Cruella de Vil

It's kind of fitting to have a post with Cruella de Vil on Halloween.She is one of the best villains in film history, and she is Marc Davis's final animation assignment at Disney. I asked Marc way back: "How could you leave animation after having done such a strong statement with Cruella?"He just said:"It was time to move on, and Disneyland gave me many new challenges."I still wonder though how Marc might have influenced films like "Sword in the...

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A Couple more Character Panels

I won't have any new posts for one week. I will be on the Disney Wonder cruise ship, where I'll give a few talks on Disney animation.In the meantime  here are a couple more character panels.Among personal favorites would be the pre production drawing of Wart. He looks more caricatured here than he does in the movie. I really like this version of him, and I had the chance to ask Milt Kahl about this early design. He said, Walt made me change...

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Woolie Reitherman

I only knew Woolie Reitherman a little bit during the early eighties, when he was still at Disney. I remember him working with Mel Shaw on ideas for a couple of animated features. One was called "The little Broomstick", based on a book by Mary Stewart.  I thought the story was utterly charming, and Mel's pastel sketches for the film were incredible.The other project was "Musicana", a sort of follow up to "Fantasia". It used some classical music...

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Hidden in the Crowd

A while ago I re watched a sequence from "Rescuers", it was the section where Bernard and Bianca are at the airport on their way to find Orville.The human crowd scenes are not particularly well drawn or animated here, but all of a sudden I noticed a young couple moving up the escalator. It was just one held drawing, yet those two were drawn exceptionally well.I knew this was a Milt Kahl drawing, but what was it doing here amongst all the other human...

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Milt Kahl Crowd Scenes

Hi everybody, I'm back in town.I have one more short trip coming up next week, other than that new posts will appear regularly again.In August I posted a few Milt Kahl key drawings from two scenes that were cut from "The Rescuers". They showed an audience watching the performance of a bear at a zoo. The whole sequence never made it into the film.I do wonder why Milt ended up animating these scenes, which I would considerof secondary importance as far as top character animation for the movie.My guess is that Medusa wasn't ready yet for production.And...

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Two Weeks Break

I won't have a new post for the next two weeks. I am off to Vienna to give a talk at the Pixel Animation Conference. Feel free to leave comments on any post you'd like, I will be checking them.When I get back I will have some very cool material for you, pencil tests as well as artwork.Like the guy on public radio over here says: "Be well, do good work, and keep in touc...

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African Cats

Early this year I was asked by my buddy Don Hahn, if I would be interested in being the featured artist for the DisneyNature film "African Cats". I didn't quite know what that meant at first.So, this is what it meant:Producing wildlife illustrations, inspired by the film, which would be showcased and offered for sale within an exhibition at the El Capitan theater in Hollywood, when the film opened.The proceeds would go to the African Wildlife Foundation...

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