Gaston's Chest Hair

That's talented French actor Alexis Loizon in the photo, who currently plays Gaston in Paris in the stage production of Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et La Bete). As you can see, Gaston still uses antlers in all of his decorating, and his chest hair is as predominant as ever.When we were animating Gaston's song way back, one of his lines stuck out: "…and every last inch of me 's covered with hair! " I did not have the time to do that scene,...

Read More

Dramatic Dragon

Eric Cleworth animated Sleeping Beauty's  breathtaking dragon in pursuit of Prince Phillip. Woolie Reitherman directed this sequence, and both artists were able to infuse high drama into the film's climactic finish. I have the feeling that Marc Davis had something to do with the dragon's final design, since it it based on Maleficent, the character he animated. It is interesting to see that early designs were influenced by the anatomy of a dinosaur....

Read More

Best Snake Gag Ever

Frank and Ollie talk about this Ken Anderson sketch in their book The Illusion of Life.It shows Sir Hiss sulking in his basket, after some verbal abuse from Prince John. Ollie Johnston saw the comic potential for his animation right away, and he ended up using Ken's drawing for the final pose of the scene. I remember laughing out loud in the theatre, when I watched this moment in the film Robin Hood. The idea that the snake would get into...

Read More

Ollie had a cranky Assistant...

…while he was working on a few close up scenes featuring the centaurettes from Fantasia's Pastoral sequence. Further down are Ollie's original rough drawings that were handed out to an assistant to be in-betweened. (Unfortunately I don't have the animation of the two cherubs, who create this sort of hat from a piece of bark and flowers.)The designs for the centaurettes were created by Fed Moore, who had been a mentor to Ollie when he first joined...

Read More

Earliest Wire Sculptures

These wire sculpture go way back to 1985. I had a small exhibition in the library of the old animation building on the second floor. It was a bitter sweet event, because the staff was in the middle of being relocated to a new building in Glendale. Needless to say, most of us thought that this move would be the beginning of the end for Disney Animation, including our mentor Eric Larson. Luckily we were wrong, big time.As for my sculptures, people...

Read More

Ollie & Frank on Pinocchio

Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas talk about animating Pinocchio in this clip from a 1988 UK TV show on the life of Walt Disney. They discuss acting issues as well as technical challeng...

Read More

Valentine Greetings from Milt Kahl

Somehow this wedding scene with Robin Hood and Maid Marian reminds me of Milt and his late wife Julie. When I met Milt for the first time in Marin County near San Francisco he had just gotten married to Julie. He was very much in love with her, and even told me how they met in a library, love at first sight. Here was this titan of an artist showing his tender side. Originally Julie had no knowledge of Milt's background at all, she just loved him...

Read More

The Bambi Lollipop Story

This is young Frank Thomas showing an animation sketch to an onlooker, who I believe worked at the studio as well.They both look very serious, yet in those early days at Disney the working atmosphere was pretty casual with plenty of time for practical jokes and silly activities.Animator Milt Kahl remembers this episode (from an early 1980s interview):"Frank had one of these big candy suckers with a big piece of doweling for the stick. It was wrapped...

Read More