Follow the Trail

This is a scene with Jafar on his horse, which  I animated early on during production.

I remember being a little apprehensive getting started, this was the first time I animated a horse in a Disney film. As far as Jafar, I had only done a handful of scenes with him prior to this one. So I was still trying to work out drawing issues.

It is sort of an action scene, and you can see that my drawings look pretty rough, especially the blue under drawing. But the graphite lines gave my clean up assistant Kathy Bailey enough information in terms of what I wanted the characters to look like.

As far as the action, it was clear to me as what needed to happen.

The horse is spooked by the bright light, it rises up, at that time Jafar says his line and points forward, and off they go screen right.

There were quite a few things to track, overlap wise. The horse's mane and Jafar's sleeves and cape. I messed with the whole thing for a little while, as you can see in the erased areas and the re pegging on some sheets.

Nevertheless I had fun animating this scene. It was painted dark for the final version, because the sequence takes place at night. Probably for the better, any drawing issues disappear in darkness.

These are most of the rough key drawings from the scene.

PS. I just noticed after all these years, the first few frames were CUT from the scene! WELL....