Jafar Clean Ups

A while ago I posted some of my rough animation of Jafar. When it came to cleaning up those rough key drawings on a new sheet of paper I tried to stay in touch with my clean up lead Kathy Bailey as much as possible. Especially on the first scenes we went back and forth on how the character should look in that nice calligraphic line that was called for to fit in with the style of the film. Looking at these sheets now after such a long time I...

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Alice giggles...

…and if you don't think this is the most adorable photo you've seen in a long time, I really can't help you.It looks like Kathryn Beaumont is cracking up at something that happened on the set. I don't believe this is a photo stat image provided to the animators for live action reference.Kathryn is standing on a mock up giant mushroom. This is the sequence for which Milt Kahl animated his first few scenes of Alice.He recalled years later: " Yeah,...

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Bill Peet's Dumbo

A young Bill Peet sketches elephants at a circus, backstage around 1940.He ended up doing story work on critically important personality sequences like those playful scenes with Dumbo and his mother. Bill Tytla saw the potential in these storyboards and turned them into animated gold. In the hands of lesser artists, emotional story material like this could have turned saccharine very quickly, but both men approached this assignment with such sincerity...

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Cruella as Medusa ?

During the early development phase of The Rescuers Ken Anderson gave some serious thought to the idea for a Cruella De Vil comeback. He made these sketches to experiment with the concept of Cruella as Madame Medusa.When I asked Milt Kahl later about this initial approach, he said: " Can you believe how people think sometimes?" He didn't mention Ken Anderson, they remained friends long after Milt left the studio, despite of the disagreement over Milt's...

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Getting to know Milt Kahl

I originally prepared these interview clips as part of a presentation for the 2009 Milt Kahl Tribute at the Academy. This is a series of brief, but fascinating statements which reveal Milt's passion as well as his artistic ego (watch for his comment about the use of live action, priceless).He reflects on certain character assignments, talks about the genius of Walt Disney, and he even draws a few characters.It is shocking to watch him start a sketch, he begins with details, as if he sees the complete drawing already on paper.One thing is clear,...

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London & Peter Pan

I am writing this post slightly jet lagged, having just gotten back to LA from a week in London (after a few days in Hamburg, Germany).The weather was beautiful for outdoor activities, so I skipped museum visits this time around.I decided to look up the bronze statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Walt Disney paid a visit there while working on his animated version of the J.M. Barrie story. Commissioned by Barrie in 1902, the tall statue...

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