were very happy with  the way it is coming along. Believe me, they would have told me if they saw any problems.

I am over the moon. A crazy dream come true. From JUNGLE BOOK to MUSHKA.

Full circle for me.

Fromt row:

Ariel Goldberg, voice acting and dialogue coaching.

Fabrizio Mancinelli, composer axtraordinaire and Roger Viloria, post production and a lot more. Then Andreas Wessell-Therhorn, animator . Followed by animator  Courtney Di Paola. Ambrosio Garcia, character opaquing and painting. Me, Elisabeth and Richard Sherman.

Background painters Craig Elliott and Tooba Rezaiei. And background supervisor Natalie Franscioni-Karp.

Way in the back, Craig Peck, associate producer.

Many thanks to Kai Loebach catering for the wonderful food!!

Frank Thomas on Lady & The Tramp

This is Frank Thomas, probably in 1954. Behind the scenes photos of Disney animators are relatively rare, so I treasure every one I can find. 

Frank animated scenes with Lady, Tramp, Jock and Trusty. The character of Tramp was designed by Milt Kahl, who also animated the character's opening scenes in the film (Tramp sleeping in a barrel, he wakes up and takes a "shower".)

Frank did wonderful scenes with him as he happens to pass by the Darling home and overhears a conversation between Lady, Jock and Trusty regarding a human baby.

Here Frank is animating, what might be his first scene with Tramp, who spots Lady being lectured by Jock and Trusty.

This is that scene, a close up of Tramp looking toward the three dogs,

In the upper right corner of the publicity photo you can see design doodles as well as a size comparison sheet drawn by Milt.
Walt Disney repeatedly assigned Frank and Milt together on the same character. Needless to say the results were always of an insane high standard.

Klaus

Treat yourself to a viewing of the animated film Klaus on Netflix.

Sergio Pablos and his crew managed to come up with a brand new style for hand drawn animation.

Believable motion combined with inventive lighting. The result is magical.

Kudos to the entire Klaus team as well as Netflix!

Progress

So happy and proud to report that progress on MUSHKA has been substantial. 

We are locking several more sequences in final color, it is a joy watching it all come together. At this pace we should finish around summer/fall of next year. 

This has been, and still is, an amazing ride. There were times when I thought: What's wrong with a short film that is seven minutes long? 

But telling a story is funny, in a way that it tells you how long it needs to be. MUSHKA can't be told in seven or ten minutes. It is a half hour film. That's the length necessary to cover everything, the development and relationships of the characters as well as the overall storyline. 

In the photo you can see how we add "character effects". This is a process that happens after character opaquing and coloring. Minor highlights and shadows are being added, but also deeper color areas on a tiger. His back, parts of his face etc. 

So far so good!!

Lounsbery Cels

Most Disney animation history buffs agree, John Lounsbery doesn't get enough love.

He died in February of 1976 as the first of the Nine Old Men. (Les Clark was the second).

Louns was a mild mannered, soft spoken animator who nevertheless inspired new generations of animators. 

Glen Keane was blown away when he saw Lounsbery drawings for the first time. Dale Baer had the pleasure of being tutored by him during the Disney animation training program. And I am still studying his work trying to figure out why his characters in Dance of the Hours, Dumbo and Jungle Book -to name just a few titles- come off the screen in such a believable and entertaining way.

His use of squash and stretch when animating loose skin is astounding. Examples:

Tony& Joe, the dog Bull and Colonel Hathi. 

So many great performances  like Willie, the Giant, the Mad Hatter (yes, a lot of the the key scenes are his along with the Cheshire Cat), the mice in Cinderella and on and on.

Lounsbery was one of the greatest...ever.

Here is my first post on John Lounsbery:

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/06/john-lounsbery.html

Dumbo Story Sketches

These charming story sketches are by Bill Peet. (Not 100% sure about the last one.)

Peet's work was an animator's dream come true. He worked out story continuity, character relationships, where the camera was placed, and of course dynamic poses with tons of appeal.

Word has it that he felt the need to re-draw Bill Tytla's animation which he considered to be off model  in some scenes. 

This might be an animation history myth, but you can see in his wonderful drawings that he had a knack for drawing Dumbo as well as the other elephants. Such a great feel for the type of staging that reveals personality. 

When I met Peet late in his life, I knew I was having conversations with an animation giant.

More on Bill Peet's work on Dumbo here:

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2013/08/bill-peets-dumbo.html

Preston Blair Life Drawings

Preston Blair was an extraordinary animator who worked for Disney, MGM and Hanna-Barbera. 

His work on Mickey in the Sorcerer's Apprentice, his hippo/alligator dance in The Dance of the Hours and Red Hot Riding Hood for Tex Avery is legendary.

As are his books on cartooning and animation. Here is a selection of his life drawings currently being offered at Heritage Auctions.

Black Cauldron Witches

There were many different design versions drawn for the Witches of Morva in The Black Cauldron.

Artists like Milt Kahl, Mel Shaw and Tim Burton all came up with character models that represented their individual artistic style. 

Milt"s witches reminded me of Madam Medusa and Madam Mim, two characters he had previously animated. Tim of course drew the trio in his wonderful outrageously avant-garde style.

By the time I come onboard, I took bits and pieces from these earlier approaches and came up with this look. I believe this what they ended up looking like in the film.

I drew a few scenes with the Witches, but Dale Baer was the one who showed real polish in his animation.

Heritage auctions is currently offering these sheets from the film's producer's estate.

Gold!

Today by accident I came across a lecture given by animator Chuck Harvey at California State University in 2017. Chuck talked about his own work at Disney and other studios.

I was beyond thrilled when he showed and discussed several Milt Kahl thumbnails for Madame Medusa. Copies of this kind of exploratory sketches for certain sequences for The Rescuers by Milt are all over the place, I posted some myself.

Yet I had never before seen thumbnails for the Holy Grail, the make up removal section.

I frame grabbed these images from the video, no HD here, but it is still a thrill to be able to study them. 

Chuck was already an accomplished animator when I started at Disney. He had worked on The Small One, Pete's Dragon and The Rescuers.

You can find his lecture here:

https://media.csuchico.edu/media/Animation+at+the+Walt+Disney+Studios/0_e9aoii2h/66947452

Big Cat Staging

This story sketch showing how Shere Khan extends his claws in front of Mowgli is by Vance Gerry.

Its gets a little tricky when a four legged big cat needs to act human like with its front paws.

The pose tends to look unnatural and even off balance when the acting is shown as a full body shot.

Milt Kahl knew this. So whenever Shere Khan rubbed his paw against his chest or clapped in applause, he chose a medium close up in his animation. 

The animal character becomes human for a few moments, and it looks more believable in this type of fielding. 

This is a general rule and there are exceptions. Earlier when Shere Khan first approaches Kaa, he pulls the snake's tail down to the sound of a door bell. It's a funny gag, and the tiger is shown in a full body long shot.

I became aware of this staging issue when animating certain scenes with Scar.
Here he is talking to Simba about a "Father/Son......Thing".
I animated his left paw rotating as if Scar is looking for a certain word: "Thing".
On that word he flicks his paw, to show a sense of banality and slight disgust.
I love working this kind of stuff out.
This scene wouldn't have looked right if we had chosen to show his full body.

Roger Rabbit Problem Solving

This was my first scene that involved a character's eye to pop out a la Tex Avery.
I remember paying attention to the technical aspects for the scene. Roger's eye pops and then there needed to be a stagger, a subtle back and forth, back and forth, animated on 1s (like the rest of the movie).  I thought the pencil test looked pretty good until Dick Williams pointed out that during the stagger the eye still has to follow Bob Hoskins' movements.
I adjusted the animation, but there still seemed to be something awkward with the way Roger was placed into the live action scene. A lot was going on with the pillow and the blanket. They seemed to have a life of their own.
I tried a couple more times to make Roger fit into the bed, but it didn't look perfect.
Guess what, ILM placed a shadow over the screen's lower right corner to take the edge off this combination issue. It sure helped a great deal.

In the following scene Roger exits the bed before jumping back on it. It turned out that Bob Hoskins' eye line was too high before the rabbit arrived in his upward position. The solution was to stretch out Roger's arm, so Hoskins looked at the hand, and a few frames later the head.
There were times when we all had to be creative in order to make the animation/live action combo believable.
Great times!!

 '

From Vance Gerry to Milt Kahl

Story artist Vance Gerry boarded Medusa's introduction sequence from The Rescuers.
You can see that Vance was still kind of hanging on to her classic depiction, in which her hair mass is actually a bunch of snakes.
Milt Kahl who animated the villainess didn't go quite as far and drew her hair more conventionally.
This of course makes  complete sense since we are not dealing with Greek mythology here but instead with New York during the 1970s.

But Milt kept Vance's overall idea for the character's staging.
He mentioned in an interview that Medusa treats the phone's hand set as if it were Snoops. She is mad at him for not being able to control Penny. So she shakes the hand set, pokes it with her finger etc.
That thing represents Snoops to her. A fun way to approach this scene from an acting and animation point of view.

A few terrific thumbnail sketches for this section of the film.

A felt pen sketch that shows Medusa's unusual and entertaining body proportions.

Mickey Mouse, 90 Years

This is a reject for a proposed illustration to help promote Mickey's 90th anniversary.

Theme park Mickey and Steamboat Willie take a selfie together.

Flying Horses

I have always loved the design and animation of the Pegasus pair in Fantasia.
Beautiful simplified anatomy combined with an elegant art deco style. And did they ever work out perspective challenges of those wings. I don't know who drew these construction model sheets, but Eric Larson did a fair amount of gorgeous animation with these flying horses.
By contrast the juveniles in this sequence look a bit too cute and cartoony to me. Their overall animation is fine, but a certain solid body structure is missing.

To me it's the adults that steel the show.

Appeal, Flair & Magnetism

For some reason I have a difficult time finding those attributes in recent as well as upcoming animated feature releases.

Look at how Donald Duck's world was presented in this 1944 ad. So incredibly charming and inviting. You can't take your eyes off this -I believe- Hank Porter illustration.

I could give you hundreds of other examples from the past that tell me something is missing in today's animation offerings. Not that I expect animation today to look like 1940s Disney. It's just that there was integrity and artistry to cartooning. A higher standard!

I am reminded of what Joe Grant told me, what seems like just a few yers ago: "We had the same problems making animated movies back then. It's just that we drew better."

I could argue that the advent and influence of video games has been toxic on animated features from an artistic point of view. Call me crazy, but I kind of believe that.

Yet box office success speaks for itself. Like someone said: "You can't argue with money in Hollywood."

Anyway, tons of appeal in this James Bodrero sketch for FANTASIA.

The master of appeal, Fred Moore.

I remember that these were the first Disney animation drawings I saw as a kid. This photo of Kimball was included in a small brochure that came with a Disney Super-8 film clip.
I kid you not, my heart was racing. Magnetism on a grand scale.

I am confident though that eventually more artistic "left-turns" will be made in animation. 

Art has a way.....

Cinderella Photostats

A small selection of photostats from Cinderella. 

Filming all that live action to help the animators maintain realism in their work resulted in a very short animation schedule. I remember Frank Thomas telling me that they did the whole thing (animation) in six months. Unbelievable!!

Frank gave a LOT of credit for the successful portrayal of his character, Lady Tremaine, to actress Eleanor Audley. He loved her sinister, powerful voice as well as her nuanced live action performance.