Ferdinand and Matador

Before I scanned these two drawings for this post (I traced them from Frank and Ollie's book Too Funny for Words) I saw something in them that seemed odd.

First of all though, these are two absolutely fantastic key positions. How much bolder can you get ?! The matador had just exposed his chest in a last effort to challenge Ferdinand to a fight. But the bull only notices the tattoo of a flower which he starts licking affectionately.

The staging of the lick in the first drawing is already crazy, but it goes on from there. The tongue moves from the chest on all the way up to the jaw in one gigantic stretch.

Here's the funny thing: By the time the lick is in it's extreme position and the matador's body is fully stretched, his jacket fits tight on him now with the tie in place.

Logically this makes no sense. I assume that Ward Kimball, who animated the matador, didn't want to go through the business of having him put on his jacket afterwards.

I studied the scene on DVD, and realized that you just follow the main extreme action. The "morphing" of the jacket is a clever cheat, but you don't notice it unless you look for it.

Ferdinand was animated by Milt Kahl. 

These guys, even at a young age, sure had fun, and they knew what they were doing.

A Lesson from Frank Thomas

…on how to draw Merryweather, one of the three fairies from Sleeping Beauty.

Frank notes on the first sheet, these instructions were probably meant for assistant Dale Oliver.

What's so fascinating about these is that they give you an insight into the animator's thoughts on the character's construction and design.

As Ollie Johnston states in the documentary "Frank & Ollie", Frank analyzed everything very rigorously in preparing a scene, probably more than anybody.

This is a great demonstration on how to squash and stretch Merryweather's body and face. The idea is that you can distort her body mass, but the amount of mass must remain the same.

Fred Moore pioneered this principle years earlier when he developed Mickey Mouse from a rubber hose design into a character that moved with more weight and expression.

Even the design of folds in the costume's fabric needs to be carefully thought out.

Just about everything in Sleeping Beauty had to be specially designed.

This is all about how to base the cartoon eye on that of a real person. To the layman Disney eyes might just look like an oval with a round pupil in it, but there is so much more to it than that.

Many components go into the eye unit. The eyebrow, the mass underneath, the upper eyelid, the eyeball, the lower eyelid, eyelashes etc. Even though the animated eye is much simplified, those components do play a part.

Wildlife in Wire

That was the name of my second exhibition of wire sculptures at Disney.

Originally I had no plans for a show like this one, my mind was on animating King Triton in early 1989.

Then one evening a news report on TV got my attention. It was announced that a day ago the last five remaining Black Rhinos in Kenya had been killed and poached for their horns.

I couldn't believe it. First I got angry, then an idea came to mind. I looked around my little home studio, I saw three or four new wire sculptures I had just finished…..so, what if I produced a whole bunch more and sell them as a charity to benefit the World Wildlife Fund. I found out that they were involved in efforts to help save the Black Rhino.

So on the evening of March 6, 1989 I invited guests to a proper reception in one of the conference rooms of Disney Animation in Glendale.

Here is the link to an earlier post about some of the sculptures that were offered for sale :

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/09/wire-sculptures.html

There were a total of about twenty pieces, and later I was thrilled when I found out that all of them were sold. I recall the total for the WWF was $17.500. 

The guest list included many Disney old-timers, and it was an honor to welcome them to this event. Many hadn't seen each other in years.

Look who arrived first, Ollie and Marie Johnston, followed by Frank and Jeanette Thomas. Receptionist/clean up artist Lauri Benson-Noda signs them in.

Here are Alice and Marc Davis. Effects master Dorse Lanpher is holding a glass, and that's animator Jacques Muller on the right.

In conversation with Marc and Frank…somebody pinch me. I remember Frank asking me:" So how do you get started on one of those?"

Simon Wells is way in the back.

With Mel Shaw and Ollie, James Baxter is serving champagne in the background.

(Thanks, James, all these years later.)

On the left is Background artist/Imagineer Claude Coats, then Alice and Marc.

I am trying to contain my excitement while talking to Bill Peet.

That's comic strip artist Daan Jippes on the right.

Still listening to words of wisdom from Bill Peet. In the foreground is my long time clean up assistant Kathy Bailey.

Front row from the left: Mel Shaw, Harry Tytle and his wife, then Alice Davis, Tony and Alexandra Palazzola (Milt Kahl's stepdaughter) and Carla Fallberg.

In the front from the left: Tom Sito, Susan and Eric Goldberg, Charles Solomon, Ollie, Dave Spafford and from the back Roger Chiasson.

Should have gotten a haircut.

Merlin in Wire

I did this wire sculpture of Merlin a few years ago.

Human subjects are usually difficult to balance, two legs aren't enough to hold up a sculpture made out of wire. But the buttom of Merlin's cloak helped to solve the problem.

He is 14" tall, and again I tried to use as little wire as possible in defining this pose.

It is probably not the most ideal angle this was filmed at, right when his face looks the most clear, his right hand moves across the head. It would look better, had the camera been a little higher, but for technical reasons I had to go with this angle.

I am looking forward to doing a Madame Mim sculpture.
She will be a challenge in terms of balance, unless I do the pose when she is sitting down, holding Wart (as a bird)……hmmmm….

Another Color Kley

How about this Heinrich Kley beauty?

An eerie fantastical underwater scene with some kind of a sea horse, a lagoon type creature and who knows what else. Kley was such a prolific artist, he illustrated story books, he rendered architectural designs, he did postcards and of course those famous pen and ink drawings of animals, fantasy creatures and humans.

If you want to see some of his originals up close, head over to the amazing

Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. Walt owned quite a few Kley originals, and the Museum currently showcases a selection. Here is the link with some more info about the exhibit :

http://wdfmuseum.squarespace.com/posts/2012/5/4/special-exhibition-heinrich-kley-from-fantasy-to-fantasia.html

Character-Rich Staging

It was Frank Thomas who said that if you have two characters in one scene who think alike, you have a problem.

Of course he is right, it is the contrast in what the characters are thinking that brings a scene to life.

Here are a few examples done by different animators that help illustrate the point.

Fred Moore scribbles down his poses as easy as handwriting. 

Simple action lines that communicate instantly. (This scene was not used in production). Here Jose Carioca introduces himself as a parrot with an attitude that says, Don't you get it? The Gouchito seems doubtful, his hand covering his mouth. He is thinking this over.

In this animation drawing Marc Davis depicts Maleficent and her raven with an almost equal attitude. Yet there is a subtle difference. Maleficent was  about to leave the royal scene when the queen addresses her again. The bird though keeps his eye contact toward the king and queen, he seems even more hateful and disgusted than the witch.

Note all the spiky shapes in the design, even in the raven's wing feathers. This is a couple to reckon with.

Baloo is about to demonstrate to Mowgli what a big bear growl sounds like. In this Frank Thomas scene he is leaning back in anticipation of a big move toward the boy. Mowgli is curious and his attention is with Baloo. He doesn't know what to expect next.

A "friendship building" moment. 

Ollie Johnston animated this scene with Penny and Rufus, the old cat. 

Penny is staged back view, and we don't see her face, but her body language signals resigned sadness very clearly. Rufus approaches her from screen right and tries to offer some comfort.

One character in need of affection, the other one intending to help emotionally.

This is a somewhat unfinished animation rough by Milt Kahl. 

Penny is trying to resist Snoop's forceful pull, she doesn't want to search for that diamond. Snoops is lecturing her one last time before lowering her down into the cave.

His body mass and strength overpowers Penny, who is brave enough for trying to stand firm against this bully.

It's still so much fun to learn from the masters. Every step of the way they make you think about personality.

Madame Bonfamille

Here is another character Milt Kahl didn't particularly enjoy animating, but as usual he pulled it off beautifully. There was criticism at the time as to why Madame Bonfamille in "The Aristocats" looked so realistic. This lady was eccentric enough to will her fortune to her house cats, so why not design her as a nutty old woman?

Milt's response was that the story guys thought of her as a beautiful, dignified elderly lady, as did Ken Anderson. So he refined what they gave him, not changing the character's concept.

In an interview Milt said that it doesn't hurt to do your straight, realistic job once in a while, knowing that you will have other characters in the picture who are eccentric and more entertaining.

And of course Milt did pride himself for being able to do assignments like this one that called for careful realistic handling.

"Realism is not the problem, it's the way (other) people do realism that's a problem!" he said.

To me the contrast between her and the lawyer and butler works quite well. 

A development sketch by Ken Anderson

American illustrator Charles Dana Gibson might have been an influence on Milt when he drew Madame Bonfamille. You find the same careful accuracy in the remarkable draughtsmanship of both artists.

This is a photo of Grace Godino posing as Madame Bonfamille. To my knowledge no film footage was ever taken. Grace was an inker at Disney, she also had a little acting experience as a stand-in for Rita Hayworth.

The following rough animation drawings are from the scene in which Madame greets her old friend, lawyer Georges Hautecourt. He is about to compliment her on her soft hands after having just kissed the cat's tail.

These drawings AMAZE me…elegance, grace and perfection.

The motion of her left hand reaching forward is beautiful.

Guess who?

For the live action part of the Disney movie "The Reluctant Dragon" large size character illustrations were needed to dress up the set. The movie opened in June of 1941, so these photos were probably taken earlier that year.

Here are a bunch of young animators taking a break from their desks in order to provide "set designs" for the film. Even at this early age these artists were already masters of their craft. Under Walt Disney's guidance they elevated the art of personality animation to unimaginable heights.  

The first photo shows Milt Kahl and Frank Thomas sketching Bambi and Thumper.

Behind the ladder are Les Clark and Eric Larson. We can't see it here, but Eric is drawing centaurs from Fantasia.

In the second photo Les Clark shows up again, he is working on Mickey and Minnie. To his right are John Lounsbery with Pluto and Art Babbitt sketching Goofy.

I am sure Walt knew that with talents like these you could move mountains and go places. Only Art Babbitt wasn't a part of the Disney decades that followed. 

What a shame...

A Cool Heinrich Kley

This is an awesome oil painting by German illustrator Heinrich Kley. I believe it is titled "The Race".

Most of us know Kley from his delicious pen and ink drawings of anthropomorphic animals, delicate nudes or nightmarish visions. But he also did a lot of color work,

some realistic, some set in a fantasy world like this one.

Frank Thomas was a big admirer of Kley's work. After all, Walt Disney and Kley did the same thing: They both showed what implausible characters and situations could look like in a totally believable way.

Clarice

Within an early version of "Beauty and the Beast" Belle had a little sister, called Clarice.

I had a lot of fun doing some rough development on this character. Clarice adored her older sister and wanted to be part of everything Belle was doing. When Gaston came by the house, trying to charm Clarice's sister, she did everything she could to be present and listen to the conversation.

I liked this character concept, and one evening I did a lot of drawings trying to show her personality.

Here are a few of those sketches.

By the way, at that time I was also asked to come up with a design for Belle based on the look of a young Ava Gardner.

Fairy Godmother

Look at the strength in this pose above!

What a beautiful thing to study, there is this warm personality combined with a great graphic composition. The Fairy Godmother in "Cinderella" changed quite a bit from storyboard to final footage. Her design used to be more realistic, along the lines of the Stepmother and Cinderella herself. 

I assume it was Walt's idea to enrich her personality by making her act absentmindedly and change her appearance into that of a warm, loving grandmother.

Brilliant actress Verna Felton supplied her voice, and her key scenes were animated by Milt Kahl, equally brilliantly. 

You would think that Walt might have given this character to either Frank Thomas

or Ollie Johnston, who always had a sensitive touch in their animation. 

But Frank had his hands full animating the Stepmother, and Ollie was doing the stepsisters.

It is obvious that Milt was able to do "warm stuff" as well, some of his previous assignments include Pinocchio, Bambi and Thumper.

The following Milt rough animation drawings show dimension and delicacy, especially in the character's face and hands.