Category ArchiveAnimation
Animation &Animation Artifacts &Disney 21 Dec 2011 07:26 am
Mickey and the Shadows – 4
- We end the animation of the Shadows in this scene where Mickey conquers the undead, the brooms. The violent attack on the broom that he brought to life is done completely in shadows.
We have left Mickey walking out of the backroom and into the light. That will come next week.
The scene was animated by Riley Thompson with Harvey Toombs assisting. The sequence director was James Algar.
To see the last three parts of the shadows go to: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
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The following QT incorporates all the drawings from this post
and the two earlier shadow posts.
All posts will be combined in the final piece.
All drawings were exposed per the Exposure Sheets.
this scene comes in at 5’30″
Animation &Animation Artifacts 14 Dec 2011 07:03 am
Mickey and the Shadows – 3
Here is the next part of the violent shadows in the scene from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Mickey has to put a stop to the broom before it floods the Sorcerer’s workroom.
The scene was animated by Riley Thompson with Harvey Toombs assisting. The sequence director was James Algar.
To see the last two parts of the shadow go to: Part 1, Part 2
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The following QT incorporates all the drawings from this post
and the two earlier shadow posts.
All posts will be combined in the final piece.
All drawings were exposed per the Exposure Sheets.
this scene comes in at 5’30″
Animation &Animation Artifacts &Disney 07 Dec 2011 07:21 am
Mickey and the Shadows – 2
- This is the fifth post of this scene, and the second that concentrates on the shadows. There are more where this comes from, and the post will continue with more parts. There are a lot of drawings to this scene (almost all on ones.)
However the scene’s a beauty. I think the animation by Riley Thomson recalls some of the earlier gutsy cartoon animation from the late Silly Symphonies. Mickey’s shadow moves several times from the right side to the left as he hacks away at the brooms. Whenever he walks, there’s always planned slippage in the movement. And the extremes are bold for a Disney cartoon. In a way, it brings Mickey back to his roots despite the high-minded subject matter of this film.
Harvey Toombs did the assisting. The sequence director was James Algar.
We start off this scene with the last drawing from the last post (Shadows Part 1):
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The following QT incorporates all the drawings from this post and the last.
All previous posts will be combined in the final piece.
All drawings were exposed per the Exposure Sheets.
Action Analysis &Animation &Animation Artifacts &Disney 30 Nov 2011 06:36 am
Mickey and the Shadows – 1
- Having seen the entirety of Mickey chasing the broom into the adjoining room, we now take up the shadows that show us what Mickey does in there. Again there are many drawings (it’s all on ones) so this is the first part. (See past posts here.)
It’s animated by Riley Thompson with Harvey Toombs assisting. The sequence director was James Algar.
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The following QT incorporates all the drawings from this post
All previous posts will be combined in the final piece.
All drawings were exposed per the Exposure Sheets.
Animation &Animation Artifacts &Disney 23 Nov 2011 05:02 am
Mickey and the Brooms – 4
- I should have started with this opening run of the broom which Mickey follows. So, this weeks entry has only a few drawings, but it’s an introduction to the broom that’ll be splinters in a few seconds.
The scene was animated by
Riley Thomson with an assist from Harvey Toombs.
The sequence was directed by Jim Algar.
This is production #2004- Seq. 7 – Scene 53. It runs 28 ft. 3 frs.
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The following QT incorporates all the drawings from this post
as well as the previous posts, Part 1 & Part 2, Part 3.
All drawings were exposed per the Exposure Sheets.
Action Analysis &Animation &Animation Artifacts &Disney 16 Nov 2011 07:14 am
Mickey and the Brooms – 3
- This is the third part of the famous scene from Fantasia wherein Mickey Mouse finally kills off the non-stop broom. He axes it into pieces. This post concludes all the drawings of Mickey; from here on out we have Mickey’s shadow doing the dirty work.
The scene was animated by
Riley Thomson with an assist from Harvey Toombs.
The sequence was directed by Jim Algar.
This is production #2004- Seq. 7 – Scene 53. It runs 28 ft. 3 frs.
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The following QT incorporates all the drawings from this post
as well as the previous posts, Part 1 & Part 2.
All drawings were exposed per the Exposure Sheets.
Animation &Animation Artifacts &Disney 02 Nov 2011 07:54 am
Mickey and the Brooms – 1
- I’ve got a very long scene to share with you, and I’m busy. There are over 500 drawings involved – many are the shadows of Mickey’s chopping of the brooms. So this scene is going to go up in many parts. I also have the exposure sheets (which are complicated) and I’ll post those when I reach a good breaking point.
The scene is beautifully animated by Riley Thompson with assistant animation from Harvey Toombs. Here’s Mickey entering the scene and skidding to a stop outside the door.
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The following QT utilizes all the drawings displayed above.
as exposed on the X-sheets. Most are on ones. Moving
into and out of short holds drawings are on twos.
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Animation &Animation Artifacts &commercial animation 26 Oct 2011 05:58 am
Lu Guarnier’s Alphabits
- Vinnie Cafarelli of Buzzco gave me these drawings by Lu Guarnier from an animated Alpha-bits commercial that Lu animated. Vince said that Lu gave him that scene to clean up and inbetween late one Friday afternoon and needed it for Monday. The spot features a caricature of comedian, Jack E. Leonard, who did the voice, and some of the actions were part of Leonard’s shtick in his comedy routine. They ran a number of these ads in the ’60s with the same two characters.
Lu always worked on the rough side, but his animation was usually dependably good. He started with Warner Bros in the 30s as an inbetweener, then assistant to Bob Clampett. After the Signal Corps, where he was stationed in NY at the Astoria Studios, he moved permanently to NY and became a solid part of the commercial scene. He was a mainstay at the UPA studio in NY, the only one to have a cubicle with a window. As a result, there were many in-house gags done about him. In the past, I’ve drawings from his work on Sendak‘s Really Rosie.
When I knew him, Lu made his living as a freelance animator with no permanent roots at any one studio. He would go from job to job, and many of them were from studios in LA. He had his contacts well honed. This was what most animators in NY did back then. Lu did quite a bit of work at the Hubley Studio, while I was there, and I assisted most all of his scenes during that period (1972-1977.)
This scene was scanned by Rick Broas at Buzzco. Unfortunately, the pegs were dropped so that the drawings could be scanned in registration. Many thanks to Candy Kugel for shepherding the art and scans to me and to Vinnie Cafarelli for the gift. Lu Guarnier worked on top pegs most of the time. Here he used Oxberry pegs. This is the scene from his Alpha-bits job:
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The following QT utilizes all the drawings displayed above.
On ones, except where there’s a missing drawing -
this is made up by adding one frame to the preceding drawing.
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You can see another spot with these same characters
in the following commercial for Alpha-bits.
Animation &Animation Artifacts &Tissa David 19 Oct 2011 05:58 am
Titania and Bottom – recap
Having revisited a number of Hubley films recently, I’ve grown more attached to some of the Tissa David works, and having spent a few hours with Tissa recently, I thought I should look again at her work on The Midsummer Night’s Dream, a film which has rarely been seen but is worth looking at.
- I’ve posted a number of pieces about Tissa David‘s work on The Midsummer Night’s Dream. (see them here.) This was a film she directed and animated with three other people: Kalman Kozelka photographed, xeroxed the cels and coordinated it, Ida Kozelka-Mocsary color styled it and did most of the painting, and Richard Fehsl did the Bg designs and animated many of those Bgs.
The film aired on the BBC in 1983 and was released on VHS by Goodtimes Video
I’d previously posted a couple of the cels from a scene, and here I’m posting all the drawings. I do think the film looks better in pencil test, but then I’m partial to Tissa’s beautiful drawing style. Here, again, are those cels:
Titania catches Bottom in her arms.
Three cels from a sequence.
And Here are those drawings:
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Titania Dances with Bottom
I took a guess at the timing of this putting the
action on three’s and adding two short holds.
All drawings from this scene (both posts) are included in the QT.
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.
Animation &Commentary &Frame Grabs 17 Oct 2011 06:57 am
Lantz and Me – recap
In scouting around the internet, I came back to Thad Komorwoski ‘s great piece on Ace In The Hole. It was nice to see these drawings again, and it pushed me back to my own post on the film. I thought I’d bring some attention to that by reposting it, today.
- Like many others, reading the Roger Armstrong reminiscence on Mike Barrier‘s site really got me into the Walter Lantz mood.
I first went back to Mike’s book, The Hollywood Cartoon, and read what info he had about Lantz. After a bit of reading there, I went to look at some of the old Woody Woodpecker shows – I have that collection from Columbia House that came out years ago which includes about three half hour shows per DVD, 10 DVDs, and some beautiful prints.
Then I reread one of my all time favorite animation books, The Walter Lantz Story by Joe Adamson. This isn’t a terribly large book, but it sure is packed with a lot of first-rate information.
As an owner of my own animation company I get a real charge in reading about the ups and downs Lantz had to go through, financially, to keep his company afloat. In one chapter, Universal dropped him, and he rebuilt, financing a couple of films with the help of a few animators. Then he went back to Univeral and sold the films to them with a brand new deal. It took enormous entrepreneurial strength believing in what he did and going forward with everything on the line.
It’s a great book, and Joe Adamson should be proud of the effort. I also encourage you all to read it. (If only there were a similar book about Paul Terry.)
I got to meet Lantz a couple of times in his late years. One was at Grim Natwick’s 100th birthday. Too bad Walter didn’t sit for the group photo; it would’ve added something to the collected group of animation veterans.
The group photo with ID’s alongside this picture.
(Click to enlarge.)
Another event in LA was the Walter Lantz Conference on Animation in which a number of speakers spoke and films were screened. Lantz was everywhere in those few days. It was great.
However, my most memorable meeting came thanks to John Canemaker. John had interviewed and met with Lantz several times during a group of meetings Walter and Gracie were having in New York in the 70s. There was, if I remember correctly, a special screening of their films at which they would talk. Since I was going there, John asked if I wanted to meet up with him and ride to the event with Walter and Gracie in their limousine. It was a treat to meet them one-on-one and to have a chance to share a few words. I have to say he was one of the most kind people I’ve run across, who gave me plenty of chance to talk. It was one of those standout moments in my life.
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- Back in the day, when I was just a teenager, there was very little in the way of media, as there is today. If you were desperate to become an animator, there weren’t many directions to turn. You had what was on the four or five tv channels that existed and there was the library..
TV offered the Walt Disney show, which two out of four Wednesdays (which eventually moved to Sundays) each month, they’d touch on “Fantasyland”, and you could watch some Disney cartoons – usually Donald and Chip &
Dale, or there was the Woody Woodpecker show, during which Walter Lantz would talk for four or five minutes about some aspect of animation.
For all those other hours of the day when you wanted animation you had to make do with what you could create for yourself.
At the age of 11, I took a part time job for a pharmacist delivering drugs to his clientele.
I lived off the tips that were offered, and I saved my money until I had enough to buy a used movie camera.
The trek into downtown Manhattan was a big one for an eleven year old child, but I loved it. I went by myself to Peerless camera store near Grand Central Station. (It later merged with Willoughby to become Peerless-Willoughby; then it went back to just being Willoughby.)
That store, I quickly learned had a large section devoted to films for the 8mm crowd. Lots of Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang and Woody Woodpecker cartoons. Once I had the camera, I saved for a cheap projector and eventually bought some 8mm cartoons.
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Independence. Now, I didn’t have to wait to see them on TV, I could project them myself whenever I wanted. Even better, I jiggered the projector to maneuver the framing device which allowed me to see one frame of the film
at a time, so that I could advance the frames one at a time. I could study animation.
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I know, I know. I’m describing the stone ages. Today all you have to do is get the DVD (which is incredibly cheap compared to the cost of those old 8mm films) and watch it one frame at a time or any other way you want. And every film is available. If you don’t have it just join Netflix and rent it. Your library is always open and growing.
Yes, Peerless had a large 8mm film division, so you could buy the latest Castle film edition of some Woody Woodpecker cartoon, or you could find many of Ub Iwerks’ films. I had a collection of these. Ub Iwerks was my guy. Everything I’d read about him (in the few books available) got me excited about animation. Actually, Jack and the Beanstalk and Sinbad the Sailor were the first films I’d bought and watch endlessly over and over frame by frame.
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In short time, I knew every frame of Jack and the Beanstalk backwards and forwards. I didn’t realize that it was Grim Natwick who had animated (and directed the animation) on a good part of the film. Meeting Natwick years later, I think I surprised him by saying as much. He just moved on to another subject, appropriately enough.
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In some very real way, I learned animation from that film and several others that I bought in those primitive years of my career. Before I knew principles of drawing, I’d been able to figure out principles of animation. I’d had the Preston Blair book, and I had the Tips on Animation from the Disneyland Corner. I just measured what they said about basic rules and watched – frame by frame – how these rules were executed by the Iwerks’ animators. The rest was up to me to figure out, and I was able to do that.
Eventually I bought a Woody Woodpecker cartoon. I was reluctant because so many of them were the very limited films done in the early 60′s – Ma and Pa Beary etc. It took a while to figure out that Ace in the Hole was a wartime movie and the animation would be a bit better. It was also the Woody that I liked – just a bit crazy. So I sprang for it and swallowed that film’s every frame for years.
I’m not sure who George Dane is, (he seems to have spent years at Lantz before working years at H&B and Filmation) but I studied and analyzed his animation on this film closely and carefully.
The work reminded me of some of the animation done for Columbia in the early 40′s. It had that same mushiness while at the same time not breaking any of the rules. Regardless, he knew what he was doing, and I had a lot to learn from him. And I did.
Things keep changing, media keeps growing. I’m glad I had to fight to get to see any of those old 8mm shorts back in the early years. When I bought my first vhs copy of a Disney feature, it took a while to grasp the fact that I could see every frame of it whenever I wanted. In bygone years, I could only see the rejects that TV didn’t want. I wanted to study Tytla and Thomas and Natwick and Kahl. Instead, I studied George Dane. And you know what, it was pretty damn OK. I learned enough that I knew a lot when I started in the business.
I just jumped in and was animating for John Hubley within days of getting that first job. (It helps that it was an open studio like Hubley’s where the individual artist could do anything, as long as he kept his head above water. In most studios there’s a rigidity that keeps you in your classified job.) In fact by then, I was more interested in Art Direction and Direction than I was in animation, but that’s another post.
If you want to learn from the masters, just pop in a DVD and watch it frame-by-frame. If you don’t get a charge out of it, you might begin to wonder if you’re really in the right business. After all these years, I still get the thrill, and I imagine I always will – even from watching Ace in the Hole AGAIN.
