Tease 4

One of Madame Mim's best acting moments, and one of my favorite Frank Thomas scenes.
The witch is setting the rules for the wizard's duel against Merlin: "(Rule one: no mineral or vegetable!) Only animal. Rule two: No make believe things like, oh...pink dragons and stuff. Now..."
Quite a while ago rough drawings from this scene were offered for sale all over the place. It took me years to collect most of the important ones, which can all be seen in sequence in my upcoming book on Disney's Nine Old Men.
This scene showcases yet again Frank's virtuosity as an actor. Mim first gets into a thinking pose, as she dreams up the next rule. Wild gesturing follows, emphasizing the "outrageous" idea of turning into a pink dragon.
This is the kind of work that still awes me and inspires me.

More Liu Jiyou

These stunning paintings appear in a book on Chinese painters, which I recently purchased.
Beautiful brushwork and gorgeous watercolor textures. Liu Jiyou studied Western painting and incorporated its realism into his own work. His art is bold and delicate at the same time.
How about an animated film in this style? Now that would be something!!

More on Liu Jiyou's art here in these previous posts:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/08/liu-jiyou.html

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/11/liu-jiyou-2.html

Tease 3

I will be discussing this Maleficent scene by Marc Davis in my upcoming book The Nine Old Men.

Most key drawings will be shown in sequence. It is interesting to see how rough this scene is drawn, compared to Marc's drawing approach in his earlier work on the character, which is very clean and tied down. My guess is that by this time in production his clean up crew had become very familiar with the character, allowing Marc to draw loose and get through his scenes quicker.

Evil power combined with sophisticated elegance!

Jungle Book Layout/Background II

In this photo Disney background artists Al Dempster, Bill Layne and Art Riley are examining character color model cels and background paintings for The Jungle Book.
You can see that early edgier work by Walt Peregoy has given way to a more realistic, romantic interpretation of the Indian Jungle. I believe at this stage of production Baloo was painted as a brown bear, before Walt Disney asked for a different color (there had been plenty of brown bears in Disney films before.) Since Walt was no fan of the Xerox line, particularly in the backgrounds, he requested a less graphic and a more painterly approach toward the film's art direction.

A B&W still from the title sequence. Fantastic use of light.

Mowgli  walks through this setting  after parting ways with Bagheera, the panther.

It's interesting to see that the painters found it necessary to add black contours to background elements that would be in contact with a character. Bagheera walks over this branch, and since his outlines are black Xerox, character and background become a little more unified.

I've always liked the color mood in this scene by Ollie Johnston. Look at how Mowgli's red shorts pop in front of the lush green tones.
A German journalist once told me that part of the reason why Jungle Book was his favorite animated film was the fact that you spend over an hour in a richly painted exotic jungle. Very easy on the eyes.

Jungle Book Layout/Background

This has always been fascinating to me: The relationship between Disney layouts and final backgrounds. It is interesting to see what the background painter changed from working with the layout. For example, the layout above from The Jungle Book suggests a dark, cloudy sky, a storm might be approaching. The BG shows sunlight, mid day.

Comparing the two, I would say that I prefer the dark foreground level of vines and branches in the layout. The highlights in the final painting compromise the depth of field.

I wonder how much Disney's layout and background artists used to argue over color, contrast, light etc. 

Tease 2

This gorgeous Merryweather scene by Frank Thomas will be part of my book on The Nine Old Men. The most important key drawings will be shown in sequence.

Louis Prima

What a great photo montage with King Louie next to jazz musician and trumpeter extraordinaire Louis Prima, who also voiced the character. The Sherman brothers wrote the signature song "I wanna be like you!", and Richard Sherman still raves about Prima's vocal energy and improvisational quality he brought to the character and the song. The "scat dialogue" between him and Phil Harris as Baloo was Prima's idea.
If I would look at a concept like this one today, mixing American Jazz with (elements of) Kipling's Jungle Book, I would probably call it a bad idea. But boy...it works like gangbusters!

Hilarious concept sketches by Ken Anderson and a cel from a Frank Thomas scene.

Milt Kahl's early stunning animation. Yet Walt Disney asked for slightly larger eyes and more hair on the top of the character's head. Those changes were made by Milt's assistant Dave Michener.

A clean up model sheet of Louie's sidekick Flunkey, beautifully animated by Frank Thomas.

More on King Louie here:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/03/king-louie.html