Penguins

After having seen the fabulous film "Saving Mr. Banks" I feel inclined to do a post on Mary Poppins' penguins. They were animated by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, Ollie did most of the introductory scenes, and Frank did the famous dance with Dick Van Dyke.

The photo shows the two animators acting as penguins in front of animation director Ham Luske ( who was a fantastic animator in the early days of Disney) and animation art director McLaren Stewart.

Milt Kahl helped to design these characters based on story sketches. As usual his drawings show very pleasing shapes and forms. He also deals with foreshortening issues, like the difficult facial front view.

Milt didn't do any animation with the penguins, he instead focused on the terrific fox during the hunting sequence. More on that in this previous post:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/07/mary-poppins-fox.html

Frank Thomas knew he needed to dig a little deeper as far as animatable penguin anatomy and range of motion. He also found beautiful graphic solutions for how the wings are attached to the body. Great observation of real penguin behavior! Just wonderful stuff!!

What a great way to squash and stretch a penguin's upper body in the small doodle on the right.

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Disney Leading Ladies

Here is a little background information on a few actresses who acted out scenes for the animators.

Though this article was published many years ago, it is fun to see faces next to the drawings. Everybody was cast perfectly for their individual roles, Kathryn Beaumont not only provided live action reference, but also voiced her characters beautifully.

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The Colonel

Storyman Bill Peet drew these sketches of The Colonel, an Old English sheepdog, from the 1961 movie 101 Dalmatians.

Most of the animation for this character was done by John Lounsbery, who must have been relieved to have gotten this assignment. After animating mostly serious and dramatic scenes for the previous film epic Sleeping Beauty, he again was given the opportunity to handle comic animation.

When you look at Lounsbery's career, it's his eccentric characters who are the most memorable. The alligators in Dance of the Hours, some of the Mice in Cinderella, the crocodile in Peter Pan and Tony & Joe in Lady and the Tramp are just a few highlights. 

Below are a few of his oversized thumbnail drawings for the scene when the Colonel, after realizing that Pongo and Perdita are close by, tries to meet them half way. "By jove, it can't be the Pongos!" The Colonel runs screen left over a frozen surface, and Lounsbery knows exactly how to play this scene for optimum comic effect.

Over the years John didn't get to develop his "own" characters very often in the way Frank & Ollie or Milt did. But the Colonel is one of his animated creations.

So much life in these drawings.

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One of my Days

In 1978 Wilhelm M. Busch published a small edition with a collection of drawings, depicting moments from one day of his life. Busch gets up in the morning, takes the bus to the Hamburg art school, where he teaches life drawing. In the afternoon he visits the circus to sketch animals.

He returns home, watches some TV with his wife before going to bed.

Busch had given his students this kind of assignment before to draw key moments from one day in their lives. Eventually he went through the exercise himself, and here are just a few illustrations from that effort.

What a fantastic idea for student homework! It teaches you how to analyze and draw what you do on a given day of your life. I encourage everybody to do the same thing, I know I will, as soon as I find some time. Great challenge!

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Disney Vis Dev II

Part 2 of classic Disney Vis Dev art begins with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and ends with The Rescuers. The films that followed were drawn by a new generation of animators, classic Disney ends right here in my opinion.

Mary Blair, the first lady of visual development, still dominated color and staging during the early 1950s. After that artists like Don DaGradi, Eyvind Earle, Walt Peregoy and Ken Anderson put their mark on the look of the films.

And there were politics. Mary Blair had been a favorite of Walt, to the dismay of several artists. Eyvind Earle was fed up with animators, who felt that his backgrounds out staged their characters. He left right after Sleeping Beauty. Ken Anderson and Peregoy disappointed Walt with their graphic visions of Dalmatians and Sword in the Stone. 

In those days it wasn't always easy to put forward your own creative efforts without offending the rest of the crew or the boss himself.

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Disney Vis Dev

The visual development artists that worked at Disney Studios over the years pioneered all kinds of different styles for characters as well as for environments. Sometimes their artistic vision made it intact into the final film, other times their work provided only a subtle influence. 

One thing is for certain, the range of expression was huge. What you see here are images that are realistic and tonal, others are graphic and flat. They all try to set a mood or illustrate a particular situation. Story people were involved in suggesting designs as well.

I thought it would be fun to show one….just one visual from each of the classic Disney films. Post one (of two) covers the features from Snow White, 1937,  to Mr Toad from 1949.

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