Twenty Years Ago...

…to this day Marc and Alice Davis were hosting a garden party for family and friends to celebrate Marc's 80th birthday. As you can imagine I was looking forward to the event, but didn't want to show up to congratulate Marc with a store bought card. So I came up with this illustration in which Jafar invites Maleficent to a dance. I added lyrics from an old song in order to point out that Maleficent had an influence on the way I designed and animated...

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Marc's Cruella

A great photo with Marc Davis, Milt Kahl and Ken Anderson being interviewed, possibly for a radio program. Marc is doing the talking, but it looks like Milt is trying to get a word in.These guys are at the top of their game, and the animators couldn't be happier, because for the first time they would see their own drawings on the screen thanks to the new Xerox process.I cannot even imagine this film being inked, just look at the vitality of the line...

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Moments with Marc

I was working on the Mickey Mouse featurette The Prince and the Pauper, when I got invited to attend a screening of the story reels for Marc Davis and Joe Grant.I remember that both men had quite a few story notes. Marc told me that if I was going to animate Mickey, to keep in mind that even a little cartoon character like him has an inherent anatomy.You can squash and stretch him all you want, he added, but it's important to maintain the specific...

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Marc Davis talkes about Bambi

Here is a clip from another UK TV show, this time from the early 80ies.Marc is in his home studio, where he explains how he achieved human expressions on a realistic fawn. Frank Thomas told me once that the animators couldn't have come up with he same results if it wasn't for Marc's thorough and extremely useful research.Characters like the ones in Bambi could easily look overly sweet and kitschy, but when you have artists involved with...

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Victory Through Air Power

For this most unusual of all Disney animated feature films Marc Davis storyboarded the fight sequence between the eagle and the octopus. The drawings date back to 1942/43.What a change from his story work on Bambi, which delicately showed  the poetry of nature and animal characters in the forest. Here Marc pulled all the stops in order to portray these action scenes in the most dramatic way. These story sketches were so effective that the powerful...

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Countdown to Marc Davis' 100th Birthday

This March 30 marks the 100th birthday of Marc Davis.I thought it might be a nice idea to post material relating to Marc's career until then.The photo shows a very young Marc Davis. It was most likely taken sometime in 1939.Some of the rough model sheets on the wall date back to 1938 and early 1939.This means that the location isn't an office at the then new Burbank Studios, but a much smaller temporary studio for the Bambi unit on 861 Seward Street...

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Happy Birthday, Milt Kahl!

Today is Milt's 104th birthday.The photo was taken around June 25, 1974 at his "40th Anniversary with Disney Party" at the studio.Milt is obviously enjoying goofy gifts from some of his colleagues.When I started at Disney I remember seeing a long printed panel that was made up for the occasion. It was titled "40 Years of Kahl Characters" and showed many drawings from his long and astonishing career at the studio.So this is a good enough excuse to...

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