Early Mama Odie

When designing a new character, it is entirely possible to get off to a false start.

And that's no big deal, as long as you haven't fallen in love with your first attempt.

I almost did this with Mama Odie, before we started production on "Princess & the Frog".

The directors Ron Clements and John Musker had given me some ideas about her character and her role in the film. And they were great :

Mama Odie is 197 years old, she is blind and has a seeing eye snake.

Her home is a boat that got stuck in a tree after a storm.

She is the one who can help the lead characters to return to their human form.

These are sketches I made right after the briefing. It was fun to get started on such an eccentric character, and after a while drawing her became easy and very enjoyable. I got to a point where I thought, this might be the character.

When I showed these sketches to Ron and John, their response was positive, but they pointed out a few things I had missed.

At an age of 197 there had to be a way to show bony limbs, she needed dark glasses (I had avoided them in fear of not being able to show emotional change) and she should be a lot shorter. So I visited our story guys Paul Briggs and Toby Shelton, who were working on Mama Odie sequences. Their story sketches showed an older looking character with a twisted sense of homor. I liked how they drew her, and I was able to use that concept for the final design.

Teamwork!

 

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Penny and Rufus

Ollie Johnston did a lot of work on "The Rescuers".

The mice Bernard and Bianca were developed by him and Frank Thomas. 

Most key personality scenes of characters like Orville, the albatross, as well as Rufus the cat and Penny were animated by Ollie.

Part of the reason for this big amount of footage was that he didn't over analyze.

Ollie had a gut idea about who his characters were and how they felt in each scene. And he really did kind of fall in love with them after some initial research.

These are development sketches that were done before animation began.

Ollie captured the loneliness of a young orphan very well, by exploring specific 

sentimental attitudes and poses.

As far as Rufus is concerned, John Canemaker is right, that character ended up being a self portrait.

I love these realistic studies of a cat, the way form and shape of ears are thoroughly analyzed. The sketch of the cat scratching it's head is amazing.

During the few years before Ollie's passing  2008 I tried to visit him at his home in Flintridge as often as I could. Even though it had gotten difficult for him to talk, he did welcome company and was grateful to people stopping by and spending time with him. Occasionally I took friends or students with me on these visits to liven up the conversation and to offer a little stimulation. 

Ollie repeatedly mentioned how lucky he felt to have had that kind of a career at Disney, and  to have lived that kind of life.  He said he was at the right place at the right time.

Photo by Mark Kirkland

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Bambi Book Layouts

For those of you who like the movie "Bambi", here is a real treat.

Years ago when I purchased these illustrations, Frank Thomas told me that they were done by him, Milt Kahl and Ollie. These supervising animators for the character of Bambi drew them with the idea in mind that they serve as visual guides for other illustrators who would do book illustrations. At that time production of the movie was finished.

I remembered right away that I used to own one of those Bambi books when I was a kid. Recently I found another copy of it on Ebay. 

The final book illustrations are quite nice......but the animators' roughs are just incredible. Charming, elegant and full of life.

It's a little hard to say who drew which sketch, since they helped each other out by drawing over the other one's layout.

But I am pretty sure that the first few are by Frank and the last ones by Milt.

Frank said he had a little bit of trouble with the staging of Bambi's mother in this

sketch. He felt her body looked too blocky and stiff. He said: "So I asked Milt for help, and within moments he came up with this beautiful, much simpler pose for the mother." But it's the way Frank remembered this episode, with a sort of "I hate him for that" expression on his face. Of course meant in good fun.

I heard from some people who find Bambi's story a bit slow, personally I think it's one of the most beautiful films ever made. To quote Richard Williams: "The way these cartoon deer are handled in animation with realism, believability and dignity is miraculous."

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Happy Birthday, Walt!

Today is Walt Disney's 110th birthday.

This man not only changed the world of entertainment forever, he also changed many people's lives, mine included. 

Google/Life-Images has a few wonderful photos of Walt and some of his artists.

 Check out their site: 

http://images.google.com/search?q=Walt+Disney+source:life&biw=1683&bih=903&sei=LjrdTsjzL-KxiQLB4JzJAw&tbm=isch

   

All photos are ©LIFE.

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Peter and the Wolf

I have always loved this short film  from the feature "Make Mine Music".

You put the music of Sergei Prokofiev and the animation by Disney together, and of course you end up with something special. Originally planned without narration, it was Walt who asked to get Sterling Holloway to tell the story.

The animation is top notch and the background styling is stunning.

Several great animators had their hands on this film, and it is interesting to compare these design sketches and staging drawings.

This is an early model sheet of Peter, courtesy of Joe Grant's model department,

followed by the final clean up sheet, based on animation by Ollie Johnston.

The next few images are by Milt Kahl, who actually didn't do any animation for this short. But as so often he helped out with design and drawing issues, in this case for scenes by Ollie Johnston. The sketch with Grandpa mimicking the wolf is kind of scary, Ollie did not take it this far in his animation.

The wolf foreshadows the one from "Sword in the Stone", both characters were designed by Milt and animated by John Lounsbery.

Milt's early version of Peter.

Ward Kimball took a crack at it and came up with these. Any resemblance to the young Pecos Bill?

These are Ollie's drawings, I find those proportions the most appealing.

Layout and compositional studies by Milt. The last image is Ollie's.

When I look at this cel set up, I see beautifully painted snow, but it also reminds me of sweet whipped cream. You just want to take a bite out of it!

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Mickey

I had the opportunity and the honor to animate Mickey Mouse on a number of occasions. In "Who framed Roger Rabbit" it was Dale Baer who handled most scenes for Mickey's cameo, but I did a few as well. A couple years later in 1990 the studio produced "The Prince and the Pauper", and I got the chance to animate a few key sequences. 

To tell you the truth, it was intimidating to get started on such an iconic character. 

I have always loved Mickey Mouse shorts, but since the character's look changed over the years, which design should we apply for this new featurette?

After studying just about all of his classic films, we agreed that the most charming looking Mickey was from the period of the late 1930ies to early 1940ies.

Time to go back to the archives and study Fred Moore. It was so much fun

to find out, how Mickey's hands really work and how to do graphic cheats with his ears and nose. 

The section I particularly enjoyed animating was when Mickey and the Prince meet for the first time. They both have the same design, but the acting needed to be specific to each character. Mickey is humble and shy, the prince is confident and cocky.

I had discussed "The Brave Little Taylor" (probably my favorite Mickey short) with Frank Thomas, who admitted that Mickey's old concept for his eyes gave him trouble when animating certain acting scenes. 

Still, those scenes in front of the King and Princess Minnie are animated GOLD.

The last Mickey short I worked on was "Runaway Brain" from 1995.

I can't shake the feeling that the world is truly waiting for a cool Mickey comeback, he's been away from the screen way too long, wouldn't it be nice.......

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