Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Walt and Ludwig


As a kid I've always loved TV shows in which Walt appeared alongside this befuddled character, Professor Ludwig van Drake. With Paul Frees' voice work and terrific animation by some of Disney's best artists, Ludwig discussed a variety of topics such as education and how color television works.
Two shows from 1961 stand out to me, An Adventure in Color and Kids is Kids. I think that Milt Kahl and Frank Thomas had the best handle on the character, their scenes are alive and very entertaining.


For more on Ludwig van Drake, go to this previous post:


Friday, April 3, 2015

Queen/Witch


Joe Grant sure knew how to infuse the right amount of evil when he designed Snow White's Queen and Witch characters. His drawings were hardly changed at all for the film, I sure love all that dramatic black. (I remember having to argue to include the color black in the design for Jafar. Early versions showed him in fifty shades of red. Really, red only)
I love all of these sketches, they are graphically sound and scary in a groundbreaking way.








This scene was animated by a very young John Lounsbery.

Quick Mushka update:
Thanks again to everybody for your interest in the project. I started to hire only a few people, but as production continues, I will need more help. Please, keep your contacts in the comment section, so I can revisit portfolios and reels as time goes by.
The internship program will happen in connection with CTN, I will have more on that soon.
I apologize, but artists need to be local.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Sir Giles



I've always loved Sir Giles as a personality from the 1941 film The Reluctant Dragon.
Skinny characters like him or Ichabod Crane have this wonderful gangly, lanky quality in their movements. When I look at the strong simplicity of Sir Giles' design, I think he would be a great character for any young animator to experiment with. His head is made up of two main masses, the cranium, and the very flexible mouth/jaw configuration. Squash and Stretch galore!

Fred Moore did some of his key scenes. I have no idea why somebody colored this rough key drawing...but it sure looks pretty! Joe Grant worked on the story for this short, and these drawings kind of resemble him.

Some of these sketches, if not all of them were offered at Howard Lowery's auctions, and I wished I had bid on them. They are stunning!! Long live Fred Moore!