Marc Davis & Frank Thomas on Walt Disney, Acting Coach

Another excerpt from a UK TV show featuring the life of Walt Disney.

In this clip Marc Davis and Frank Thomas describe what an asset Walt was when it came to getting a hold of an animated character. 

I remember Ollie Johnston telling me how Walt acted out Baloo's entrance, dancing, finger snapping and singing. Next time you watch that sequence from The Jungle Book think about Walt Disney as the inspiration for the character.

If you want to know who Walt Disney really was, just listen to the artists who worked with him.

They are the ones who tell you the truth !!

More Disney Staging

Here are a few more staging studies I did a while ago. 

All of them fantastic examples of outstanding draughtsmanship with focused arrangements of shapes and lines. Milt Kahl drew most of them except for the last two images.

Madame Bonfamille is offering Frou Frou a sugar cube. 

There are plenty of lines which connect the two characters visually. Madame's reach is supported by the coat folds in her upper arm. And what beautiful hands, the open one, but also the one holding the package. Those bars from the coach ending at the horse's neck and the reigns guide you toward Frou Frou's head, which is tilted downward toward the hand.

A graphic masterpiece.

Robin Hood and a wolf composed in a dynamic triangle.

A lot of the line work points upward to the area where the swords make contact, but the characters' heads communicate back and forth. Robin's hat and the feather, his ear and his nose point to the wolf, and the wolf's ears and the lines in his hood revert back to Robin.

"You are too soffft!" 

Medusa wiggles Snoop's nose, and that's what Milt wants the audience too see clearly.

Medusa's arm seems to create a little detour toward the area of interest, but all other lines support the overall staging. Her neck, the flow of her hair and the direction of her nose. The back of Snoop's body connects with the temple of his eyeglasses which points to Madusa's face.

The King from the Island of Naboombu ellbows the Secretary Bird.

Plenty of lines lead to the characters' contact . Hysterical reaction on the bird.

Roger and Anita during a playful moment.

The drawing style is very shape oriented, but because there is great variety in the shapes' forms and sizes, nothing looks flat and awkward. It is almost like a carefully assembled mosaic with an end result full of rhythm. And what great profiles on both of their faces!

John Lounsbery animated this scene with Mim as a snake threatening Merlin as a mouse.

Snake bodies always give you an immediate, positive direction. Merlin's straight uprise pose contrasts the snake's  curviness. It says something about their personalities, too.

This is a lovely Ollie Johnston scene.

Baloo and Mowgli are having a great time in the water. Their body language signals a sort of explosion. All limbs are stretched outwards to emphasize a particular musical beat.

Bernard & Bianca

What a challenge this must have been. How do you design interesting looking mice for a new Disney animated feature, produced  in the mid seventies?

Over the years animation studios had used an endless variety of mouse characters, so to come up with new concepts for these rodents wasn't easy.

Newcomer and story artist Fred Lucky had spent some time developing The Rescuers as an animated film, and these are some of his design suggestions.

They might not show a lot of appeal yet, but at least they are different.

For more info on Fred Lucky go to this link:

http://jimhillmedia.com/columnists1/b/floyd_norman/archive/2007/06/12/toon-tuesday-remembering-fred-lucky-of-wdfa-s-story-department-1938-1999.aspx#.UZV87pVMj8s

Here is a look at how Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston approached these two characters.

Milt Kahl tried to incorporate some of Fred's ideas into his own design research.

Milt is definitely trying something new here, these sketches almost look like he drew them left handedly.

Proportions and volumes look  a bit more solid in these pages.

Just an awesome sketch, period!

Still a long nose, but chubbier than earlier versions. I do like this Bernard quite a bit.

The idea here is to treat the eyes like real mice, just large black dots.

It limits the range of expression somewhat, and tends to look kind of spooky.

Milt then applies what I call the Robin Hood formula, only the ears and the tail remind you that these are mice.

After the noses got shortened these versions were approved as final designs.

Frank Thomas explores early design concepts.

These pages show how Frank stages the situation in which Bernard and Bianca meet for the first time. Simple scribbles that reveal acting possibilities.

A few charming Thomas key drawings from an actual production scene.

Ollie Johnston tries out various proportions for anthropomorphic mice.

And this is his take based on Fred Lucky's sketches.

Then Ollie explores a concept that for some reason resembles Basil of Baker Street, a character that would make it to the screen quite a few years later.

Bianca in 1970ies outfits.

Ollie's chubby, long nosed version.

Again, these huge black pupils wouldn't have worked.

Bernard as he appears in the film. Beautiful solid sketches.

A rough production drawing.

It is interesting from a psychological point of view that people are freaking out when they see real mice, but ever since Mickey Mouse audiences don't seem to get enough of them when they are animated.

Three Tigers...

…by three different artists. 

The first one is by Heinrich Kley. I purchased it quite a few years ago during a visit to Munich.

My first impression of this piece was straight forward realism. But the more I studied it the more abstractions I found. Kley played strong horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines against each other. This is a very organized head study of the animal, volumes are simplified to a point where this almost becomes a caricature. I just love the design of the black stripes with its thick and thin lines.

There is a grid drawn over this oversized sketch, which almost certainly indicates that Kley did this as study for a large mural.

Fritz Hug's tiger also has a sketchy quality with typical splashes of paint going right over the image.

I like the fact that he corrects certain parts of the body, but you still see the original position of the rear leg, the elbow and the front left paw. A beautiful raw study, probably done at the zoo.

Liu Jiyou's illustration on rice paper was done at his studio.  Before painting he would come up with endless sketches in front of the animal until he felt confident enough to draw specific poses and compositions at home. The angle and perspective of the tiger's head is stunning.

Researching other artists' approaches to drawing and painting tigers has become part of my studies in preparation for my film "Mushka". 

James Bodrero

                                                                                          ©LIFE

James Bodrero (in the center of the photo) could draw horses.

And Walt Disney knew this, that's why he asked Bodrero to storyboard large sections of the Pastoral sequence in Fantasia. All that interaction with Bacchus and the Centaurs is his work.

Not much later Bodrero was chosen to join Walt and El Groupo on a trip through several South American States to study and sketch local culture and folklore.

Not much sketching going on in the photo above, but he seems to be enjoying a dance lesson which is being filmed by Walt Disney himself.

A stunning character design sketch depicting a couple of centaurettes and a faun.

This casual situation reminds me of the work of Heinrich Kley.

These drawings made during the South American trip leave me somewhat speechless.

They seem effortless, and yet everything from anatomy to the characters' outfits is so well observed and put on paper with sheer joy. Some of my favorite Disney drawings  ever! These horses….oh boy!!

Animator Frank Thomas becomes a subject in this Bodrero sketch.

Bodrero left Disney in the mid fourties, he enjoyed traveling and particularly fell in love with Spain.

Him and his wife had residences in San Francisco as well as Andalusia on the Costa de Sol. 

In 1965 he published a book titled "Long Ride to Granada", a sort of travel log through the South of Spain. Here are a few beautiful illustrations from the book.

James Bodrero in his later years.
He passed away in San Francisco in 1980 at the age of 79.