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.

WDFM Mickey Mouse Book

Get this book!

The catalogue/book that covers the Walt Disney Family Museum's current exhibition is gorgeous.

My co-curator Micheal Labrie and I had the greatest time compiling this unique selection of images and objects that cover Mickey's astounding career. 

From early black & white short films to color and TV shows, merchandize, Disney parks and a whole lot more. 

This was a labour of love for everyone involved. The exhibit is ongoing in San Francisco, and I can only hope that Walt's daughter Diane would be happy with what we've done. I'll never forget that day when she asked me a few years ago to take on such an endeavor.

We dedicate this book to her extraordinary, supportive husband Ron Miller. I was so pleased when he gave us his blessing after having seen the exhibit's layout and design.

Diane was very much on all of our our minds while we were planing to pay tribute to her dad's most iconic character.

The book includes artwork never before seen, like Mickey and Minnie dancing in the second image. 

From the estate of Les Clark.

Go get this Book! Click on the the Mickey image to the right, which takes you to AMAZON.

Can't Get Enough of Kley

I really can't.
Each new Kley piece I discover online or at auction takes my breath away. Maybe it's our common German background.
This drawing was titled by Kley "The Patient". Not sure of the date.
What a wonderful whimsical situation. An unwell dragon, an eccentric doctor and a princess.
Just for a moment...imagine this being animated, moving, as is in the illustration!
What a glorious film this could be....

The Genius of Milt Kahl

Another example of the immense creativity of Milt Kahl during the production of Lady and the Tramp. Milt was able to animate just about any situation with a four legged animal at this point.

He knew a dog's anatomy like nobody's business, and he could animate any scene believably in a masterful way. Milt liked this movie, he thought this film represented some of the studio's better efforts.

More on Tramp here:

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2019/03/a-lady-tramp-masterpiece.html

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/06/one-year-anniversary.html

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/07/tramp.html

A Father Daughter Story

I remember animating this sequence from The Little Mermaid. 

King Triton is having a serious conversation with his daughter, who has disobeyed the rules by going up to the ocean's surface. 

His tone of voice has concern, anger, frustration and disbelief. I was in the middle of animating this, when suddenly it dawned on me that all of his feels too familiar. My older sister Christa had started dating way back, and she would go out to have a good time at a nearby disco. 

My dad told her to be back home by 11pm, but of course Christa had a habit of being late. My father would wait in the living room until she returned in order to face her and read her the riot act.

He was very loud in his rants, and he got close to my sister, pointing at her, but never touching her. 

My sister held her ground. 

How could I not reference my dad when animating this? It was a case of art imitating life.

Years later I told my father that his personality and demeanor made it into a Disney animated film.

He wasn't sure if this was a good or a bad thing.

More on King Triton in this sequence here:
https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2016/03/king-triton-stuff.html
https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2015/12/king-triton.html

The Mystery Video Tape

This item is currently being offered on Ebay.
The year is 1994, and Disney Art Editions invited Marc and me to have a conversation about our careers and animation in general. The video would be distributed to animation art dealers in the mid 1990s.
Disney Art Editions in those days produced re-created cels of Disney characters from the films' memorable moments.
This is 25 years ago, and I remember vividly what a hot afternoon it was. And also what an amazing honor to spend time with Marc on camera in front of the original Burbank animation studios. What I don't recall is what we talked about specifically.

I actually owned a VHS copy of this, hopefully I will find it and have it transferred to a digital file.
And then post it!

Update: Found it!

The Princess and the Frog at the Academy

Great night at the Academy last Thursday. A 10th anniversary screening of the film and a panel.

So nice to see everybody again. I was asked: "Does it feel like 10 years ago to you?"

Heck yes! So much has happened since we made that film. 

After Frog Disney  gave us one more shot at pencil animation with Winnie the Pooh.

As soon as it was announced that that film's release date had changed to go head to head with the last Harry Potter film, we knew...

Anyway I had fun working on both films, Mama Odie was a blast to animate (she should have had one more sequence in the film though, perhaps the at the ending)

Here are a few Vis Dev pieces by various artists from the movie.

More on Mama Odie here:

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/10/mama-odie-maquette.html

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/12/early-mama-odie.html

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/07/mama-odie-test-scene.html

https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2013/05/first-mama-odie-test.html