Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Here’s Hercules. The last two weeks I posted some wonderful watercolor sketches, preliminary art for The Hunchback of Notre Dame from the great cartoonist, Rowland B. Wilson. (see: Part 1, Part 2)

Here for the first of two parts are some drawings by Rowland for Hercules. This entry includes character sketches for characters that developed into something completely different, or didn’t end up in the film at all.

Once again, I must express my debt of gratitude to the generosity of Bill Peckmann for lending me the art to post here. Thank you, Bill.

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Megara

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Hades – version 1

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Hades – version 2

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Hades – version 3

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Death

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Pegasus

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Centaurs 1

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Centaurs 2

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Titans 1

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Titans 2

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Titans 3

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Titans 4

Next week, the last of these beautiful watercolor sketches.

- I’ve recently featured a number of illustration pieces by Wallace Tripp and have frequently expressed my feeling that he should have been desigining for animation. His style seems so ideal for the medium. Well, thank heavens, I’m apparently not the only one who thought so.

Bill Peckmann sends me a copy of a letter he received from Mr. Tripp which states that the accompanying artwork was designed for Richard Purdum’s British studio. The dragons are a delight.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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The following sketch and the character closeups are obviously
for something completely different:

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- Here are more of the stunning pre-production watercolors Rowland B. Wilson did for The Hunchback of Notre Dame while working at Disney. (Last week’s post can be found here.)

This group of images is labelled, “The Siege” and concerns itself with the climax of the film where the people storm Notre Dame Cathedral and Quasimodo pours oil on them. These pictures are so beautiful (and large) that I can’t help but split them up so you can see some of the closeup detail.

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(Click any image to enlarge.

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Now this is a Hunchback I could love.

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These two character designs look like they were influenced
by Richard Williams’ “Cobbler & the Thief.” Since Rowland worked
with Dick in London, it’s possible.

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Errol Le Cain by way of Rowland B. Wilson. Beautiful.

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At first I wasn’t sure which end was up on this image.
It might be correctly viewed counter-clockwise.
However, the label in the lower left should be the lower left.

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for the generous loan of this material.

Next week Hercules.

- This is the completion of the post I started yesterday. A large number of sketches by Marc Davis which he drew and painted for “The Pirates of the Caribbean” Disneyland exhibit were printed in a souvenir booklet which was originally distributed at the parks. Bill Peckman saved that original book and has shared these illustrations with me, and consequently with you. I’m a fan of Davis’ work and am pleased to present these. Thank you, Bill.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Marc Davis at his drawing table.

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A lot of photos of the actual ride are part of the article,
but I’ve stuck predominantly with Marc Davis’ illustrations.

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Marc Davis illustrated a “Pirates of the Caribbean” souvenir paperback book for Disneyland. Bill Peckmann, naturally, saved his copy of the book and has forwarded these illustrations from the book. I’m a fan of Davis’ work, so love sharing them with you.

Davis did quite a few illustrations for this ride and others of them can be found here and here.

More thanks to Bill Peckmann.

The wrap-around book cover.

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I still have another whole post of these drawings and will put the m up tomorrow.

- Recently, I posted a calendar by Wallace Tripp, and the response was strong. So, Bill Peckmann sent me his collection of greeting cards by Tripp, the earliest of which goes back to 1973, and I’m posting those here. (I’ll also have another calendar of his to post later in the week.)

Each and every card is a gem. I still say it’s a wonder that he didn’t work for an animation company designing characters. The guy was a brilliant draftsman, watercolorist and illustrator.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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This is the oldest of the cards.

By the way, take a look at the Tripp Family Archives site.

- Bill Peckmann has sent me an incredible cache of photostats. These are watercolor paintings Rowland B. Wilson did while working for Disney. There are two groups of paintings: one for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, one for Hercules.

These were all inspirational sketches, and they’re all extremely long. Consequently, I’m posting them in batches. The first comes from Hunchback, and I’ll post the full sized image, then break each down into a couple of parts so that you can appreciate the incredible detail Rowland did in these things.

I hope you enjoy them.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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More of the Hunchback paintings to come next week.

Many many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing these glorious images.

- Wallace Tripp‘s illustrations have gotten a bit of attention here, so Bill Peckmann followed up his other pieces with a row of book covers that Tripp illustrated between 1972 and 1999. (There are many other books not included here, but these are plenty to give an idea of the man’s scope and range.)

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for putting these all together.

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1973

1975

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1981
Front cover

Back cover

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1985
Front cover

Back cover

The guy sitting at the dest at the top of this page of
Marguerite is a self-caricature of Wallace Tripp.

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1999

- Last week I posted the first half of this book by Edward Lear of his Nonsense poems which was illustrated by Keith Ward. There’s not a lot known about Ward, however I did receive a nice email from Wilbert Plijnaar
which gave me a couple of links and some info. I’ll post that letter at the bottom of the post.

Here’s the rest of the book thanks to the gracious generosity of Bill Peckmann.

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The back inner illustration

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The book’s back cover.

Here’s that email, from Wilbert Plijnaar:

A few years back fellow story board artist Harry Sabin allowed me
to make copies of a book he had (then) recently purchased ,
illustrated by Keith Ward : “Reynard the Fox”

I was so impressed by the Disneyesq / Walt Kelly- ish, style I found it impossible to believe the artist wasn’t more well known in animation circles.
I showed copies on the Cartoon Retro – and Dutch comic maker blog (both gone) for more information. We found there are many illustrators named Keith Ward , who all have different styles.
Through intensive mouse clicking I was led to some advertising illustrations that looked to be from the same artist ( see below) , learned Ward was amongst other , responsible for the “Dick and Jane ” and “Black Stallion” Illustrations and died in Florida on March 23, 2000 .

Dutch/French comic artist Evert Geradts pointed out that the signature of a landscape painter with the same name was identical to the Keith Ward from Reynard the Fox.
http://www.stewartgalleries.com/paintings.htm
(In the mean time the gallery seems to have taken the paintings offline but maybe they still have an archive?)

Some of the Reynard scans I put on Imageshack still survive, as does one of the commercial illustrations:

If you would like to see the 4 or 5 missing illustrations I will gladly scan them again for you.

Doing a renewed Google search after reading your blog, led me to a Leif Peng’s blog post from 2007 and a more recent one, with many examples and info about Ward.
http://todaysinspiration.blogspot.com/2007/10/keith-ward-1906-2000.html
and
http://todaysinspiration.blogspot.com/2009/06/keith-wards-texaco-fire-chief-pups.html

other links:
http://www.askart.com/askart/w/keith_ward/keith_ward.aspx
http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-elsie-the-cow-cook-book-1952-ill-by-keith

Thanks to Wilbert.

- Wallace Tripp is one of those illustrators whose work seemed ready for animation. Everything he drew seemed designed and ready for animators to pick up their pencils. His illustrations for Amelia Bedilia are certainly part of the great success of that book series.

Bill Peckmann has saved this calendar from 1980 and sent it to me. It’s a great example of the work of Tripp, and I don’t mind sharing it. Great drawings, beautiful watercolors. Near perfect illustrations.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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A note of thanks, yet again, to Bill Peckmann for sharing and reminding me of Wallace Tripp’s great work.