"Up You Go!"

These are three stages in the making of a little scene from Jungle Book.

The story sketch is by Bill Peet, Bagheera is asking Mowgli to get up this tree to spend the night.

Milt Kahl animated both characters, and you can see how Peet's pose of the panther was an inspiration to Milt. The final animation shows Mowgli entering the scene in profile instead of from the foreground. Also, Mowgli's attention is still with Bagheera. 

It takes a few more scenes before he lifts his head, in a close up, to examine the enormous tree in disbelief.

Next time you watch the film, look at the animation frame by frame. Mowgli's walk as well as Bagheera's leap into the scene are beautiful, full of weight.

I don't know who painted the background, but I think that the whole night time sequence looks stunning.

Read More

"I wanna stay in the Jungle"

Here are a few rough key drawings from a Milt Kahl scene with Mowgli from The Jungle Book. The man cub is not very pleased with Bagheera, who wants to take the boy to the man village.

I just love Milt's proportions in Mowgli's design. Complex but simplified anatomy.

Look at his neck line going into his jaw on the first drawing. Normally you would expect a break there to show the jaw line going toward the ear. But this looks so much simpler and leads your eye to his face, and also to his open hand. 

That profile so appealing with the over hanging upper lip.

The acting is great, too. A little anticipation before he fully sits down, then letting one leg dangling.

As usual, beautiful stuff from Mr Kahl.

Blog reader Breana Melvin created a pencil test with these drawings. It looks great. Check it out:

http://animationtidbits.tumblr.com/post/29638095521/jungle-book-milt-khal

Woolie Reitherman directing his son Bruce, who provided most of the dialogue for Mowgli.

Read More

The Witches of Morva

A striking concept sketch of the three witches for "The Black Cauldron" by Tim Burton.

The idea of three characters moving as one is fascinating, it is perfect for animation and adds a surreal quality to these crazy ladies.

Unfortunately the final designs in the film don't utilize Tim's vision, and Orddu, Orwen and Orgoch ended up looking like average witches.

I can't help imagining what I would do today with Tim's concept in animation. 

I think I would go to town and have a ton of fun.

Read More

Ollie stages Prince John and Sir Hiss

These lovely sketches by Ollie Johnston show scene continuity and staging for the introduction of Prince John and Sir Hiss in the film "Robin Hood". They are based on original storyboards, which were done by artists like Ken Anderson, Vance Gerry and Dave Michener among others.

But before Don Griffith and his layout team would start working on the the background scenery, Ollie took a last look at the story sketches, intending to improve and refine the continuity and bring out  the characters' personality. 

My generation of animators got involved in this stage of production as a group. 

We had long meetings in which storyboards were scrutinized. Present were the directors, key layout and story people and the supervising animators. Everybody was encouraged to come up with ideas that would plus what we saw in the storyboards. After all changes and improvements were made, so called "Work Books" were printed out as a final guide to the animators, layout and background artists.

If you compare Ollie's sketches to the final film, you'll find out that he pretty much stuck with what he had planned out in his "Work Book" pages.

Read More

Signed Books

Soon after I started working for Disney, Frank & Ollie published their first book The Illusion of Life.

I purchased a copy of it during a trip to San Francisco on my way to see Milt Kahl. We met up in Sauselito at the Spinnaker restaurant. The photo shows Milt's wife Julie discovering her husband's drawings of Pinocchio on page 221.

Back at the studio I had the book signed by other Disney legends, many of them were still working there. Quite the lineup of signatures. Of course Woolie Reitherman's comment has been very meanimgfulto me. 

This page is from Christopher Finch's epic book The Art of Walt Disney from 1973.

I purchased this copy from a previous Disney background painter. She had it signed by many Disney artists who were around at that time.

I want to share with you page 332 because the comments by Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl are pretty funny. But they also show how under appreciated these two animation superstars felt.

Read More

The Prosecutor

…in the Mr. Toad section from the feature "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" was animated by Ollie Johnston. Here he had the chance to explore a villain type character after having animated mostly endearing protagonists. Ollie gave the Prosecutor sharp timing and interesting theatrical gestures.
Definitely a high point in Johnston animation.

The following drawings are by Milt Kahl. I am guessing that Milt was helping out with design issues and that he went over some of Ollie's work. There is also a possibility that  Milt might have lobbied for this character's assignment, as he would do later with Captain Hook, though unsuccessfully.

In any case, these are very strong drawings, and we have come to expect that from Milt. Even the back view with it's ominous shape has personality. This stuff is still so inspiring!

For this film Milt animated scenes with MacBadger, Rat and Mole. I will post some of those roughs soon.

Read More

Tytla's Doc

I found these beautiful animation drawings printed in a vintage Disney Animation publication.

They are the work of the "über" talented Bill Tytla. 

Boy, these were done at a time, when moving the character's masses, not lines, was on the animators minds. That's why this squash and stretch feels so dimensional and believable. During this "take" the whole arc of Doc's body is being reversed, his head moves backwards while his belly comes forward.

Tytla drew pretty rough when he got into a character's personality. Strong gut feelings on paper. That meant that his clean up assistant had his work cut out for himself, as you can see in the last image.

There are all kinds of refinements going on here, as well as a few alterations. Fingers needed to be more detailed, the edge of the beard was lowered to avoid tangents with the hands, and even the overall weight was placed on Doc's left leg by adding an s-curve to his belt line.

This assistant knew what he was doing, because he had to keep track of the movement of these changes. Way back these great guys really had to know how to draw on model as well as how to animate.

A lot of unsung heroes, who didn't get screen credit for their important contributions to the Disney Classics.

Read More