Rembrandt Bugatti

Among my favorite sculptors are Michelangelo, Rodin and Rembrandt Bugatti.

Bugatti was born in Milan in 1885 into a highly artistic family. His grandfather and his father were both famous in their time for sculpting, painting and engineering.

One of his brothers Carlo made stylish groundbreaking furniture, the other, Ettore became one of the best known automobile manufacturers.

In 1902 the family moved to Paris, where Rembrandt Bugatti developed his passion for sculpting animals. He spent a lot of time at the Antwerp Zoo in Belgium. 

That zoo unfortunately was forced during World War I to kill off most of their livestock. Bugatti, who had used many of these animals as models for his sculptures, was devastated. 

He already had problems with depression, and in 1916 at the age of 31 Rembrandt Bugatti killed himself.

His work astounds me. Even though he never travelled to wild places in order to study wild life, his research was done at zoos, the sculptures truly capture the spirit of the animal.

Stylistically they range from a rough Rodin like approach to an Art Deco design.

The first time I saw his work was at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, and I immediately fell in love with it.

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Shere Khan crouches

This post took a while to put together. As you know, creating pencil tests is time consuming, but when the result looks like this…who cares?!!

Before I get started, I had a great time at the Annies yesterday. It was good to talk to people I hadn't seen in a while. Thought the presentation was hysterical, congratulations to my fellow nominees and the winners.

Back to the tiger. Before I shot these copies I noticed that one image was missing, so I drew one inbetween to complete the scene. First of all, that took me forever. When you look at two tiger keys on your drawing desk, just try and figure out the subtle change in the stripes. Insane.

Whoever inbetweened Shere Khan (Dave Michener did some of it) deserves a medal! 

Of Course Milt Kahl wouldn't tolerate the slightest inbetweening mistake.
Just look at how all those stripes define the subtle movement of skin over the body.

I have always loved this introduction to Shere Khan. His controlled, withheld power and strength are breathtaking. And the draughtsmanship is  -as usual-  awe inspiring as well as intimidating.

The movement of the tiger's shoulders in the second scene is sort of a cycle. Milt animated that move once, then timed it a couple of different ways, slow and a bit faster. That's the only time I have seen him do this. Careful trace backs of the parts of the body that don't move give the scene so much life. If you'd use a partial hold for that, it wouldn't look this great.

Without any further ado, here is some of the most amazing animation ever drawn!

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Ollie's Three Fairies

Frank and Ollie animated most of the personality scenes with the Three Fairies in "Sleeping Beauty".

Ollie said that originally Walt wanted them to have the same personality, like Donald Duck's nephews. 

"That wouldn't have been too much fun", Ollie remembered, "so Frank and I suggested they'd have different personalities". 

And the picture is much richer because of the contrast between the three. But it goes to show you that Walt took his top animators suggestions seriously.

Here are three rough animation set ups, it's just that these beautiful drawings by Ollie aren't that rough. But then again everybody drew a bit cleaner on "Sleeping Beauty" in order to control the sophisticated design concepts.

The first image, which was drawn on there different levels, shows them reacting to Maleficent in the opening sequence of the movie.

In the second one Flora and Fauna push Merryweather forward and encourage her to grant her wish for the princess, which might counter Maleficent's spell. They are on one level here.

In the third set up, drawn on there sheets, we see the fairies in a sorrowful mood after Aurora left in frustration, when told "she is never to see that young man again".

Even though the designs are graphic, I see a great sense for perspective and depth here. When dealing with three characters in one scene clear staging and composition is so important.

Ollie loved animating these three ladies, and it shows in his drawings and in his animation.

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The Pongo Muzzle Issue

Story artist Bill Peet boarded all of "101 Dalmatians" by himself.

He had definite ideas about the construction and flow of the story, but Bill also had strong opinions for what the characters should look like on the screen.

Ever since "Song of the South" (which Peet also boarded) it had been established that Milt Kahl would take a look at Bill Peet's story drawings, and from there he would polish the look of the characters for animation.

Most often this process worked swimmingly. Peet provided the overall concept, and Kahl refined it with outstanding design and draughtsmanship.

Yet when it came to finding the final design for Pongo both artist found themselves butting heads.

Milt had finished a few drawings showing Pongo next to Perdita, but Bill Peet was not impressed. "Pongo's muzzle is too large, that doesn't look like a Dalmatian, that's a Great Dane" he argued. I am sure Milt responded with a few angry choice words, defending Pongo's muzzle size to better contrast Perdita's.

In the end though Milt gave in and adjusted his design. 

I wonder if Walt himself helped to settle the matter.

Bill Peet 

Bill Peet                                    Milt Kahl

Milt Kahl

One of my favorite scenes with Pongo shows the final design.

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Dalmatians

It is always interesting to see what kind of research was done before classic Disney characters were finalized. 

All these drawings were made before animation began on "101 Dalmatians".

(Yes, you guessed it, this is post #101).

The animators were familiar with the anatomy of a variety of dogs. "Lady and the Tramp" had been produced just a few years before "Dalmatians".

So here four of the supervising animators sketch and find out what is unique about a dalmatian (other than the obvious spots). Some of these poses were drawn from dogs that were brought to the studio, others from live action film footage.

You can identify different drawing styles and approaches to anatomy.

Marc Davis is the only artist  who did not work on any scenes with the dogs. As you know he ended up animating Cruella de Vil, every single scene of that character.

Ollie Johnston

Frank Thomas

Marc Davis

Milt Kahl

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Post #100, Old Portfolio Stuff

100 posts, how times fly.

It feels like I just started blogging, a sign that I am having fun, I guess.

I want to clarify a couple of things:

I do apologize for not having accepted any invitations to join some of you on a variety of social networks. Absolutely nothing personal, but I just don't have the time right now. Maybe in the future some time.

Also, just because I showcase the work of Disney's great animators as well as some of my own stuff from time to time does not mean that I put my work on to their level. These guys were in a class by themselves, and that's that!

But since a lot of you are students and probably grew up with some of the films 

I worked on, having the occasional "Behind the Scenes" post and talking about those movies might be of interest to some of you.

For the classical Disney animation purist, rest assured, there will be plenty more

"Nine Old Men" gold coming this way.

I selected these drawings from my Disney application portfolio.

They date back to 1978/79.

Life drawings, animal sketches, motion studies from Super-8 film and cartoon experiments, where I tried out different styles. (Second to the last)

I keep hearing my life drawing teacher from way back saying: " If you get too confident with your drawing, try sketching with your other hand (to keep learning)."

That sounded funny at first, but it makes sense. What he meant was: don't show off with what you think you know, keep observing and improving instead.

I think if you know how to draw well,  you own something treasured. It shows that you put quality time into observing and trying to understand things.

And it doesn't matter if you are a pencil animator or if you work in CG, good drawing will help you to visualize so much better, and you will be ahead of the game.

In other words, you will know a bad pose from a good one. You will be able to say:

this hand looks awful, but that one looks great. And combined with your acting sensibilities: this is entertaining, that isn't!

This journey to become a good draughtsman is a lot of fun, but of course you never arrive. Hopefully you'll just keep on learning.

My five cents worth of wisdom for the day, here are a bunch of oooold drawings.

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