Blabbing On Arts and Culture!

Happy Birthday to me

2011-12-02T08:20:00.000-08:00

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is! Just thought I'd put that out there for anyone who's interested. Now that I'm 19, I can legally drink alcohol in bars!

100 Years - Ray Patterson! (Belated)

2011-11-25T17:37:00.000-08:00

by Steven Hartley.

On the November 23rd, it would be exactly 100 years since Ray Patterson was born, he died in 2001 on December 30th and could've lived another 10 years to celebrate. I am going to make a tribute about Ray Patterson with his work on animation that he worked on, I'll include some personal information on Ray, and also some animation scenes that he animated on through my knowledge..

Here is a picture of Ray Patterson. Probably taken around the 1930's at some dress-party.

Raymond Shepard Patterson was born on November 23, 1911 in the Los Angeles County to the parents of Searles William Patterson (7/29/1882-3/29/1960) and Marlon Leslie Shepard (10/16/1886-1/9/1976). He had two brothers, one older named Donald W. Patterson (born 26 December 1909 in Illinois), you guessed it - it's animator Don Patterson who later became a famous animator for Disney, Walter Lantz and Hanna-Barbera.

His first animation career started at the Charles Mintz Studios in 1929 when he was only 18. He stayed at the Mintz Studios for roughly eight or nine years, where he worked as an inbetweener and ink and painter. Eventually he became an animator and character designer. Below are some drawings that Ray did at the Mintz studios (not mine, but courtesy of the ASIFA-Hollywood Archives site):

At around 1938, he then left the Mintz Studios, where he finally got a job as an animator at the Walt Disney Studios where he was working on features like Fantasia and Dumbo where he got screen credit in both those films. He arrived in roughly 1939, and his brother Don Patterson must've been around at Disney a year earlier, when he would be busy working on Pinocchio animating cuckoo clocks, and Pinocchio and Gepetto in the raft. He didn't animate very much at Disney, and he certainly wasn't there for very long at all, but he has contributed to some animated scenes. He seemed to have paired up with Grant Simmons at Disney, (they later became partners years later). Ray animated some scenes of the elephants in the "Dance of the Hours" section in Fantasia here is the sequence to find his only scenes.

He also worked on a Donald Duck cartoon called Truant Officer Donald and there is a scene of what he animates:

Here Ray Patterson animates on the 0:56 mark up to the 1:49 mark.

Here, on Dumbo - Ray contributed to the film with some great animation. His most notable animation on that film was on the clowns in the fire brigade act. Skip to the act where you see animation of clowns in the fire brigade performance. Ray did a lot of work on that sequence, Grant Simmons worked on that, too. Ray Patterson's scenes there includes the introduction scenes of the clowns in the fire engine and they all scramble in panic, and the small clown climbing up a tiny ladder and trips. One of his greater scenes in that sequence, is the clown up a ladder and roasting a sausage by a flaming fire. He did more animation on the clowns later on. His animation was identical to his MGM animation, and he was just a cartoony animator in the Disney films, when usually it was all personality and emotions.

Around that time, Ray Patterson was married in 1940 to a lady named Antoinette (surname unknown), they were married in 1940, but unfortunately they were divorced in 1942 after only two years. He did eventually remarry in 1946 to a June Walker (?) the marriage lasted longer, but only for about six years. He at least had a daughter named Kim, but date is unknown.

There is an interesting part about Ray Patterson in a Walt's People - Volume 9 in a Art Scott interview where during Ray's time at Disney, their wives would be working late at the ink and paint department working on Bambi and that Ray and Art would play badminton - and both of them even played a match against Walt Disney and Ham Luske. Art said about Ray as a very skilled badminton player. Here is a snippet on what Artie said about Patterson:

Ray Patterson had been an animator there, at the old Mintz Studio. Another one from that group that was there was Fred Abrams [Is that Ray Abrams who worked for Tex Avery?] He's an animator here. And Hal Ambro, who was an inbetweener. He and I were inbetweeners together. And he became assistant there, and then we went on to Disney's together. And Ray went on to Disney. He and I were at Disney together.

In fact, one time when we were there we were still at the old Hyperion studio, and he and I used to play badminton a lot together. We were over waiting for our wives, because our wives were working in the Painting Department, so they were working late because they were finishing Bambi or something...Anyway, they were working late, So we went on a soundstage to play badminton. He and I were hitting the bird back and forth, and who should walk in but Walt Disney. Of course, we were a couple of new guys there and we were using this stage. It was Walt and Ham Luske and their wives, and they were there for an evening of badminton, and here these two clods are out there...(laughs).

So Walt, being magnanimous with this couple of guys there, let their wives sit out, and said, "Why don't you join us?" So the wives watched while Ray and I played Ham Luske and Walt Disney. Not because I was any good, because I was hardly a player at all, but Ray was excellent, Ray was a fantastic player. And we ripped them. Ray, the day after he goes, "Do you think we ought to have done that?"

The story finishes with Walt Disney and Ham Luske beating them at the badminton, but Ray was close to beating them. The text is a courtesy from Didier Ghez, and John Culhane's interview in Walt's People - Volume 9.

Ray's stint at Disney only lasted about two years, and he was involved in the Disney animator's strike in 1941, and he was one of the many animators who were laid off. Ray later found other animation jobs, he spent roughly a year at Screen Gems in 1942, and finally he moved to MGM in 1943 where he would remain there for roughly a decade working on many Tom and Jerry cartoons for Hanna-Barbera, and he has contributed to so many great animation there which I will go through and I will identify some of his scenes.

Ray's animation back around 1943-1947 is quite easy to identify, and he had a lot of details in his scenes. He was particularly great for acting scenes. He always gave Tom freckles and an upper lip, and he gave Ray a pouty lip as his trademark that no animator had ever done before. Although, when it came to movement, his animation was rather stiff compared to Ken Muse, Irv Spence or Pete Burness - but it really worked and did the job well. He gave his facial expressions for the character (if it was smiling) in a rather gummy and funny way - it wasn't as appealing as Ken Muse would handle it, but Ray did make the facial expressions look very cartoonie and very funny, but Ray's facial expressions also had character, and he looked like Ray used a lot of caricature on Tom. He wasn't very loose in the early forties, but after his year stay at England, he arrived back in 1948 and his animation became looser, and made a big change. Here, I will show you some scenes by Ray Patterson that are worth studying and memorable:

Here in Mouse Trouble Ray animates the first traps that Tom plots to try and get Jerry by using different booby traps. He animates from the 1:00 mark and continues up to 1:58, and that's all he animated on. In the mousetrap scene, he gives Jerry weight when he uses much of his strength to get the piece of cheese off, and managed to without even being snapped. Tom's eyes widen (a great 'take' by Ray) and he touches his fingers, in which he is pinched from the mousetrap - that is just bad luck for Tom.

In the hilarious Tom and Jerry cartoon Flirty Birdy (animated by Ken Muse, Irv Spence and Ray Patterson), Ray did manage to get some great scenes on his own. He animated the opening scenes of which Tom picks pieces of cheese all lined up, as a booby trap so Jerry gets caught in a sandwich. Here in this mark, Ray handles 0:25-0:53 including the scene where Tom's teeth crash together and fall apart - which is priceless. Ray Patterson comes back later on animating 3:42 and up to 4:40. 3:42 with the buzzard's take on Tom's eyelash seducing him, is just hilarious timing and a hilarious expression. Ray went very extreme with that pose and it works very well - I don't think this could've been done better, and the casting was very good. Ken Muse was known for his on-model type-animation (rather Disney looking), and Irv Spence was great for his wacky scenes in which there was little detail in the scenes.

Here, Ray Patterson animates the entire opening of the classic Quiet Please and he does some outstanding animation here. The opening is just wonderful animation (probably my favorite Patterson animation), and it involves Spike the bulldog trying to take a nap while sleeping, but he gets rather disturbed in which Tom is trying to hit Jerry with a frying pan, but hits Spike by mistake and runs off. Spike then has a gesture on his face "Oh well", and continues sleeping - but is disturbed again with gun sounds, and Tom uses his head as a base to aim his gun to Jerry. Spike gets even more annoyed, and yet again hears more sounds with Tom holding an axe and trying to chop Jerry. Luckily, Tom is holding the axe the wrong way and he keeps hitting Spike in the axe. You can tell on the look of Spike's face that he is going to murder Tom any second, until he finally stands up and gives Tom a yelling. In fact, I will break down this entire short to show you what the others did, and since this is one of my true favourites.

0:22-1:41: Ray Patterson
1:42-3:08: Irv Spence
3:09-5:06: Ken Muse
5:07-5:29: Ed Barge
5:30-5:39: Irv Spence
5:40-6:06: Ed Barge
6:07-6:23: Ken Muse
6:24-6:56: Irv Spence
6:57-7:11: Ken Muse

After 1945, Ray Patterson disappeared in the credits from 1946 and 1947 - but he did in fact do animation on those cartoons throughout 1946-1947, but just remained uncredited (the same with Pete Burness). Ray Patterson did leave MGM in 1946 to go to England where he went with Dave Hand, Ralph Wright and John F. Reed to teach British men on how to animate the way they do it. Ray stayed in England for roughly a year before his return, but he didn't do very much work on the cartoons.

Ray's (uncredited) animation in Solid Serenade:
0:32-1:15: Ray Patterson
4:15-4:36: Ray Patterson

Yes, Kenneth Muse did in fact animate the famous Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby song score of Tom playing the double bass, but I won't go too much in there. Ray Patterson did the introduction shots again, but he did some great animation on Tom's plot on how to get to the orchard since "Killer" the bulldog is guarding the house. I really like how Ray animated that shot of Spike's teeth hit the tree, this vibration of timing he did was one of his trademark. Whenever Ray animated a character that hit a wall, he would animate the characters vibrating slightly after hitting a wall, and then stay stiff.

Here is a great scene that Ray Patterson animated from 4:44 to 5:19 in the cartoon Cat Fishin' - you can tell on how Tom vibrates when he whacks Spike in the rear end, and also don't forget the details that he adds in the characters.

During Ray's time in the UK, he was training a lot of British animators on how to animate better, as they weren't very professional with their jobs and needed help from the Americans. Ray stayed in England for a short time, and there is a web page that speaks briefly about Ray in Moor Hall, England.

Here is Ray Patterson at his time in England. Photo courtesy of Moor Hall site. Date unknown.

Ray Patterson returned to MGM full-time again in 1948 where he would continue to work on many more Tom and Jerry cartoons. Since the characters have changed through model sheets, Ray's animation was much more different. He didn't go much through detail, but he still had the upper lips in his animation, and he also draw his characters with larger mouths, and the characters weren't caricatured as Ray used to do it in 1943-1947 - with the pouty mouth and freckles, it was caricatured differently - sometimes Tom's muzzle made him look like an ape.

Here is a great cartoon Tennis Chumps with some great animation by Ray Patterson. He handles 1:27-2:04 where he animates the tennis game getting started as it gets more violent. He did a great job with how the game was warming up, and then it gets heavier. Ray Patterson also comes back on 2:38 and up to 3:37 where he animates Jerry taking both sides of the cat, by using different objects that look like tennis balls. Some very look acting scenes here, and I love how Tom breaks into pieces.

In Texas Tom, Ray Patterson got a sequence to himself, and he animated the If You're Ever Down in Texas (Look Me Up) song where he did all the sequence to himself, (the scenes where Jerry changes the pitches is by Ken Muse, but Ray animated Jerry being hit on the head from Tom's guitar). Ray's animation lasts up to the 4.05 mark.

In Tom and Jerry at the Hollywood Bowl Ray Patterson was the star animator on that short. He did the mammoth work on that cartoon (so did Kenneth Muse), but Ray got the best acting scenes to do. He animated the entire introduction at the 0:44 and up to the 1:24 mark, where he animated Tom who seemed like a professional conductor - Ray steps off for a short while, with Ed Barge taking over for a bit. He came back again on the 1:50 mark, and finished at 2:26 with Kenneth Muse taking over for roughly a minute and a half with Irv Spence animating Tom being wheeled away from the orchestra and run over by a bus - Ed Barge did a great scene after the bus scene, of Jerry's shirt being ripped, and clashed by one of the orchestra members with the cymbals. Ray Patterson came back again on the 5:48 mark where he animates the orchestra falling down a hole after Jerry sawing the members. Kenneth Muse then animated the finale of that sequence, and I believe that's all for Ray in that short. So, Ray (in my opinion) was the best animator on that short.

In Jerry's Cousin Ray didn't get much at all to work on this cartoon, but he did do a great sequence from 1.42 up to 2.29 (Ed Barge does Tom in a vase scene), and there is great exaggeration on Tom's face when Muscles places a dynamite in Tom's mouth. Ray comes back again at 5.53 up to 6.10.

This is all the information about Ray Patterson that I can provide for you, and I hope this is an example of his great work he's done. It might not be very much he animated on shorts in terms of footage, but he has done some very challenging scenes to do, and acting scenes. Ray Patterson stayed at MGM until 1953/1954 and he left, to form his own company with Grant Simmons - Grantray-Lawrence Studios where it ran from 1954-1967 and they made a lot of Superhero shows. but he did work at UPA for a short while, on the film Gay-Pur-ee.

With his colleague, Grant Simmons; the company was a low-budget studio and they mostly made commercials, but they did contribute to the Spider-Man series in which the popular theme song was in there, and probably their famous piece of work. The song was later parodied in the Simpsons Movie.

Ray Patterson at the GrantRay studios turned in a lot of projects, but some pretty awful material that he turned out was The Marvel Super Heroes and it was based on Marvel superheroes such as the Incredible Hulk, Captain America, etc. You can see the introduction and closing credits to one of them. The animation is horrible, and in Zartok-35's words, "Everything is WRONG with that animation." Of course, I don't think Ray had much involvement in those shows, but he was the producer and he had the crew's wishes to work on awful material.

Since he formed the studio, it meant that he was able to freelance at other studios such as UPA, or Walter Lantz. He worked at Hanna-Barbera in the 1960's, and he was an animator on Hey There, it's Yogi Bear! (I don't know what he animated), and he did some animation on The Flintstones. In fact, he remained at Hanna-Barbera up to around the early 1990's when he fully retired.

Ray Patterson was pretty active throughout the 1980's, when he was directing a lot of shows, but some of them were pretty awful - such as those crummy TV shows such as Tom and Jerry Kids and Yo Yogi! He paired up with animator Don Lusk who was a veteran in the animation industry. Don Lusk later said that he felt he owed a lot to Ray Patterson for helping him find jobs, and even at Hanna-Barbera. Ray Patterson was even directing some of the Scooby-Doo films such as Scooby-Doo and the Curse of the Werewolf and Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School.

Ray Patterson was the Vice President of Hanna-Barbera up to around 1993, when he officially retired. He was dedicated in a Simpsons episode Trash of the Titans when the character named Ray Patterson was voiced by Steve Martin. Ray died on December 30, 2001 in Encino, California.

Well done Ray Patterson, you've had some great career in animation - and you're pretty underrated in the animation industry, but I know that your animation is deeply appreciated not only by animation fans, but the public too, who've watched your animation in cartoons and appreciated them.

It's also sort of my special article that I've written since I've been absent for a very long time, and I hope that you will enjoy this very lengthy piece that I've done. Of course, Zartok-35 did write a short post about Ray Patterson, and he was supposed to write a bit in this article but he did it differently, in which I've posted by version.

100 Years of Ray Patterson

2011-11-23T15:47:00.001-08:00

100 years ago today, Raymond Patterson was born. He went on to have an interesting carreer in animation that spanned several decades and productions. In 1954, Ray Patterson and Grant Simmons started their own animation company aptly titled 'GrantRay' animation. They did mostly contract work from other animation companies. They started off by doing 2 cartoons for Walter Lantz, "Dig that dog" and "Broadway bow-wows": In the mid-1960s GrantRay did some work for Hanna Barbera, contributing animation to "Hey there, it's Yogi bear", and the "Pebbles' birthday" episode of The Flintstones. I can't tell what Ray did in the episode, but here's some Carlo Vinci animation for you: Rest in peace, Mr. Patterson. You and your work are not forgotten!

Lest we forget...

2011-11-11T10:37:00.000-08:00

On the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month, of the 11th year, let us remember those brave fighting men who gave their lives in the past to preserve the glorious freedom we revel in today. If it weren't for them, we'd still be suffering with evil doers like Adolf Hitler and Archduke Ferdinand, and their unsavory accomplices. And what better way is there to remember the sacrifices of war than by watching racist propaganda cartoons from the 1940s? It's marathon time! Let's break into this with Private Snafu, the very essence of entertaining wartime animation! Here is 'Spies', which is probably the best of the Snafu cartoons(Which is saying alot, because they're all great): Another perennial classic is 'The Ducktators', a brilliant work of satire, and the best cartoon directed by Norman McCabe. You can't celebrate war cartoons without the notorious 'Bugs Bunny nips the nips', which is probably the most offensive war cartoon ever made. It's pretty funny, too. Viewer discretion is advised. Animator breakdown: 0:58-1:56 Manny Perez 1:57-2:25 Virgil Ross 2:26-3:35 Gerry Chiniquy 3:36-4:07 Ken Champin 4:08-5:41 Virgil Ross

5:43-6:52 Dick Bickenbach 6:53-7:24 Virgil Ross 7:25-8:04 Gerry Chiniquy That one where Daffy Duck bashes Hitler in the head: Dick Bickenbach handles the scene at 2:07 with Daffy singing. Ken Champin animates the first half of the phone booth sequence before handing it off to Gerry Chiniquy at 5:24. The "Mess of Messerschmidts" scenes are by Phil Monroe. And of course, Donald Duck verses the Japanese stereotypes!

I hope you've enjoyed this politically incorrect showcase. I don't support or believe in any of the views presented here in anyway; I'm only amused by them.

Oh, and I wish my best to anyone who is getting married today! Being 11-11-11, it's supposed to be good luck.

Happy Birthday, Don Lusk!

2011-10-28T01:11:00.000-07:00

In this past year, we've had some passings from legends like Bill Justice, Corny Cole, Earl Kress, etc. Don Lusk continues to be alive and turns 98 today. I believe that he is still in good health, and an interview is hopefully still in plan, but we just have to wait and see.

The smiling man above was Don Lusk when he was much younger, back when he was working at Hanna-Barbera after he left Disney in 1960. I found this from a Tony Benedict video posted by Yowp with footage of him. It's a very neat video, and I think you should go and take a look at those who worked at Hanna-Barbera back in the sixties.

"I'm the B19!"

2011-10-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

0:42-1:30 Phil Monroe
1:31-2:11 Dick Bickenbach
2:12-2:34 Phil Monroe
2:35-2:44 Bick
2:45-3:37 Manny Perez
3:38-4:04 Gil Turner
4:05-5:16 Bick
5:17-5:27 Phil
5:29-5:47 Bick
5:48-6:12 Gil
6:13-6:51 Bick

Bickenbach draws a very tall bugs; his eye pupils are tall, his ears are tall and thin, and his limbs are lanky. When drawing Elmer, he emphasizes the bottom eyelids, like at 4:55.
Gil Turner's animation lacks structure; it's anything but solid. Bugs' face is very simple looking, and unappealing. Also, he draws Bugs with shorter wider ears. Judging by his scene at 5:48, I can understand the flak he gets from scholars. Calling it 'uneven' is an understatement.

"Why, it's gettin' so a man can't earn a dishonest livin' no more!"

2011-10-08T16:23:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been too inactive lately. I've been very busy, mostly getting sick and going to school. But now that I'm in the mood, I might as well make another post, eh? Lets do something easy; a 'Manny-Ken-Virgil-Artie' Friz picture from 1952. Being what it is, it's automatically one of the best cartoons ever made!

Animation breakdown:
0:39-1:51 Art Davis
1:52-2:26 Manny Perez
2:27-3:59 Virgil Ross
4:00-4:19 Art Davis
4:20-4:43 Ken Champin
4:44-5:42 Art Davis
5:43-6:33 Manny Perez
6:34-7:03 Ken Champin

Art Davis is very prominent here,and of course he's doing lots of fluid action scenes. He incorporates his sharp hairy jags into Sam's moustache, and draws Bugs with lots of rounded facial features. Artie brings lots of fine funny and squashy facial expressions in this episode, especially at 1:17 where,as far as I'm concerned, Sam looks like a Muppet.
Manny Perez, Friz's whipping boy, is the other driving force behind this cartoon. Like always, he draws lots of dark eye pupils; he also draws Sam with wide gaps between his eyes. Manny's facial scenes are flatter,and not as dimensional as the others.
Virgil Ross handles Bugs' "Wild feeling" scene, and it's a good example of Virgil's Clampett-honed action sensibilities. Friz must have really liked the scene, as it inspired a Woolie Rietherman maneuver. Ken Champin draws Bugs much cuter than he did in the late-1940s.

Animators on "Anchors Aweigh" Sequence

2011-10-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

Hiya folks,

Sorry if I haven't replied to you for a very long time, as I've pretty much abandoned this blog - but I have promised to come back with occasional posts. This is Steven Hartley posting this time. I've decided to drop the "Snow White mosaics" for now, as I'm in an incredibly busy academic year.

I've deiced that I wanted to post about the sequence in Anchors Aweigh in which Gene Kelly dances with Jerry Mouse in the dream sequence. The song is called The Worry Song written by Sammy Fain. Apparently, this sequence was the only part of the film that was excellent. The rest of the film was described as mediocre at best, but the music is incredible though. Originally Walt Disney wanted Mickey Mouse to be the character dancing with Gene Kelly. I've recently gone into a habit of trying to identify animators from Tom and Jerry and I might post more of those on the blog sometime.

I'm going to identify the animators who animated the famous Dance sequence in Anchors Aweigh - it's one of my favourite Tom and Jerry moments. The animators here are Kenneth Muse, Ed Barge and Ray Patterson. Irv Spence doesn't animate anything on here, probably because he went to John Sutherland Studios already. Mike Lah didn't arrive at Hanna-Barbera's unit in MGM until 1946. Pete Burness would've already had left the MGM Studios while the Jerry Mouse sequence was being animated. A lot of the animation of Jerry Mouse was rotoscoped here.

0:03-0:55: Kenneth Muse
0:56-1:49: Ed Barge
1:50-2:26: Ray Patterson
2:27-2:58: Kenneth Muse

Kenneth Muse in this sequence is the main animator on this show. He does the entire mammoth work in here, he animates practically animates the entire beginning with Jerry's first encounter with Gene Kelly, and also Tom as a servant (not included on video). A trademark of Muse's animation in MGM was that his animation was the most "on-model" from the other animators. He animated very appealing characters, with those cute eyes, cheeks. He was also the "everyman" in Tom and Jerry animators, as he could animate anything in the series. The introduction scenes in this cartoon not added in the video were still animated by Kenneth Muse.

Ed Barge was just brand new to the Hanna-Barbera unit when this sequence was being animated. He got to animate nearly a whole minute to himself. To identify his animation, his character animation has a very simple design quality to it. He seems to focus on the animation and not too much on the look. Barge was in fact a rather weaker animator than the other Hanna-Barbera animators, and his draftsmanship was quite ugly. He animates Tom and Jerry rather "younger" looking in his animation, and often doesn't get much action in his scenes. His specific trademark is that he often gives his characters rounder and smaller ears than the other animators. He has done some very fine animation in the past, but he was hot as good as Ken Muse, Ray Patterson or Irv Spence.

Barge's animation was quite good in this bit, and he appears to have been very good at animating dancing scenes, not as great as Muse; but he did a great attempt.

Ray Patterson animates about roughly 40 seconds in this bit, and you can tell from his style because it's much more cartoony than the way Muse or Barge animates. Patterson gets the fun stuff for Jerry, and he seems to have not used too much rotoscoped as he made his Jerry very cartoony. A specific trademark for Patterson in the early 40's (1943-1946) was that he animated his characters with a lot of detail. His characters were very detailed, and he was very good at animating personality scenes, as well as cartoony-action scenes. He gave his Tom thicker eyebrows and freckles in his early animation career at MGM. In the late 1940's or 1950's, he seems to have given his characters rather larger mouths.

Ken Muse animates the finale of this sequence, with some wonderful animation of Jerry dancing. He is probably my favourite animator of the Tom and Jerry series. His animation was more graceful, and he knew how to handle his timing well for scenes. So Ken Muse did the mammoth work in this sequence, and achieved it well. Notice ow the animators animate Jerry much taller or larger than his actual design in the series.

I'm going to call it off here for now, but I hope you have enjoyed my post and my return.

"Hey Nappy, this has got scrabble beat a mile! You ought'a patent it."

2011-09-22T16:42:00.000-07:00

Lets do something today that I don't usually like: Inspect a Warner cartoon from 1956.
Post-shutdown Warner Brothers cartoons aren't too great in my book. Nothing ever looked as good as it did before: the animation seems cheaper and more conservative, and the art-deco UPA-influenced backgrounds are something I'll never get over.
...And yet, I love the 1956 Friz pictures! Asfar as the Frleng unit is concerned, 1956 features a number of strong and surprisingly fresh cartoons like "Rabbitson Crusoe" and "Two crows from tacos". Another one is "Napoleon Bunny-part":

Obligatory Animation breakdown:
0:45-1:17 Virgil Ross
1:24-2:34 Gerry Chiniquy
2:35-3:55 Arthur Davis
3:56-4:33 Virgil Ross
4:34-5:13 Art Davis
5:14-5:46 Virgil Ross
5:47-6:02 Gerry Chiniquy
6:03-6:43 Art Davis
6:44-6:59 Gerry Chiniquy

With the chosen premise, this feels almost like a Propaganda short from the mid-1940s; it's as if Friz and Warren Foster wanted to make fun of Hitler, but they couldn't really do that anymore, so they used Napoleon instead.
The snuff tobacco sequence has been censored from the version they currently show in Canada.

Gerry Chiniquy's animation here is a little more appealing than it was back in the 1940s, but it's not quite as fast. In the 1950s Gerry put lots of head twists in his animation, and does so liberally in the artillery sequence; most notably at 1:54.
The layouts in this cartoon are very nice as well, especially on angular shots like Bugs entering Napoleon's room, and most of the scenes on the stairs.

Happy birthday, Dan Povenmire!

2011-09-18T20:13:00.000-07:00

It's September 18th, a very special day. Happy birthday, Grandma!
It's also the birthday of another very special person, Dan Povenmire:

Dan Povenmire is my hero. He, along with his partner Swampy Marsh, have done some truly great things in animation. They are the creators of "Phineas and Ferb", which is probably the greatest show currently on TV. Dan plays the voice of Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, an evil scientist who regularly engages in evil and very very funny exploits. But Doofenshmirtz is only one of the great things Dan has given us.

Dan K. Povenmire was born September 18th, 1963. He was raised in Alabama, where his mother encouraged him to partake in fun activities, and to enjoy the summer months. With artistic aspirations, Povenmire dreamed of brush and pallet, but ended up with only the brush. Anyway, he was very good at art in his childhood years. He was even winning art contests, and making money from his works.

Dan Povenmire doesn't really come up in the animation industry until 1990, doing storyboards on "Teenage mutant ninja turtles", and a show called "James Bond junior". When The Simpsons moved their animation unit from Klasky-Csupo to Film Roman in 1992, he became a character animator, first credited on the episode "Lisa the beauty queen" directed by Mark Kirkland. Povenmire also worked on "Mr. Plow", "Homer's triple by-pass", "Homer's barbershop quartet", and "Cape Feare", among others. While working on The Simpsons, he befriended one Jeff 'Swampy' Marsh, who worked as a layout artist. In 1993, Jeff and Dan went to Nickelodeon, to produce episodes of "Rocko's modern life" for Joe Murray. The first episode they made together was "The good the bad and the wallaby", which featured an action chase scene, a musical number, and a lude gag where Heifer the steer is sucked off by a milking machine.

Good-Bad-Wallaby by PigLips

Dan and Swampy went on to make several more fine and funny Rocko shows, including "Zanzibar", the environmentally themed musical. Dan and Swampy won an award for writing the songs.

Aside from his involvement in Rocko's modern life, Povenmire continued to animate on The Simpsons, working on "And Maggie makes 3", "Homer vs. Patty and Selma", the first half of the 'Who shot Mr. Burns' saga, and "You only move twice". In the fourth and final season of Rocko's modern life, Dan got to direct his own episode, "Driving Mrs. Wolf". After Rocko, Swampy went to England, and Dan Povenmire stayed on at Nickelodeon, making storyboards and such on shows like "Hey Arnold", "CatDog", and "Spongebob Squarepants".

Then came Family Guy. Dan Povenmire joined up during season 2, and he directed the controversial "When you wish upon a Wienstien" and "Road to Rhode island" episodes. Dan brought a refined sense of song and dance to Family Guy, and kicked off the popular series of Brian and Stewie road trip episodes, which have been an institution ever since. Dan continued to direct until Family Guy met it's maker in 2001, putting out a brilliant collection of episodes including "To love and die in Dixie", and "Brian wallows, Peter's swallows", highlights of the initial run.

When Family Guy was canned, Dan went back to storyboard The Simpsons during season 13; he also wrote a few episodes of SpongeBob, and Directed some of the 'Larry Doyle' Looney Tunes shorts, which have been not been very well received.

Eventually they brought Family Guy back in 2005, and Dan was reinstated. He directed his own episodes, as well as musical numbers in other episodes, like 'Wake me up before you go-go' in "Jungle Love", and 'Shipoopi', which is probably his most famous work, from "Patriot Games".

Family guy song: Shipoopi

With an incredible sense of timing, and the ability to incorporate gags and ideas with music on par with Friz Freleng and Wilfred Jackson, Dan Povenmire was at the top of his game. In 2007, Dan Povenmire left Family Guy. He talked Swampy Marsh into coming back from England, and the two of them went to Disney in attempt create a show of their own design, which they had been working since 1994. While it was an unfortunate blow for Family Guy, surely this new development would provide something even better? And now we come to Phineas and Ferb.

It's a show about two kids who have a pet Platypus, and they're enjoying the summer time. Their paranoid sister Canadace is always trying to get the boys in trouble, because they're summer time activities are particularly unusual, and often larger than life. Meanwhile the Platypus is a secret agent, tasked with preventing the villainous Dr. Doofenshmirtz from taking over the tri-state area with his half-baked evil schemes. If you haven't seen this show, I suggest you check it out, because it's pretty funny. Dan Povenmire has even put in some of those great musical numbers of his.

Congratulations on a brilliant career and a wealth of animated entertainment, Mr. Povenmire. You are probably the most entertaining person alive right now.

The Rover Dangerfield Combine

2011-09-13T20:43:00.000-07:00

We're currently in the midst of harvest season, an important time here in Saskatchewan. I went on a trip down to Craik last Saturday to have dinner with some relatives, and seeing the farmers out harvesting with their combines inspired me. I remembered my childhood, and one strange, surreal, twisted, disturbing, unforgettable animated moment that has to be seen to be believed:

The Rover Dangerfield combine.

Yeah, THAT doesn't happen when something is picked up by a combine. I have relatives who have run over skunks with these things, and THIS isn't the way they tell it. Like they sing on Phineas and Ferb, cold hard reality can get in the way. Maybe all this goes without saying for people who are smarter than me, but considering what the rest of the film is like, I have no reason not to expect the worst. In context of the film, this moment of unbridled cartoonyness just doesn't belong!

A Combine harvester is designed to cut down grain stalks, and like any other dignified grain threshing machine, crush the seeds out of them. They are full of sharp metal pointy parts, so a brutal pulverising is imminent. The pipe-like unloader is usually mounted on the right side of the combine, and is lined with sharp metal auger flighting. I'm pretty sure they aren't that flexible.

And what the hell is up with those sound effects?!? They're even more disturbing than the visuals! Is that sound supposed to be the combine or the dog??

A more accurate depiction of this is provided by that cat and mouse duo who always get it right, no matter how gruesome, Itchy and Scratchy:

The featured combine appears to be an International Harvester machine, judging by the windows.

The venerable 'IH' symbol has been replaced with an MC in the film. Maybe Matthew O'callaghan directed the sequence. Not that he should be proud of it or anything.

For those of you who don't know what Rover Dangerfield is, I'll step aside and let a professional elaborate on it:

I don't hate the film as much as the Critic. I grew up watching this; it's a part of me. Regardless, it's not without its ~~flaws~~ wacky combines.

"Oh Belvedere, come here boy!"

2011-09-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

Today, lets look at one of the greatest cartoons Chuck Jones ever made: Dog gone south, from 1950. Charlie Dog is kicked off the train in the deep south(Possibly in Platte Falls Missouri), and tries to "endear himself into a good home" with a local Colonel on his plantation. The Colonel hates Yankees from the north, which Charlie happens to be thoroughly, so Charlie must turn him against his current dog, Belvedere, and usurp him. Hilarity ensues. Animators are Ben, Lloyd, Ken, and Phil Monroe, joined by Emery Hawkins.

Animation breakdown:
0:34-1:32 Ben Washam
1:33-1:37 Lloyd Vaughan
1:38-2:03 Emery Hawkins
2:04-2:10 Ben Washam
2:11-2:20 Lloyd Vaughan
2:21-2:37 Emery Hawkins
2:38-2:43 Ben Washam
2:45-2:52 Lloyd Vaughan
2:54-3:32 Ken Harris
3:33-4:19 Ben Washam
4:20-5:10 Lloyd Vaughan
5:11-5:33 Phil Monroe
5:34-6:50 Ben Washam

The cartoon opens with a sizable and beautifully animated sequence from Ben Washam. Charlie's character is established nicely through Benny's smooth line work.Throughout this portion Ben accentuates certain facial expressions by occasionally enlarging Charlie's pupils. Another standout sequence comes at 5:33, where Ben comes up with delightful expressions and some marvelous acting. Mike Maltese has put in a clever reference to how Boll weevils devastated the cotton industry in the American south.
Lloyd Vaughan is the other majority on here. His signature style comes through completely in the New York Yankees beating and "Sow belly and Corn pone for lunch" scenes. There is a fair bit of stiffness in Lloyd's scenes, but the Colonel's angry walk at 5:04 is remarkably fluid, and made all the better by his skittery timing(The music here is great too).
Emery Hawkins work is outside of Jones formalities just enough to keep things interesting. He gets some opportunities in this cartoon to do what he does best: bend and sway characters with his elegant brand of animation; 1:52 provides a very good example. Emery was always drawing characters with curvy limbs and torsos.

"I don't know how yuz done it, but I know yuz done it!"

2011-09-09T20:34:00.000-07:00

While the subject matter of Canned Feud is still relatively fresh in our minds, lets take a look at the production immediately before that, "Stooge for a mouse". How 'bout that! It also features Sylvester and the vicious little brown mouse. Kind of bizarre that these two cartoons were released next to each other, but it's probably just a coincidence. In this cartoon the mouse isn't quite as cruel, he has some motivation for his meddling, and he gets some satisfying ~~abuse~~ retribution for being a jerk.

This is Freleng's last cartoon from 1950, and there are lots of changes happening in and around his unit. This is the last screen credit for Gerry Chiniquy until 1954, after the shutdown. Nobody seems to know exactly where he went, but apparently it was out of the animation business. The loss of Chiniquy, Freleng's favorite animator, brought some drastic, interesting, and in some ways preferable stylistic changes to his output. This is also Emery Hawkins last turn for Friz as well, but he's mostly a passing trend. This cartoon was made while Friz was changing his writers, so there's no story credit; I assume he wrote this one himself. Friz later reused all the story elements here for "Bugsy and Mugsy" in 1957. This one has Paul Julian background art, so it's better!

Animation breakdown:
0:30-0:46 Gerry Chiniquy
0:47-1:04 Ken Champin
1:05-1:17 Gerry Chiniquy
1:18-1:32 Emery Hawkins
1:33-1:58 Gerry Chiniquy
1:59-2:14 Ken Champin
2:15-2:32 Virgil Ross
2:33-2:44 Gerry Chiniquy
2:45-3:51 Virgil Ross
3:53-5:02 Art Davis
5:03-6:32 Ken Champin

The animation is executed in a very interesting scheme here. In the first half of the cartoon, the work is broken up and spread between several people. In the second half, Friz probably didn't have Gerry or Emery around anymore, so the scenes are longer and less distributed.
Again, Virgil does excellent work. Friz gives him the dialogue heavy acting scenes, and he does them very well. The emotion and drama runs high, and you feel every bit of it. When Mike lashes out at Sylvester, it's tragic.
Gerry Chiniquy's work is standard fare: stiff, jerky, with precise timing and acting. He draws Sylvester with a larger nose, and well rounded cheeks.
Emery Hawkins doesn't get allot to do in this cartoon, so I don't know why he has top billing. He doesn't get any action scenes that compliment his style, so there's none of his bending or fluttering. His work is particularly clean, though.
Art Davis does the longest uninterrupted stretch of work, so his name is at the top of the credits. Artie gets his typical loose action scenes here, most notably at 4:14. He was always adding extra movement and detail to Sylvester's cheeks. Artie draws Sylvester hairy, with lots of textured jags, especially on the tail where no one else does.
Ken Champin is mostly a place holder this time. Compared to everyone else, his movement is rather generic, but his attention to detail is impressive. He does some great perspective work in the boxing sequence, and the walking scenes with the mouse at the end are marvelous, both in timing and expression.

"The blood thirstiest, shoot em' first-iest, doggone worst-iest buccaneer has ever sailed the spanish main"

2011-09-08T08:41:00.000-07:00

Here's a Manny-Ken-Virgil-Gerry Friz picture from 1948, Buccaneer Bunny, the cartoon first to feature Sam as a pirate. It's a pretty solid premise, and one which Friz would revisit in 'Mutiny on the Bunny' and 'Captain Hareblower' over the next few years.

0:36-0:56 Gerry Chiniquy
0:57-1:49 Virgil Ross
1:50-2:30 Manny Perez
2:31-3:08 Virgil Ross
3:09-4:46 Ken Champin
4:47-5:23 Manny Perez
5:24-7:17 Gerry Chiniquy

Manny Perez draws bugs, as always, with very large dark pupils. His work is considerably looser than that of Ken or Gerry, but not by much.
Ken Champin makes Bugs a bit cuter than Manny and Gerry, and he draws him with smaller, more rounded inner ears. Compared to Gerry Chiniquy his movements are gentler; he doesn't thrust his characters around the screen.
Virgil's animation is very realistic with lots of slow movement, and his acting is top notch. The scene where Bugs rises from the ground covered in jewelery is an amazing display of human personality. Virgil also draws Sam with the thickest eyebrows in the cartoon.
Gerry Chiniquy's work is hard to miss, with the jerky bobbing heads. Gerry is implemented very well here; the gun powder sequence gives him several opportunities to draw Sam with the scared and concerned facial expressions he did so well. He draws Bugs with wider cheeks and less space between his eyes, which isn't the most appealing variation of the character.

"Gimmee! Gimmee the can opener! Quick!"

2011-09-07T16:32:00.000-07:00

This is it folks, the first Ken-Virgil-Art-Manny Friz picture: Canned Feud. Manuel Perez, better known as "Friz's whipping boy", was just dragged back from the McKimson unit with Warren Foster. Oh, and John Carey is here too. He was the rotating animator in 1951; in 1950 it was Emery Hawkins, in 1943 it was Phil Monroe.
While this cartoon is a sign of great things to come, but it's not too wonderful in itself. The antagonist in this cartoon, a mouse, is characterized as a cold heartless monster who torments Sylvester the cat without any real motivation. He does so by stealing his can opener. Can opener theft strikes a real nerve with me. I collect can openers as a hobby, and would be devastated if someone took any of them. Ah, but I digress. Sylvester has other reasons to be concerned: He's stranded for 2 weeks without food. It's a pretty bitter cartoon that isn't as funny as it could be, and I attribute that to Cal Howard. But all in all it's worth it, because Friz gets to move on into his age of complete perfection, with Ken-Virgil-Art-Manny cartoons written by Warren Foster. Here goes...

Animation breakdown:
0:36-1:53 Manuel Perez
1:54-2:12 Virgil Ross
2:13-2:26 John Carey
2:27-2:29 Virgil Ross
2:29-2:30 John Carey
2:31-2:57 Manny Perez
2:58-3:24 John Carey
3:25-3:34 Manny Perez
3:35-4:06 Ken Champin
4:08-4:19 John Carey
4:20-5:06 Virgil Ross
5:08-5:38 Arthur Davis
5:39-5:51 Ken Champin
5:52-6:27 Art Davis
6:28-6:57 Virgil Ross
6:58-7:13 Manny Perez

The scenes of Sylvester scrambling around and freaking out are by Manuel Perez, you can tell by the two-ply eyebrows and the dark eyes. Sometimes Manny draws characters with flat-looking faces; a good example lies at 2:47. Regardless of how much Friz chastised his work, Perez did really well as a fast action animator. He wasn't as wacky as Art Davis, but his scenes in this cartoon leave a lasting impression on the audience.
Virgil Ross makes beautiful work like he always does, but Sylvester's eyes appear to be drawn much smaller than usual in his scenes, and it isn't as appealing as his work usually is.
Ken Champin's electricity sequence is probably the most appealing scene in the entire cartoon. When Gerry Chinniquy left, Ken Champin developed into a brilliant and versatile animator, succeeding at action and dialogue scenes. He draws Sylvester with spiky hair, and tilts his head allot. The face Sylvester makes at 5:50 is brilliant as well.
Not a whole lot I can say for Art Davis in this cartoon, other than his work is a bit off too, resembling animation from his directorship in the 40s, more so than his current standard. None the less, he convincingly depicts sheer terror when Sylvester gets sucked up the vacuum at 5:55. And the beating scene at 6:13 flows beautifully.
John Carey is a special guest on this cartoon, and he does some delightful work that is loose and expressive. Most notably the scene where Sylvester is rifling through silverware drawers, which is particularly fun to watch. The scene where he runs to get the axe features some excellent fluidity rarely seen in a Freleng cartoon.

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Roastin' children!"

2011-09-05T15:58:00.000-07:00

"It's a weakness."
This cartoon is a weakness of mine: Bewitched Bunny, from 1954. This is probably my favorite post-Phil Monroe Chuck picture. I first saw it edited into "1001 rabbit tales", the worst of the early 1980s anthology films, and have enjoyed it consistently ever since. It's a delightful take on fairytale conventions that will leave you asking "HANSEL?"
This cartoon was made just before the shut down, when Chuck Jones divided his unit, and handed out cartoons to two different groups. Lloyd, Ben and Ken are on this one, while Abe Levitow and Dick Thompson were doing "Stop! Look! And Hasten!".

Animator breakdown:
0:32-2:54 Ben Washam
2:55-4:53 Ken Harris
4:54-5:20 Ben Washam
5:21-6:47 Lloyd Vaughan

The casting in this cartoon is not very complex at all; everyone comes in and does there bit and leaves it for the next guy, excluding Ben's dying sequence. Lloyd Vaughan draws Bugs with his strange eyes again when he talks to the Prince at 5:42.
The backgrounds in this cartoon are ridiculously flat. Maurice Noble was probably making fun of John Hubley's philosophy that animation is a naturally flat medium, and should be executed as such.

A New Member...

2011-09-04T20:46:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've been having a hard time with posting on this blog, as I've felt I couldn't say much. Since I'm very busy with my reviews on my other blog: Likely Looney, Mostly Merrie; I felt that I can't handle two blogs at once, it's very hard work. Plus, I start school tomorrow and it's going to be a very busy year with exams and I can't manage two blogs in such a busy year, only stick to one.

I've decided that to keep this blog going, I decided to get a team member to join my blog and write posts, if interested. I chose a blogger if he wanted to join my blog and write posts, and he was very happy to so do. The person who will be posting more often is Zartok-35 (Elijah Hall) who you've may been familiar in comments from other blogs. He's a very intelligent fellow, with a very interesting background in animation, and also very good at identifying animators, with such a great knowledge of locomotive steamtrains (that counts as culture). I can trust him very much with this blog, and I've spoken to him many times, with such brilliant knowledge, and is a nice person.

I will come back once in a while with posts (particularly on Snow White), but Zartok-35 will be controlling on the upcoming posts, while I will still run the blog, but not do too much posting on it. I hope you will be fine with this idea, and I'll see how this goes.

Animators on Duck Amuck

2011-09-04T15:19:00.000-07:00

Hello, everyone! I am Elijah 'Zartok-35' Hall, and Steven has asked me to do some extra posts on here while he isn't as available. I have some experience in running my own blog(which I don't use too much for some reason), and like I always say, I know a fair bit of stuff about arts and culture!

Well, let's cut to the chase! A little while back Steven and I worked out an animator breakdown for Chuck Jones 1953 classic, "Duck Amuck". Throughout this episode Daffy Duck is pushed around by an animator, resulting in a few angry rants, and some interesting exploration of Daffy's character. The animators are Ken Harris, Ben Washam, and Lloyd Vaughan. The Ben-Lloyd-Ken cartoons are usually pretty easy to figure out.

0:26-1:54 Ken Harris
1:58-2:24 Lloyd Vaughan
2:25-2:54 Ken Harris
2:58-3:35 Lloyd Vaughan
3:37-5:35 Ben Washam
5:42-5:58 Lloyd
5:59-6:21 Ken
6:22-6:29 Ben

Ken Harris handles the majority of the work in this cartoon, and has top billing in the credits. Ken does what is probably my favorite scene in the cartoon, at 2:40; the sound effects and expressions come off really well. The introduction to this cartoon is one of the scenes identified in Thad Komorowski's Ken Harris 'Animator reel'.

Ben Washam is famous for coining Daffy's remark "Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin!". In this cartoon Ben gets to do the longest uninterrupted stretch of animation, lasting almost two minutes, and "Ain't I a stinker?" at the very end. As always, his work is elegant and appealing, and drawn with wide cheeks.

A very good example of Lloyd Vaughan's draftsmanship is at 2:19, where Daffy breaks the guitar. The eyes are particularly round, and one of them is taller than the other. Lloyd had a tendency to draw his characters with strange tall eyes. As the 1950s wore on, Lloyd drew this way less, but he never really stopped.

Well, that's all for now, folks. I'm glad to be part of the organization! I'll see what else I can come up with in the coming days.

With a Soup, With a Bowl...

2011-08-31T17:40:00.000-07:00

Hiya, I'm still a long way from making the "Dwarfs song" sequence, and in the meantime I forgot to add the sequence in which the dwarfs have soup, with a musical number in it by Frank Churchill and Larry Morey.

As you know, this sequence was cut from the film because it was too slow-paced, and the gags weren't really that funny. Also, it was pointless because we've already seen enough of the dwarfs, and the tub-washing sequence and the soup sequence both don't have connections with the story, but the tub-washing remained because it was funnier.

Ward Kimball is known to have animated all the sequence, but there are other animators too: Ward Kimball only animates the entire song score (with Grumpy by Bill Tytla), and then he animates them briefly again in the scenes of the dwarfs practicing how to be mature while slurping soup, "Spoon in the hand, bending the wrist, into the bowl and out with a drip!" - that's Kimball. Grim Natwick animates the entire scenes with Snow White featured. Even Bill Roberts gets a chunk to animate, (most of the scenes with Dopey swallowing his spoon isn't featured in the film, but it's still all Roberts). There are also scenes animated by Fred Spencer (who animates the beginning) before the song, Marvin Woodward and Dick Lundy do at least one or two scenes each.

I suppose that there is one continuity in the film, that the soap finally comes out of Dopey's stomach, but I never thought you could hiccup from swallowing a film, I thought you would more likely choke. But, it still doesn't follow up the plot, and the song isn't so great too. If that survived the film, the audience probably would've got bored because there was too much comedy. I think it was the right thing to do, cut the sequence out - even though Ward was furious about much of his work in that sequence cut and wanted to leave, so he got to be an Animation Director on Jiminy Cricket instead.

Snow White /mosaic: Part 13

2011-08-28T19:49:00.000-07:00

Sorry, that it's been too long since I last posted a sequence in Snow White - here is the sequence. I've been too busy with the other blog, and I have a feeling that the mosaics might go slowly because I haven't had much time working on them.

The sequence starts off back to the Queen's house, as we've seen enough of the seven dwarfs for now. Our main focus is to get back onto the queen and it's the evening. We truck to the castle (and the shots are reused layouts but the backgrounds are different, but credited to Sam Armstrong), and then we see the Queen who believes Snow White is dead. Not being boastful about her death, she goes to the magic mirror (as she does often), and she asks "Who NOW is the fairest of them all," - she's so sure that she's going to get a different answer, and is still assuming Snow White is dead. The Magic Mirror (who seems to know all), assumes the Queen that Snow White is still alive and still is the fairest of the land, and announces that the Huntsman tricked her and was in league with Snow White all along. The Queen feels embarrassed that she was tricked.

The Queen walks all the way down the stairs and is aware that since hiring a huntsman was no help, she'll go down and kill Snow White herself without her knowing that it's the Queen, or anyone else knowing. She pulls out a book from a bookshelf with a formula that demonstrates on how to prepare a disguise, and she has to create a potion that turns her into an ugly old witch (otherwise known as "Mummy Dust").

The scenes where the Queen is transformed into a witch was always described as one of the many frightening moments in theatre, that it even scared Walt Disney's daughter, Dianne. There is a lot of animators who work on the transforming scenes. It even finally credits effects animators, while so far in the draft, we have seen very little effects scenes credited. It credits George Rowley, Stan Quackenbush and Josh Meador, and that's their only known credit so far in the draft. There is even a scene of the Queen's hair turning white animated by Campbell Grant. The task that Grant was assigned to was probably not to difficult to animate, but it's important in terms of colour because her hair changes from back to white. It was a task for the ink and painters, and not much a challenge to the animators.

The effects animation in this sequence is incredible, especially the transforming scenes. The effects animators who animate the bubbles provide a great atmosphere in whole changing sequence. There aren't any effects scenes credited in the scenes when the Queen is making her recipe, and I assume those effects animators mentioned would've worked on it. Shot 21 with the effects animation is just perfect animation, with the whole layout changing into whirls. That is simply incredible for 1937, and I don't know what greater there was that had been accomplished. It's interesting to find that Eric Larson handles effects animation scenes, but none of them involve thunderstorms or liquid. Shot 21C, Larson handles an effects scene in which the Queen's hands transform into old, rusty hands. The hands are not very well designed, but they do look hideous. It's not an assignment that a character animators always get, but it has happened before. Shot 26 is also animated by Larson, and he animates the Witch in silhouette, before zooming down with a Witch by Norm Ferguson.

The Queen here is not only animated by Art Babbitt, but he also has Bob Stokes handling a chunk as well. Bob Stokes animates the entire beginning with the Queen at the Magic Mirror, and walking down the stairs with rats watching (did Stokes animate rats, I don't see another animator on that scene). As soon as Art Babbitt enters the sequence, he handles most of the shots with the Queen. Bob Stokes mostly handles the Queen's hands. I forgot to point out that in an interview, Art Babbitt claimed that he didn't rotoscope any scenes he did on the Queen and says that he has proof that he didn't rotoscope it. I wonder if Stokes rotoscoped his scenes on the Queen?
Woolie Reitherman returns again but only briefly when he animates small characters like the Magic Mirror. It's such a difficult and probably (dull) assignment to animate the mirror. The scenes isn't much, but it probably took such a long time to complete the footage of the mirror. Woolie also got some scenes of the dwarfs where they are building the bed, and it was cut - with the mirror being his only surviving animation.

Norm Ferguson steps along and he starts off with his famous assignment on the Witch in Snow White. He also animates scenes of the raven, too. The Witch isn't VERY well animated, but the design is very well done - and Joe Grant did a good job on the design. Norm Ferguson makes the animation of the Witch look very frightening, and I think that it was Fergy's main task to make her scary. The animation didn't have to be very good, but just very frightening and ugly. He provides some broad acting here when the Witch reads through the book. I also like his raven, too. He provides some great staging and acting on the raven inside the skull. The scene shows the raven in fear, and we feel sorry for how scary the Witch is, but the scene with the raven in the skull is also quite broad. Shot 33 when Fergy looks at the audience with the line "in the sleeping death". She looks frightening once she looks at you, and the freeze frame is just perfect timing to end the sequence.

I wonder what Tony Rivera is doing in this sequence? We've seen him by Jack Campbell a lot in this film on the Snow White character, and now we see him working with Fergy? I wonder how that happened, or unless this is a different "Tony", but I can't think of another Tony around Disney in 1936-1937.

Hope this is keeping a bit up to date. I'll try and post the entertainment sequence next, when I get the chance. I'm posting these fairly slowly, mind you.

A Third "Paranormal" Adventure?

2011-08-26T20:19:00.000-07:00

Recently, I bought the DVD of Paranormal Activity 2 as part of my birthday money, and ever since about a year ago - I used to brag on about the new sequel and how exciting it would be. I saw the film only a few weeks ago - on my own. I heard about what people thought of it at school, they seemed to shiver with fear, I remarked "If you want to see something REALLY scary, then watch the first Paranormal Activity film!"

As I watched Paranormal Activity 2 the film was more or less "hit and miss". There were so much footage that showed the family that I thought was pointless, the whole concept isn't as scary as the original film, and considering that the film was set before the first film, it makes it less scarier, and the trailer looked much scarier. The film was quite disappointing at times, and I must say there were some scary moments.

In the meantime, only a few weeks ago - I saw the "new" trailer for a Paranormal Activity 3! I thought that this was crazy, the second one was mediocre, and now a third one? Here is the trailer:

The trailer actually takes back MUCH EARLIER than the other movies. Instead, the movie shows two girls named Katie and Kristi (both as adults in the other films) and it appears to be that they are children, and that this is where the haunting began with the demon. The trailer didn't look very scary, and I suppose that it won't be as scary.

The child actresses playing the two girls actually do look a little scary themselves. That's as much as I can say. I guess that the trailer is meant to show stuff that isn't much scary and that the scarier stuff will be shown in its theatrical release. The film will be released on October 21, 2011 - and I probably will see it.

Camping

2011-08-21T13:03:00.001-07:00

Going away camping for a few days, will return posting by August 26.

Poor Pooch

2011-08-18T22:50:00.000-07:00

I got this from an e-mail by my dad, it's so hilarious and you've all got to see this - and the look on that poor dog's face, and this is a true story in the east part of Northampton about a man who gave his dog a haircut:

He was sick and tired of thugs breaking into his garage shop to steal tools, etc.
So he came up with this idea to give his dog a haircut. He put the word out that he had a new Mexican Lion that would attack anyone that tried to break in or climb his fence.
Would-be thieves saw the "Lion" from a distance and fled the scene.

HA! You can stop laughing for five minutes, and past this on via emails.

Snow White Mosaic: Part 12A

2011-08-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

(Just as a recap from my previous post yesterday, and as promised - here is the commentary on this sequence, and I'll be writing this down...)

This is a classic sequence that has been remembered a lot by the audiences, and it's a personal favourite sequence of mine in this film. It's a lot of fun and there are a lot of gags you can do with washing as it's demonstrated in this whole sequence, in the washing song. There is a great amount of character personality used between Grumpy and the seven dwarfs. How they plan to get Grumpy back from his insults. Of course, Grumpy's personality doesn't change one bit until much later on in the film.

Whilst Snow White has sent the dwarfs to wash their hands and get ready, and she is doing the cooking off-screen. The dwarfs do not know how to wash and they are unsure if they have to go inside the tub, and the line where Bashful says "Do we have to wash where it doesn't show?" and I assume that he's talking about "private parts".

I also like the song in it very much, and it's quite clever on how that Doc is demonstrating the men how to wash and yet he finds a way of putting some rhythm into it, and I like the whole music in that song, and I think it's one of the best Disney songs ever written.

Bill Tytla is the main animator on that sequence. He animates nearly ALL of the sequence by himself, with some scenes of Dopey and the soap by Fred Spencer, a scene of Snow White calling for "supper", and a scene of the fly washing itself with soap by Riley Thompson. Tytla is the best animator here and what amazes here in what Tytla uses in his animation is the weird poses here - and I'm not saying weird in a bad way. He has some good poses there and he really has a lot of fun with the animation. A lot of the scene grabs in Tytla scenes shows some extreme poses in Tytla's shots.

When I hear animation folks talk about one of their favourite pieces of animation by Bill Tytla, an example of an answer might be oh, the Devil in Night on Bald Mountain, or Stromboli in Pinocchio. An answer I would say is this sequence. This is one of my all-time favourite film in this film, and I just love all the animation. Shot 36A is perfectly done well and I love the squash and stretch used on Dopey's head. Tytla uses the "squash and stretch" animation element a lot in this sequence, and it works very well.

There is also the classic part of the whole sequence where the dwarfs plot on washing Grumpy in the tub, after Grumpy's response that there would be no chance that they would get washed. So, they surround Grumpy and they grab him to be washed in the tub, and each dwarf grabs his hands and arms so he has no chance of escaping.

I should note that I notice that Bill Tytla has a different animation style to the seven dwarfs compared to other animators like Fred Moore, Frank Thomas, Fred Spencer, Dick Lundy, etc. and his way of animating the dwarf is more menacing looking, and he gives his characters sharp poses and and also thick eyebrows. The style and his way of animating in this sequence works very well.

Fred Spencer's scenes of Dopey trying to catch the soap is very fun to watch, too. I like them very much - and it's very broad and very funny, and I believe that Eddie Collins does the voice effects of Dopey, as he was a burlesque entertainer. The scenes where Dopey tries to catch the soap were originally animated by Fred Moore and they thought his original tests didn't suit the scenes and the shots were reassigned to Fred Spencer.

What I do notice, is that the reflection effects of the dwarfs from the tub look as though that he were animated as well by either character or effects. This was before when special effects in films like Fantasia or Bambi had very realistic water reflections, and that Snow White was in the early process of effects animation when it was just building.

Here is the whole washing sequence, with most of the animation by Bill Tytla, himself.

Snow White Mosaic: Part 12

2011-08-15T19:45:00.000-07:00

(I'll post the commentary tomorrow, I haven't got time - too busy on the reviews, but I will post it tomorrow for recap - I promise).

Corny Cole Interview

2011-08-14T19:21:00.000-07:00

Due to the recent passing of an animation legend Corny Cole (1930-2011), Michael Barrier has quickly posted an excellent and interesting interview of Corny Cole, and there is some very interesting discussions on the people who worked for Chuck Jones, and also some hatred.

He described Chuck as an "asshole" when it started off that he would take Cole out for lunch if he was an assistant animator, and when he was an animator - he would ignore him. Also what interested me was that Cole seemed to be an assistant for a few months and an animator for the next few months and then back to assistant, because he had no assistant animator while animating.

Cole also mentioned that only Chuck's story guys made his cartoons great like Michael Maltese or Tedd Pierce, and that when Chuck was trying to write a cartoon on his own it was "atrocious".

He also seemed to be cold towards legendary animator Ken Harris, and also describing him as a fascist, and at one time when Corny was struggling on a scene Ken bellowed "Goddammit, Cole, if you can't get that scene right, you'll never get it right," and Cole muttered "F*ck off you old fart" behind his back. It seemed that in a way Cole, was one of those youngsters who felt they would talk behind the older animator's backs.

I find it interesting that when he mentions that there is a difference in talent - like Ken Harris is a natural animator, and he could just animate a scene quickly because he wanted to do his own hobbies like tennis, driving a car or play snooker - and Ken didn't bother whenever or not he would ruin a scene. Dick Thompson, was an animator who struggled at animation and it meant a lot to him.

Cole not only had a career in Warner Bros. but he also worked at Disney for a brief period of time, inbetweening on Lady and the Tramp and also working for studios like UPA, and on the animated feature Raggedy-Ann & Andy.

When I Came Home From My Holiday Today...

2011-08-13T19:04:00.000-07:00

...I heard about the news that involved a lot of rioting and looting across cities in the UK such as (London, Birmingham, Liverpool, etc.) and the whole riot showed a lot of chavs or teenagers in their hoods breaking into shops and smashing buildings with an excuse to steal items from shops claiming that they can't afford it. That's no good at all, and a very bad excuse.

The rioting started on August 6, and I was just on my cruise on that first day - and hearing about the riots. I thought it was awful, and I admit - I was quite worried. It all started when it started off as a peaceful protest after the shooting of a criminal named Mark Duggan, and it turned out that the protest went out of hand, and became a huge riot. Well, this is just from what I've heard. From that point, there was looting and rioting going on in many areas of London (Tottenham, Hackney, etc.) I have a sister living in Hackney, but thank goodness she's away and is in a honeymoon. I hope their apartment is ok, since their area was quite trashed.

This here is a local London man who protested against the whole riots, and I remember watching that live in my cruise cabin, and I couldn't stand hearing it and I turned it off!

By August 8, almost everywhere in London had looting going around - I had friends living in Croydon and I heard about the experiences, that I do not wish to say, but they're fine now - I recall watching it on television with flames at nighttime and also rioters burning a car. The next day, the rioting was spread around north and there was also an incident where there were 3 guys in a car, and they got killed by the rioters. This is just a tragic, and it's tearing the whole country apart.

David Cameron must have been really ticked off when he found out that the UK riots were going on and that they were worse than ever. He even had to cancel his holiday early to try and sort out the riots and end it once and for all. He attended the COBRA meeting and ordered thousands and thousands of London police to take care of the streets all around London, and even suggested using a water cannon for any further rioting. In that case, not much rioting was going on and the police started to arrest the looters and sending them to prison. It may take months to arrest all the looters and rioters, but the police are DEFINATELY going to arrest every single one even if it's the last thing they do!

What was funny to hear was that there were 10 year old kids and 11 year olds that were looting because they thought that the police weren't going to arrest them because they were too young to go to prison. Erm, thick heads(?) - the legal age of being sent to prison here in the UK is actually aged 10, and you're obviously not going to get away with that. There was even one looter who thought he was doing the right thing and thinks he won't get caught, and thinks he's such a smart-ass, and saying "Oooh, they can't send me to prison - because the jails are over-crowded" - that's BALONEY! Well Mr. Looter - the jails may be overcrowded, but there's ALWAYS room for one more...

I admit that I was kind of worried because I was worrying that the rioting or looting could come to Horsham (the town I live in) and I thought that there was a slight chance, but a very fat chance because it's outside London and there isn't such to break into. Anyhow, I was relieved to hear that the rioting officially stopped on August 10th, I knew I would come back home today safely (and I did).

I would die a happy man if those police would keep those vile looters as long as they would live, they've basically ruined our country. Think about next year, at the 2012 London Olympics - tourists from other countries are going to think Britain is a dump because of all the looting.

Anyhow, I'm sure glad this whole looting has stopped - and I hope not to see another huge riot again (well, you'll never know).

Snow White Mosaic: Part 11

2011-08-05T20:55:00.000-07:00

Hiya readers - I've finished my first vacation at Sayer's Croft (an activity centre, 5 miles from where I live), and I'm able to post this mosaic today. Of course, (August 6) I leave for a cruise and I won't resume posting I'm afraid. My second blog still can't be updated until August 13th, too I'm afraid. Sorry, my holiday - my call.

In this sequence, this shows some more unsophistication out of the seven dwarfs, and this time in involves personal hygiene and manners on the table (except the manners on the table part doesn't show up until the deleted "soup" sequence). Snow White plays an important role in this sequence, and he controls the characters here. Since she is the maiden of this cottage, she also has to make sure the dwarfs are down what they are told, and plus - she treats the dwarfs quite mother-like in this sequence.

As soon as the seven dwarfs smell the lovely smell of soup, they all rush down stairs (Dopey being stuck on the banister part of the stairs) and they all scramble around on the table, fighting over where they are going to sit - or fighting over pieces of bread, and also snatching. As Snow White stops the fighting and bickering - she warns them that they "have time to wash". The dwarfs are baffled, and have no idea that it's mannered to wash your hands before supper.

Unsophistication turns up when Doc is unsure of Snow White saying "wash", and he tries to get out of the situation along with the other dwarfs, that they told a fib that they had lied - considering that they washed "recently". Snow White, who shows an astute personality in this sequence is aware that the dwarfs are fibbing with Doc hesitating, and the dwarfs not being able to get a full answer out until they all (exc. Dopey) say "Recently" in a group. Snow White is also aware that they are lying, because of the evidence that they are not showing their hands that are dirty from mining all day. As, all seven pair of hands are dirty (Grumpy doesn't show his hands), and they all are ordered to wash or no supper for them.

Snow White's line "You'll go straight outside and wash - or you'll not get a bite to eat." That is one of the old-fashioned ways of punishment to children, if they didn't follow their parents orders or they misbehaved, and (usually) as a warning note, they would not have anything to eat for dinner and sent to bed early. Of course, Snow White is a teenager and yet she has power to tell the dwarfs what to do because of her beauty. I'm afraid that I've always never understood that, beauty isn't always everything. But, Snow White is part of the Royal family and is the princess and the dwarfs must show a lot of sympathy and respect for her.

Frank Thomas animates the bulk of the dwarfs in this sequence, and gets the good personality shots. Bill Tytla animates the personality shots of Grumpy, and wonderful timing on Grumpy's facial smear in Shot 20. This is one of Frank's earlier animation where he handles personality scenes wonderfully. His dwarfs animation are appealing, as well as the acting is very good. He gets a lot of personality particularly in shots that are about 30 feet long and also Shot 13B which is roughly 39 feet of animation in 26 seconds, of the dwarfs revealing their dirty hands. I assume that the assistant animator had to probably add the dirt on the dwarfs' hands, while Frank did the animation. Shot 18 by Frank Thomas has some good staging in the scene where the dwarfs march to the bathroom to wash, and Dopey walks on with his "hitch steps" - a gag contributed by Frank Thomas. Grumpy is also in the scene just standing there cantankerously. The shot is 32 feet song and it lasts 21 seconds.

Fred Spencer mostly animates crowd shots of the dwarfs on the table and fighting. I suppose that's animator casting - the director had an animator cast onto crowd scenes, and Fred was suitable for the scenes evolving around there.

Snow White is mostly animated by Grim Natwick here who takes control of her personality. Grim does some wonderful animation there of the wise princess who can't get fooled by the dwarfs. He also animates the scenes of Snow White and with Tytla's Grumpy scenes. Jack Campbell handles the first shot where Snow White runs to the cauldron and cooks the soup. It surprises me to find Campbell credited for animation here, the first shot doesn't even LOOK like Campbell's animation. It's a completely different animation style from Jack's and it really does look like a child Ham Luske scene. Unless, this is one of the theories I heard about the Snow White animation scenes been swapped around. Maybe Jack very well handled that shot, and it wasn't rotoscoped at all - but I don't know too much on his animation background.

What's good to find here is that the single-shot scenes of Snow White warning the dwarfs to wash, and knowing that they are lying, the fireplace animation is animated with real fire. It seemed that the director on this sequence was very aware with errors, and wanted to make sure that the fireplace animation had animated fire when it couldn't be noticed in the background. I think that was pretty good back for 1937 - although it's a shame that most effects animation in this film is never credited at all in this film. We may find some effects animation credited later on.

This was the sequence where Frank Thomas contributed to the story and that Dopey should continuously throughout the film do hitch-steps to catch up with the others, and as Walt Disney thought it was a good idea - he got the animators on the dwarfs (when the animation was already greenlit) and called to reanimate scenes to add Dopey's hitch steps - the animators blamed Thomas for the amount of work. Frank also said that when an idea already comes during the animation process and Walt Disney liked it, he would always ask animators to reanimate scenes or start again. The "hitch steps" gag is an example.

Two Weeks Holiday

2011-07-31T21:03:00.000-07:00

Hello readers, folks and anyone else that follows my blog. The blog post might not be updated until around August 13th, as I'm having two different holidays. Tomorrow, I'm off to an activity place where there's rock climbing, canoeing, zip wires, etc. with friends tomorrow on August 1st and finish on August 5th - I might make a quick post on that day. The next day (August 6th) I will be on a weeks cruise around France, and the northern part of Spain, and I will be returning back to England on August 13th.

In the meantime, reading my older posts will have to do at the moment, I will continue posting shortly afterwards. Believe me.

It's my Birthday

2011-07-29T06:45:00.000-07:00

15 years ago today - I came down to this very little planet to join all you people in the world, and show what I can do. So far, I've been able to show what I've been doing by creating two blogs - and sharing some posts and happy to write down articles never told before.

As I'm now 15 years old today, I'm up at 6.30am now and I'm waiting for my folks to wake up to wish me a Happy birthday. At the age of 15, it may be just a another year of childhood - before you turn 16 where you get more privileges and you could leave school, get lottery tickets, and all that sort of stuff. Of course, I still want to use up as much as I can in that year, and enjoy the remaining childhood parts of my life. :)

Stumbling through a bit of history on that date: here is a news event that I found on my exact birth date July, 29 1996 on Wikipedia: 1996 – The child protection portion of the Communications Decency Act is struck down by a U.S. federal court as too broad . The rest of the information are not too important, I know that on July 29, 1987 - Margaret Thatcher made an agreement to build the Channel Tunnel (a tunnel from Dover to France). On July 29, 1921 - Hitler became the leader of the National Socialists German Workers' Party in other words to put it (Nazi) - Oh my. I even looked up on famous people's birth dates - I couldn't find any. But I found a death date of a name I'm familiar of - Vincent van Gogh, who sadly committed suicide on my birthday - thus my oh dear.

A BIT of Disney history: Walt's Disney first ever full-length short ever created Little Red Riding Hood for Laugh-O-Grams was released on July 29, 1922 - so the first Disney film started on my birth date - even though it may not be official. Other Disney shorts released on my birthdays (The Shindig - July 29, 1930), (Old King Cole - July 29, 1933) and (The Fox Hunt - July 29, 1938). The rest I don't need to bother knowing about.

So, here is a video that the March Hare and the Mad Hatter made especially for me, to celebrate (I'm afraid that they're that mad that they got the title wrong).

A Very Merry Unbirthday.

See you later folks - my birthday won't be a mad one. ;-)

Snow White Mosaic: Part 10

2011-07-28T19:48:00.000-07:00

This continues on from the "Spooks" sequence. The dwarfs are convinced that there's definitely a monster that resides up there in their bedroom. As they enter their own bedroom, at the same time - they walk together at the same group and stuck together, and then they notice the bedsheets moving (Snow White) - and I believe that it is a reuse from the previous sequence.

As they pull open the bedsheets, they realize that it's just another human sleeping in their beds, and they are all smitten by her looks. Grumpy, is the only one of the seven dwarfs that suspects something bad about her, and as Snow White wakes up they all hide. From that point, when Snow White looks at the dwarfs the first time, she realizes that they are not children, they're just men, or the way to put it - dwarfs. She asks to greet them, and they don't know how to greet one another. She uses her philosophy and wise guesses to guess which of the seven dwarfs is who.

Out of the seven dwarfs, Dopey is the only one of the seven dwarfs who doesn't introduce himself to Snow White. It is known that Dopey that he never learnt himself how to talk and the audience realize that's why he never speaks throughout the film. Instead, Happy introduces Dopey to Snow White. In fact, Happy is the only one of the seven dwarfs that doesn't allow Snow White to guess who is name is - instead, Happy interrupts and doesn't listen to Snow White's quest "Don't tell me, I'll guess your names," she couldn't even get a chance to guess which one is Dopey - and yet Dopey would've been an obvious guess.

In this sequence, we learn on how all the seven dwarfs are unsophisticated compared to Snow White. Their social skills weren't very good from the start, as they didn't know how to greet one another. Grumpy and Doc tend to argue in this sequence - and even argue horribly in the bedroom fight scenes that were deleted from the film. Grumpy is the most unsophisticated dwarf there. Throughout the film, the dwarfs become more sophisticated and mannered, thanks to Snow White. At first, they never washed their hands and rarely did so - even in the deleted soup eating sequence, they didn't know how to eat their soup properly, and often slurped their soup with those horrible sounds, or funny ways.

Grumpy is one of the main focuses in this sequence, he obviously doesn't want Snow White to be living here, and even in the deleted scenes where he and Doc fight horribly - there's a reason why he doesn't want her to stay. He thinks that Snow White is a witch and would cast a spell on the dwarfs, considering that her step-mother is "an old witch".

This there is the bedroom fight between the scene where the dwarfs say "Gooseberry pie - hooray she stays" and between the shot where the cauldron boils. The scenes do not work in that film, and the voices of the dwarfs have obviously been unedited or just recorded, and that's why the voices sound terrible. The animation is all by Fred Moore, and even Snow White scenes by Grim Natwick, and one scene of Snow White shouting "STOP" by Jack Campbell. It's a "miss" sequence, a sequence that doesn't belong in the film.

In this sequence, the main dwarfs animator here is Fred Moore, and he animates nearly of the dwarfs by himself - except for a few scenes that are animated by Frank Thomas in the beginning shots. As soon as Frank animates the dwarfs pulling the sheets off Snow White - Fred Moore takes over the dwarfs and continues from then on. I really like Moore's animation on the dwarfs, they are so flexible, smooth and very appealing - too. There isn't really bad animation in that sequence, they all work well. When you watch this sequence (as an animation enthusiast or historian), you can really see Fred Moore's animation in the film - with his rubber hose and chubby cheeks he provides for the dwarfs. Fred was a very young animator at the time (around 25 when animating this sequence), and yet he was very capable of animating great acting scenes like when Doc can't control his speech or what he's going to say, Fred was told to be a natural at animation - and never had any animation training - it goes to show that naturals are great at those jobs.

I also like Ham Luske's animation of Snow White a lot. He animates the entire character in that sequence (with one scene surviving in this sequence by Grim Natwick). Luske's animation of Snow White may look child looking, but not too much here in this sequence. I think that Luske's animation of Snow White really works here - she does look very different, from what Grim Natwick and Jack Campbell animate, and a lot younger looking - but the animation does work very well. Ham animates the lips very solid and smoothly done, and I like the way he animates Snow White's eyes differently from Natwick or Campbell.

All in all, this sequence is a great introduction to Snow White and the dwarfs - and they all decide that she could stay (just over gooseberry pie), and in that case - the dwarfs are still unsophisticated.

"Billy Elliott" - Review

2011-07-27T20:45:00.000-07:00

Last around last week - I went to London to watch Billy Elliott on Broadway, at the time I was quite aware that it was rated 15, and even though I'm very close to nearing that age - I still felt I shouldn't watch it, since I'm just barely under age. However, I got permission and approval from my parents, and it was either watching Billy Elliott or watch Shrek: The Musical - I admit that Shrek would suit my needs better.

I already saw the film Billy Elliott before watching it on Broadway, and I admit that I was pretty darn disappointed with the film in terms of character personality, really. There were some entertaining parts to the story, but the film wasn't my cup of tea to say the least. When I watched it on Broadway, it felt very slow watching it considering that I already watched the film (blame the teachers for that - they thought it was a wise idea to watch it on film before watching it on Broadway), and I admit it DID feel slow. The songs, were quite unmemorable in it (most of whom I forgotten already), and I admit I thought it was better than the movie - because the characters were better in it.

When I first saw it on Broadway, I had no idea it was based on the movie at all - and I thought it all started off from the musical. Now from what I've heard, it does make the musical unoriginal and the corny songs added to it, with some bad added dialogue in the musical. Since it's based on the movie, I'll review the movie:

Billy Elliott is a British drama film that was released in 2000. It was directed my Stephen Daldry, produced by Greg Brenman and Jon Finn, and written by Lee Hall -who wrote the whole concept of this story. The story mainly focuses in Durham, England and it's set during the 1984-1985 miner's strike in the UK and it was during the time when Margaret Thatcher was head of the Conservative Party, and when he considered closing down the mines. It was a depressing for 11-year old Billy (Jamie Bell) and his family, his older brother: Tony (Jamie Draven) and father Jackie (Gary Lewis) were miners and were out of a job, and they protested. Billy's mother died a couple of years earlier, and only a vauge memory for Billy. Billy's nan ends up living with himself, his dad and brother. She's rather old and senile, and wanted to a be a dancer when she was younger.

Billy had a strong passion for ballet all his life, and wanted to be a ballet dancer when he was older. When his father took Billy to the Sports Centre for boxing lessons. Billy has a hard time with boxing, and preferred doing ballet lessons. While he started to secretly join in ballet lessons, he struggled slightly, and his mentor was a strict, cantankerous ballet teacher named Mrs. Georgia Wilkinson (Julie Walters). One time, Billy's dad caught Billy from dancing lessons - and interrupted the ballet lesson to take Billy home immediately. Jackie [Billy's dad], who is rather outraged and worried - tries to tell Billy that ballet is for girls or boys that are "poofs", and tries to encourage him to do sports that are considered "manlier" like football, wrestling, rugby, etc. Billy rejects those options and rudely calls his Dad a "bastard", and storms out the house.

As Billy walks to Mrs. Wilkinson's house, he persuades her to try and do ballet lessons as secretly as possible - so he has some one-to-one sessions in Mrs. Wilkinson's spare time. In the meatntime, her daughter named Debbie who fancied Billy and tried to get Billy interested in her by saying, "I'll let you look at my fanny" - which is quite gross for a child to say that, and Billy never shown particular interest in her, much. She was just a minor character in the film who fancied Billy and that was it. Meanwhile, back to the plot - Mrs. Wilkinson asks Billy to bring him in some of his favourite things. Billy did come back with a few pointless stuff, and even a sweet, farewell letter from Billy's mother when he was littlle and as she read it - Billy read the letter off by heart. He also secretly stole Tony's casette album to the song We Love to Boogie. The more Billy dances, the better he got and the potential he got to join the auditions in Newcastle to apply scholarship at the Royal Ballet School.

One of Billy's friends - named Michael actually thought Billy was a "poof" since he liked ballet, and he started off wearing female's clothing at his home, and trying on makeup on Billy, and trying to convince him he's not gay. Even on a Christmas night, Michael tried to warm Billy's hands in his armpits, and kissed him on the cheek. Billy, convinced him again that he was not a homosexual, and Michael realized that he was right. Ballet is alright for anyone - and Billy kept the "kiss on the cheek" scene quiet, and not spoken.

On the day of the Newscatle audition, Billy ended up having to miss out on the audition because his dad and older brother ended up waiting in court. Mrs. Wilkinson enters the house later, furious at Jackie and Tony for their misunderstanding that Billy missed an audition, when actually Billy never said anything about it to his family, considering that he could get into trouble by them. He is ended up forced to give up forever, and Billy ends up dancing furiously, in a dance sequence.

Upon Christmas Day, when Billy and Michael were playing in the Sports Hall on Christmas, Billy does a ballet performance and Jackie enters the scene and watches Billy perform ballet for the first time, and this touches Jackie in a way because he had no idea that ballet was Billy's passion, and that he wanted to follow his dream. So, Jackie tries his best to go to the London auditions for Billy - by finding out the price from Mrs. Wilkinson (£'5000), and tries to cross the picket line in the sake of Billy's training. A few of the miners and neighbours help raise money for Billy's audition.

On the day of the audition, they arrive at London - Billy and his dad. They discuss about why his dad never went to London before, and he mentions because "they're no mines down there". Whilst arriving at the audition, Billy nervously dances in the audition and does his best -after that, the judges didn't raise anything and dismisssed him. Billy, furious from that judge's point of view becomes very upset claiming it was "a waste of time", and worried that his father payed so much money on nothing. As a fellow kid tries to comfort him, Billy physically assualted him. As Billy and his father enter the same room where Billy did his audition. They mentioned that physical violence would not be allowed, and that it was not only being a good ballet would offer you a place at the Royal Ballet School - you had to have good qualifications and academic standards in your schoolwork, and Billy was aware that he didn't do too well. The judges tells them that Billy will be informed through a letter in the next couple of ways, and says to Billy's father "Good luck with the strike".

A lettter finally arrives addressed to Billy Elliott - and as Billy reads the letter, he becomes amazed that he got a scholarship at the Royal Ballet School. His delights his father and brother very much, and are both very happy. In the meantime, the union said that the minors are being sent back to work which would be good news.

That's my review: When I first saw that film just last week - I admit that I thought that there were disappointments in it - in terms of personality wise. I really felt that the relationships between Billy and his father and brother - really lacked warmth in the film, and we only saw the warmth towards the end. I felt that he didn't see enough warmth, and that was quite sad to me. Well, I guess you can say that I'm an effectionate person. The relationship with Billy and his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson is quite strange time to time, she can be quite a bossy-boots, but also a sweet side. I didn't like her final scenes with Billy at the end - when she found out that Billy got a scholarship. She seemed rather cold from that standpoint, I suppose because he got to go to Royal Ballet School, and she was quite sad that he had to go already - and she knows that she can't teach him anymore. Also, I never ever quite understood the friendship between Billy and Michael, when he kissed Billy on the cheek - he didn't seem ticked off from that. Also, when he left home to say goodbye to Michael, he kissed him on the cheek, also.

Furthermore, I actually feel the movie is somehow similiar to Kes - my all-time favourite film. In a way, the character looks like Billy Casper from Kes, and the fact that story is about a boy with a hawk and he follows his dreams - except that his chances go very low towards the end.

There are morals in this film, the first is being a ballet dancer does not make you gay or a "poof" at all, and that's why there are famous athletes that do ballet, and they are very strong people. The second moral is to follow your dreams. If you have talent in your life, you should follow it and not spend the rest of your life doing checkouts at a supermarket (unless you think that it's fun).

Second Blog

2011-07-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

Okay - some of you folks who do follow my blog are probably thinking Why does Steven Hartley have two blogs now? Well, yesterday I opened up a blog titled Likely Looney, Mostly Merrie. The blog's purpose is meant to be focusing mainly on Warner Bros. theatrical cartoons from 1930 to 1969 - Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.

Recently, I've been thinking of preparing a challenge of watching every single Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies in release order from the very first Bosko short to the very last Cool Cat cartoon, basically the 1930-1969 era. I'm not only going to be watching them as part of the challenge, but another goal is to try and review every single one of them, each.

Some of you people may be raising their eyebrows about why I created a seperate blog on mostly Warner cartoons, and not just put it in my regular blog. The reason is that, recently I've became a real fan of Warner history - and I'm getting interested in identifying animators' work like Rod Scribner, Bob McKimson or Ken Harris, even. I have tons of more Warner posts to talk about - and I felt that putting them all in this blog is just going to fiddle and mess my schedule up. So, I felt that creating a new blog separately would be more suitable.

Furthermore, I should point out that I felt that my blog wasn't getting too much feedback as I felt - and I thought that creating a new blog on a different topic would be more interesting and that I felt that Disney has been discussed too much, and that more Warner posts need to be published. I don't recall a post where a blog on Warner posts reviewed every Warner shorts chronologically, but there is a Disney one. We do need more of those blogs I think. Don't worry, I'm not going to give up Blabbing on Arts and Culture - I still have more posts coming my way - but I just want to let you know that I may be focusing on that new blog a bit more.

Now, I know I've heard from people saying that there's 1'004 Looney Tunes shorts - but my count was only 1000 - but I still add 1'004 - because I tell them as I hear them.

Snow White Mosaic: Part 9

2011-07-25T21:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't been able to post this in quite a while, I was quite busy making this - and also leading to the creation of my second blog. But, now I'm able to post this and I'll go through as much detail as I can.

From the previous sequence, the animals heard singing voices. It's the seven dwarfs of course walking home singing Heigh-Ho - they stop and see something mysterious going on in their house. They feel that there could've been a "monster" breaking into their house or a burglar, perhaps. They start investigating, and while the animals trick them by making screeching sounds - they feel that the house maybe haunted, and Dopey investigates and spots a "monster" (Snow White in bedsheets), and runs out the house panicking, and Dopey is in pots and pans and the dwarfs believe that it's a monster before realizing it's just Dopey. Dopey pantomines on what's going on in the house - and they believe it was a ghost living up there (as Snow White covered with bedsheets, shows that it looks like a ghost).

To point out, Dopey is one of the main roles in which he causes the dwarfs to be scared. He gets the dwarfs scared twice, the first time when Dopey slams the door as they tiptoe inside the house - and the dwarfs panic and realize it was Dopey. The second time, was when Dopey went running out of the room panicking, and causing the dwarfs to mistakenly refer Dopey as "the monster". Funny enough, both those incidents were casted by the same animator - Art Babbitt. I wonder if he was cast for that particular reason?

Sneezy and Dopey are the only two dwarfs out of the seven, that cause the risks and fears of the dwarfs. Sneezy particularly sneezing so violently, that it blows the dwarfs away, and thinking that it would scare away "ghosts", and they would get killed. Grumpy and Doc appear to be the only two dwarfs, that are fully aware that there is something spooky going on in the house, and often try to stop the dwarfs from anything that would be considered risky. Grumpy does that job, like in the shot where Happy and Dopey smell some food in the cauldron, and Grumpy stops them - convinced that it's poison.

The animals play an important role in the haunted sequence, too. They're job in this sequence is to trick the dwarfs - as they believe that they don't belong here and to leave Snow White in peace. The birds would peck the rafter, and the dwarfs fearing something haunted going on. The birds make screeching sounds, that scare the dwarfs' out of their wits.

There are a lot of animators cast in this sequence for the dwarfs: in fact there is seven animators animating the seven dwarfs. None of them really specific dwarfs casting. The seven animators are Bob Wickersham, Fred Moore, Bill Roberts, Bill Tytla, Dick Lundy, Art Babbitt and Fred Spencer. Bob Wickersham is the only uncredited animator here who animated two minor shots. I admit, that I Wick's shots here are not very appealing and do look ugly looking - I wonder if that has a reason to why he lacks credit in the film?

I admit that I don't like Dick Lundy's animation too much - not as nice looking or enough appeal that the other animators give. Shot 19 of Grumpy by Dick Lundy, isn't very appealing to me at all - and Grumpy has those beady eyes there. It just feels that Lundy wasn't used to much of the modern animation in those standards, as he was an old fashioned animator. Hopefully, we might see more nicer work by him later on the film. He animates Sneezy quite strangely in shot 5 - with the cheeks, mouth and eyes. Although, I must say shot 3 by Dick Lundy was done pretty well.

Overall, it's a safe bet that Bill Tytla was the head animator on that sequence - even though he didn't animate it from start to finish. But he planned the animation mostly earlier on the sequence. Fred Moore only animates two shots here - and they are animated very well and entertainingly done. I always liked that shot where Sneezy's beard is tied to a knot - it's perfect casting for Moore, it would be a challenge and Moore would never lose it's appeal. If that was cast to a second-rate animator, it would lose it's appeal, most likely.

Bill Roberts does a neat introduction to the dwarfs where they are walking home singing Heigh Ho and when Doc halts the group and the dwarfs bump into each other - that has neat timing. Shot 27 by Bill Roberts is a good shot in terms of execution and the weight of being strucked by wind (sneeze).

Fred Spencer and Art Babbitt are my two favourite animators in this sequence, and they get to animate the best part of the sequence, which are the other part. The first part was animated by a variety of other animators, while Babbitt and Spencer then take over the final shots. Art Babbitt's animation of Dopey was wonderfully done in my opinion, and he gives Dopey the feeling of being scared like when he shakes and worried whilst going up stairs, he uses speed-lines for when Dopey turns when he hears Snow White's groan. He exaggerates the character's expressions, and gives Dopey a very expressive look. Shot 42, animated by Art Babbitt is a VERY expressive shot. It's so extreme, and Babbitt occupies a lot of squash and stretch in that animation. It really does look like Rod Scribner's work on Warner cartoons. Like I mentioned about the turtle in my previous post - the turtle is more Bill Melendez looking (in terms of Warner animation). Shot 42, is very extreme that it looks strangely animated - but I think it works in this sequence.

Fred Spencer also gets the bulk of animating the second half of this sequence and he animates it very, very well. I know of Fred as an early Duck animator before tragically dying in a car accident in 1938. He seemed to be a fast-action animator at comedy. He animates the shot where the dwarfs fall down the staircases when Dopey knocks them down - that was later reused in a Reitherman sequence in Sleeping Beauty. I like his use of speed-lines in shot 45. The animation of the dwarfs attacking Dopey thinking it's a monster - would've been a difficult shot to stage, and yet Spencer managed to handle it well.

Snow White - My View on the Character

2011-07-24T21:30:00.000-07:00

Since, I'm in the middle of producing the mosaics for Snow White and that I'm still working on a sequence. I also forgot to talk much about the title character herself, and I'm going to explain my views on Snow White, the princess.

Snow White, is more or less a character who is one of the Disney princesses that I consider quite weak character development. I know that some people's jaws would probably drop when I say this, but I admit that I don't think her personality is very strong and she's not even strong-willed like the other Disney princesses made. The only type of strong-willed princesses ever produced at Disney would include Jasmine in Aladdin, Ariel in The Little Mermaid, the title character in Cinderella, as well as a few others.

By what I meant was that, in a way she is quite a pathetic character, in my very own opinion. It's just that she never seems to complain too much - and I do think that she's very sexist in a way. She never really seems to stand up for herself. She's so ladylike, like when she tells the dwarfs to wash their hands or they'll not get fed at all. She's bascially meant to be a teenager, and she gets to tell the dwarfs off since they are much older looking, and they only seem to do that in terms of her beauty.

She's meant to be a easy-going type character, she's sort of treated like a slave - and yet is happy to do it. When the Queen dresses her in rags and orders her to be her maiden, there doesn't seem to be any negativism by Snow White about the Queen. She appears to just get on with it - and not complain about it, and enjoying it once she has company. She also appears to be happy to just clean up the dwarfs house, when they can just slack about - but she only does that in order that the dwarfs will let her stay.

In a way, she's quite a cowardly character, because whenever she is at risk with the Queen, she doesn't fight back - she just runs away. Although, I suppose she runs away because the Queen would just kill her and she doesn't have the guts to try and be brave. Even when the dwarfs leave for the coal mine, they ask her not to speak to strangers or not to have any acknowledge about them - and she promises. But, she is very naively when she encounters the Witch and not realizing it was a disguise. She somehow believes in her pack of lies like a "magic wishing apple", and she wishes what she wants - takes a bite of the apple, and then dies. See, this is why teenage girls can be foolish at times - and are unaware of strangers.

Also, I should point out that I do find the rivalry between the Wicked Queen and Snow White quite silly, in a way. The Queen and Snow White both have something in common - looks. The Queen does look beautiful in a way, but a rather cold, cold character. Snow White is as beautiful and as sophisticated as ever. The Queen just wants to get her back because of her jealousy since Snow White is more prettier. I just wish that there was more reason to why the Queen hates Snow White - the Queen not liking Snow White because she's prettier is just a lack of excuse, really. But I suppose, it does show what an evil character she is.

Furthermore, in a way that most Disney princesses do - Snow White is able to communicate with animals well - and typically sings to them or make them happy. It probably sounds quite wimpy or soft, but yet - it's animated - and Snow White and the animals are believable in their own ways.

That's as much as I'm going to on about - this is just my own personal view on the character, herself. If you have any more views, please say so.

Parrot's Whisky

2011-07-23T23:05:00.000-07:00

I haven't really had much time to go through a detailed and long post today and considering I haven't posted yesterday on Friday, I do like to post down a very funny joke I heard from my guitar teacher which I think you should know:

On an airplane, there was a man and next to him seated was a parrot with a belt strapped around him. As a stewardess walks by, she asks the gentlemen, "What can I get for you?", The man replies, "I'll have a cup of coffee." The parrot rudely replies, "Give me a bottle of whisky or I'll slap you." The stewardess quite annoyed over that response gives the parrot a bottle of whisky and completely forgets about the man's coffee.
The man asks again for another cup of coffee politely, the parrot interrupts and shouts, "Give me another bottle of whisky you tart!" So, the stewardess brings back another bottle of whisky for the parrot and completely forgot about the man's coffee again.
The man thought, "Hang on a minute - the parrot is being rude to the stewardess and he gets what he wants, maybe I should try that...", so he shouts to the stewardess, "Give me a cup of coffee or else," and the parrot shouts back, "Give me another bottle of whisky while you're at there!" So, the stewardess gets very angry and throws the man and the parrot off the place. The parrot then says to the man, "What's the big idea for you - you acted as though you could fly!"

Ha! I thought it was a very funny joke - I wonder if you can figure it out yourself with the punchline?

Snow White Mosaic: Part 8

2011-07-17T15:00:00.000-07:00

As promised, here is the new entry for a Snow White sequence - and this one is quite annoying because there is so little animator information here, and the usual no director or layout credit. I'll still try and go through as much as I can - even with not many information here.

The animation is mostly credited to Ham Luske here - and he animates Snow White here, and he appears to animate on behalf of the animal animation in the scenes where Snow White. The scenes only showing the animals have no animator credit - but there's only one shot of the turtle climbing up the stairs by Louie Schmitt - who later became a key animator on Bambi.

The sequence mainly focuses on Snow White and the animals (again), we see that they have finished cleaning the dwarfs' house and that they have nothing else to do - so they check upstairs curiously to find out what's up there - the animals follow. As soon as Snow White enters the bedroom, she's delighted to find nice looking beds in there. She reads the names of the seven dwarfs carved on the beds, and still mistaken them for children. As soon as she reads dwarfs' last name mentioned, "Sleepy" - she feels rather "sleepy" and as of the other animals, too. So, they start sleeping - and just as they were making themselves quite comfortable, they hear mysterious voices (of the seven dwarfs) and they all rush downstairs to see what's all the noise about?

It's a safe bet that Ham Luske planned and animated some of the animals in the uncredited shots - as well as animating the remaining uncredited Snow White shots. I assume that maybe Milt Kahl or Bernard Garbutt animate around here. The turtle is probably still animated by Louie Schmitt - and I think that shot 16 would've been animated by Kahl or Algar because there's a different animator's style there. The "take" shot of the turtle in shot 16 sort of remind me of Bill Melendez or Rod Scribner's work on Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies except maybe not as wild or as extreme.

Speaking of the turtle, we get to know the turtle a bit better in this sequence, and some good personality there. All the other animals are capable of going up the stairs quickly - while as for the turtle, it takes him a bit of time and effort to climb up the stairs, so he bites the top of the stairs to climb himself up. After all the effort of climbing up the stairs - and making it. His luck changed, and all the animals scram downstairs and the old turtle falls down the stairs, with bumps, and skids with his shell. It's quite an amusing shot - and it's a shame that we don't know who animated it.

The only known animal animator that animates here is Louie Schmitt for one scene - and he was an uncredited animator. Ham Luske was the animation supervisor for the animals as well as for Snow White - and he gets his share of the animals in this sequence, but that's about it.

It appears to be an early draft in this sequence because not only that there are many scenes without animator credit - but also that there are certain scenes that are not mentioned in the draft, and even some reworking that needed done there.

Shot 10 with the bird extinguishing the flame out with it's wing cap - I wonder why the feathers did not burn?

Bill Roberts - Disney Animator & Director

2011-07-15T22:16:00.000-07:00

I suppose that it's been a while since I last wrote a detailed biography and article on mystery Disney animators on guys like Cy Young, Don Lusk, Cliff Nordberg, etc. It's been months since I've last done that - and since I still have a little bit of information left that Joe Campana sent me - the only one I have left that isn't posted is on Bill Roberts - and I feel the need that maybe I should share a bit about Bill Roberts - who was a Disney animator in the 1930's and directed on features and shorts up to the late 1940's.

This picture was taken during the production of Fantasia. From left to right: Walt Disney, [Igor Stravinsky], and Bill Roberts at the far right demonstrating the storyboard.

Photo courtsey of Hoagan's Alley.

First, a little trivia: Bill Roberts is a Disney animator from the 1930's and up to the 1940's. He first came to the Disney Studios in 1932 as an animator and he was known as a "Pluto" animator in the mid-1930's - he worked as an animator on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - mostly of dwarfs, and he earned his way of becoming a director, and he directed sequences on Pinocchio around mostly at the ending - including the Whale chase, directed the The Rite of Spring segment in Fantasia, and he directed several sequences in Dumbo, Bambi, the llama sequence in Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, and Fun and Fancy Free. He also directed several shorts like Reason and Emotion, The Brave Little Tailor, Society Dog Show, as well as a few others.

First some history about Roberts: William Opal Roberts was born on August 2nd 1899 somewhere in Kentucky to parents W.A. Roberts (born 3/18/1873) and B.M. "Bertie" Roberts (born March 1878). He had an older brother named Bryan (born in August 1896), also from Kentucky. He is known to have lived around 1918 as a teenager, before moving to California in 1922 with family. He started off as an animator in 1919 at the Carlson Studio and left in 1922. He started off as a magazine illustrator for New York around 1929-1932, and he was married to Lillian in 1929 - and the couple are not known to have had any children.

He joined the Disney Studios in 1932 - working as an animator for Disney on cartoons like Giantland, Mickey Plays Papa, Mickey's Steamroller, etc. and some Silly Symphony shorts like Father Noah's Ark and Old King Cole in that era. [He also animated the parrot attorney in Who Killed Cock Robin - he was known for his speedlines in his animation]. His animation career mostly peaked around 1935 - when he was one of the top animators and also inspirations to the Nine Old Men - like Milt Kahl, who is believed to have been his assistant. Roberts was mostly known as a Pluto animator, working for Norm Ferguson - who was probably the top animator at the Disney Studios at the time working on Pluto - and he worked on Pluto in Pluto's Judgement Day working on Pluto and cats. Bill Roberts' most famous animation he did for Disney was on Alpine Climbers when he animated Pluto and the eaglet duelling, and also introductory shots of Mickey, Pluto and Donald climbing the mountain

Bill Roberts was one of the top animators at the Studio assigned onto Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and he has animation all over the film. Mostly animating the Dwarfs, and pretty much "hit and miss" scenes. He animated shots of Doc halting the group in their Heigh-Ho song noticing the house's lights are on. His scenes come mostly later on the picture, where he animates the dwarfs at the mine - and discover that the Witch has got Snow White. Roberts did the action scenes of the dwarfs chasing the Witch, as well as animating a couple of Witch scenes, along with Ferguson.

After the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and the advantages that the Disney Studios were getting, Roberts was soon promoted to director in 1938 - directing many sequences in Pinocchio - particularly the scenes later on in the picture. He practically directed every shot and sequence featuring Monstro the Whale, and just about every Jiminy Cricket shot directed by Roberts had Woolie Reitherman or Paul Busch animating. It's a safe bet that Bill Robert's top animator was Woolie Reitherman at the time. True, Roberts was the director of the sequence where Pinocchio and Jiminy return home to find that Gepetto had gone - and the fact that it was described as poor storytelling - with Jiminy reading the message (to Pinocchio) delivered to the Blue Fairy - whilst Pinocchio couldn't have read it himself.

Roberts went on to direct several sequences on The Rite of Spring - but he mainly directed on all the dinosaur sequences and anything that has living creatures in that segment. While Paul Satterfield did the non-living sequences with the earthquakes and evolution.

On Dumbo, he directed several sequences that had the clowns in them - doing their fire performance, and the animation in it really reminds me of later MGM animation - pretty much because it had Ray Patterson and Grant Simmons animating the clowns, and it showed that Roberts had a unique way of animation apart from the Disney standard. He also directed the Lullaby sequence with Dumbo and his mother embracing each other - which is one of the emotional standpoints in the film. He did one of the last sequences, in which the story was at it's peak when Dumbo flew at the circus and everyone first saw an elephant fly.

He also directed several sequences in Bambi, Saludos Amigos, The Cold Blooded Penguin in The Three Caballeros and several sequences in Mickey and the Beanstalk in Fun and Fancy Free. Bill Roberts left sometime around the late 1940's, and I believe that he became a Real estate manager and made quite a bit of money from that. He appears to have banished after leaving Disney, and never returned to the animation business.

Bill Roberts died on March 18, 1974 in Tulare County, California at the age of 74. His wife Lillian died five years later in 1979.

Snow White Mosaic: Part 7

2011-07-09T23:25:00.000-07:00

We have reached into the part with the song Heigh-Ho and all the seven dwarfs are introduced in this sequence, but imagine yourself watching the film for the first time in 1937, and not knowing any of their names, at first you don't know their names at all - and it's not clear to find out all of the dwarf''s names until when Snow White first encounters the dwarfs while she estimates their names correctly.

The first shot of this sequence introduces us to some of the dwarfs: Sneezy, Happy, Grumpy, Bashful and Sleepy on the cart with the deer attached to the cart. It's clear that those five dwarfs are minors, their occupation is mining, and all day they dig for gold - and that it's their hobby, and it's their job to find diamonds, rubies, crystals, etc. Happy, Sneezy, Grumpy and Bashful are four dwarfs are appear to be assigned as diggers searching for diamonds or any type of crystal that mine. Sleepy has the job of delivering the diamonds to Doc for approval, it's interesting to find Sleepy given the job to ride the cart - as he sleeps on the job and you don't do much. Doc appears to be the manager of the dwarfs while mining, and checking for any diamonds that are precious and valuable, and that are worth saving - buy doing that he taps the diamonds with his hammer for nice sparkling sounds - any dodgy sounds that Doc hears are no use and throws it away. Dopey, appears to be the janitor while mining - sweeping away any useless diamonds that are not worth, and throw them away. It seems appropriate to find Dopey working there.

Dopey appears to be the happiest worker at his job, and always smiling and doing his hokey-pokey stuff, like placing diamonds in his eyes - trying to entertain Doc. As Doc had no time for cracking jokes, he hits Dopey in the head, so the diamonds pop out of his eyes in time - and looks at him as a foolish character.

There are a few clever gags that are brought in this sequence. The first one, is in shots 7 and 8, when Sleepy finds a fly flying around and lands on a deer - and as he is a "sleepy" character, he has a stick in his hands and hits the deer's behind to try and catch the fly off. Much of the annoyance of the deer, he almost tries to buck Sleepy off the cart, which is a very funny gag. Shot 19 animated by Fred Moore, is masterfully done - and a lot of monument weight produced. Doc, as he's confident and aware of his abilities, throws the bag of diamonds in the vault successfully and walks off. Dopey, who is unaware of his ambitions and control, completely got out-of-hand while shaking his bag getting ready to throw the bag in the vault - and the force is so powerful, that it throws Dopey inside the vault. Dopey unlocks the key, and a great Moore part is when Dopey realises that he forgot to place the key by the hook, and then he catches up with the group singing Heigh-Ho.

There are a lot of dwarfs animators in this sequence, and there is some specific animator casting in there: Al Eugster animates the introduction shot of the dwarfs with their shovels and hitting the ground and getting on with their jobs happy. Bill Roberts animates scenes of Happy and Grumpy in single-shots digging for some diamonds. Marvin Woodward animates the scenes of the dwarfs, with their echo sounds responding back to the verse "In a mine." Les Clark takes in for animating the shots of Sleepy in the cart, and almost getting himself bucked off, with Eric Larson animating the deer carrying the loaded cart. Art Babbitt, appears to animate a shot of Doc testing the diamonds for approval and disapproval - Babbitt doesn't seem to animate much on the dwarfs, but the shot he animates on Doc has got some very good acting. Fred Moore gets the best scenes, and the juicy parts - with Dopey being a doofus and placing the diamonds on his eyes as a laugh, and including the bag throwing shots. There is one minor shot by Frank Thomas, and Shamus Culhane takes over the Heigh-Ho song - which he was long famous for. It's no surprise to see that Fred Moore supervised the dwarfs in this sequence.

Notice how that in Shot 14 that Fred Moore gives Dopey thick eyebrows for the close up shots, and a rather strong use of caricature there, compared to his other cute, appealing shots he worked on in this sequence.

This is Shamus Culhane's long famous animation in Snow White which is one of the most-famous scenes in the entire picture, and that the song is so recognizable that even the team in my Duke of Edinburgh expedition were singing the song during my travel - to tell you the truth, the song does get tiring to me - as I hear it too many times.

Shamus Culhane's animation in the film may not be very special or any personality scenes that he brings in - but it's a great way of putting the animation in the scenes with the beautiful layouts. I know that this may not have been the most interesting to animate, but at least Culhane put something good in his scenes, like the hitch-steps that Dopey does, that was suggested by Frank Thomas before. The final shot with the dwarfs walking into the distance is wonderful animation, and also the waterfall. Shot 1 with the dwarfs' overlayed shadows coming by is also a favourite of mine, and I assume that Culhane probably did the animation. It's a shame that Culhane doesn't get much footage in the rest of the film, but will we see him again?

In the draft, I noticed that there was a shot missing in the Heigh-Ho sequence, and that the shot was 28-feet long and also animated by Bill Tytla?? I wonder what Tytla was doing in this sequence, but unless he supervised Culhane's animation, and he spared a shot that was removed. It would also mean that a part of the song is also missing, which is really interesting - but I suppose that it's probably lost.

Cannon's Bugs

2011-07-08T23:09:00.000-07:00

As I've started to become really interested in Warner Bros. animation as well as I'm interested in Disney animation, I've decided that I might want to start identifying some Warner animator's work, and here is my first attempt that I'm going to go through in analysis.

A scene I'm going to go through with some poses is a scene by Robert "Bobe" Cannon in the short Hold the Lion, Please which is an early Bugs Bunny Chuck Jones short. Ken Harris is the only animator credited on that short and he animated the animals earlier in the short and other scenes, inc. the shot with the Lion on the phone to his wife.

The shot I'm referring to is when Bugs Bunny has already encountered the Lion, who is apparently the "King of the Jungle", and he tries to prove to his kingdom that he's King and able to kill a rabbit. Bugs Bunny pretends that he's scared and acts as though he's having a panic attack. It's one of my favourite bits of animation in Warner animation so far, and I like the animation style of Bobe Cannon. A very funny animator, and very expressive, who seems to move everything around on animation. He's really had some career at MGM, UPA, and Disney. An overlooked animator.

Here is the first bits of Bugs Bunny talking to the Lion, and trying to explain that he would run away if he was hunting a rabbit, before realizing that he's being hunted:

I really like the quick speed lines that Cannon provides in the animation of Bugs' hands that he uses to demonstrate. It's very flexible, and it really reminds me of Cannon's style, as he often made his animated characters move fast. I also like on how he prods at the lion's nose, and pokes his nose like a cushion.

Notice that in that pose, that while Bugs is still talking, Cannon widens Bugs' pupils to express fear, and the sarcasm Bugs was going to prepare.

This is my favourite facial expression in this shot where Cannon puts in a lot of expression with the mouth and the eyes widening. It's very powerfully expressed here, where Bugs says the line, "I am scared", the timing of the mouth and the eyes widening is just pure gold.

I like how Cannon lowers the ears, everytime Bugs says a verse on how terrified he REALLY is when the meek lion says he's trying to kill him. The way that the ears lower and the music timing is excellent, and I've got to praise Cannon here.

Another example which shows that Cannon's expressive animations, with the pupils moving sideways, and the facial expressions showing him with the scared look on his face is just priceless.

Wonderful Bugs Bunny facial expression here, this makes myself aware of Cannon's crazy animation style. I like how he seems to put bags under Bugs's eyelids, and the hair sticking out in the neck, and also the stretched mouth while he screams. The shot reminds me a lot of John Lounsbery's work on Jaq in Cinderella where the mice try to steal the beads and sash while Lucifer the cat is guarding.

I like here on how Cannon moved Bugs well on paper, from the first few feet of that scene, Bugs is very close to the screen and then he runs further away, and then back into a good close up. This is a good achievement back in 1942.

Bugs finds his way back onto the camera close-ups.

I love the looks on Bugs' face (above the writing), with the goofy look.

"Shriek, shriek - scream, scream..." Bugs being sarcastic as he pantomines.

This here shows a crazy cycle where Bugs Bunny hops away pretending to panic as the Lion is just standing there, baffled. Bugs was rather astute in that scene, because he knew how meek the Lion was, and that he was powerless, and Bugs pretending to be scared meant that Leo would not do anything. I also love the voice of Tedd Pierce who provided the voice of the lion, and Tedd is also another great Warner story guy (along with guys like Michael Maltese, Warren Foster, Dave Monahan, etc.).

With this shot, I've actually always been curious with the lines placed by the lion's face. Are they reaction shots of the lion, or is it film scratches?

I remember when I first saw the cartoon Hold the Lion, Please when I was about 8 years old and there used to be an old VHS copy I had on Tom and Jerry and there were clips for a Looney Tunes clip, and they showed about two minutes of Hold the Lion, Please. I must say, I've always thought that the shots with Bugs pretending to be scared were the ending shots because of the "fade to black" shots, and the fact that the clips in the VHS copy went straight to the That's All, Folks! title cards.

It was a few years later when I finally got to see a good look at the cartoon, and I didn't realize that there was still a good chunk in there that wasn't included in the VHS tape. I missed out the Mrs. Bugs Bunny part - where Bugs claims that "he wears the pants in his family".

It's one of my favourite Warner cartoons because it was one I've always been familiar with for a long time, and I always liked the personality of the lion, as he's the king of the jungle and very powerless, thanks to Tedd's story genius. What I find funny is that they say that lions are the "King of the Jungle", when lions don't even live in jungles - they live in the Savannah - so they could be called "King of the Savannah".

I hope to do more analysis on particular scenes of well known shots by the Warner animators, and take a look and learn. I hope you have enjoyed this post.

Snow White Mosaic: Part 6

2011-07-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

As tomorrow will be Independence Day for the United States, and that I'm away during the week. Here is the mosaic for the Whistle While You Work sequence, like I promised. I know that my postings may be goofed - and that I'm unavailable, but that doesn't mean I'm gone.

The sequence immediately starts as soon as the song starts, which is appropriate - as soon as the birds chirp and start the chorus, with Eric Larson starting the song. The working sequence is a very illustrious sequence in Snow White, and notice that in the shots - a lot of it focuses on the animals cleaning up, and that Snow White doesn't appear in very many shots. Although, it's safe to say that Grim Natwick animates the bulk of Snow White in this sequence, with one shot interrupted by Jack Campbell.

What I like about this sequence is that the animals get their responsibility for their rise to shine. I like the gags that are involved in the animals, because it shows that the animals would be capable at cleaning the house and certain struggles that are part of the gag. There are anatomies of the animals are are part of the gags, like the squirrel in shot 9 has a larger tail to dust away the cobwebs in the ceiling, while the chipmunk in shot 10 has a smaller tail, and couldn't be able to do pull away the cobweb very easily and slips and happy landing, lands into a sock.

I must say the song written by Frank Churchill and Larry Morey, was a very well-known that it has been spoofed several times on television and films. The sequence has been parodied in Enchanted where the Princess and the animals clean up in the awful song Happy Working Song. Even the popular British comedy series Dad's Army had spoofed the song into a very funny verse: Whistle while you work - Hitler is a twerp - he's so barny, so's his army - and whistle while you work.

The animals cleaning up the house really shows what character animation really is, and it shows a clear explanation that the animals have personality, and that they can help out Snow White with the chores, in order to please the dwarfs. There are numerous gags here in what the animals do, and some of the gags are pretty clever, like the squirrels using their tails to clean the plates like a dishwater - is a very clever gag. Shot 6, with the squirrels dusting the dust into the mouse hole gives a clear explanation of laziness, - while trying to sweep it under the rug, but told off by Snow White for doing do, they thought they were cunning enough to sweep it into the mouse hole, and not realising that there is a mouse living under there.

The main animal animators that are animating in this sequence are Eric Larson, Milt Kahl and Jim Algar. Bernard Garbutt has no involvement here, but we do see two uncredited animators working here which are Louie Schmitt and Cornett Wood. I have no idea why Wood is working in this sequence, I thought he was doing effects of the cobwebs, but he did the squirrel, also. I suppose that Cornett was doing character animator before moving onto effects, and later becoming a Warner layout man for Bob McKimson.

Milt Kahl appears to be the animator who animates most of the gags for the animals in this sequence. Shot 15, is a favourite of mine by Kahl - and I've done from framegrabs of that shot, pose-to-pose.

Shot 15 is just perfect animation with some very neat timing. In frames 1 to 8, there is a gag where the chipmunk is scrubbing a piece of clothing with the tortoise being the washboard, the tortoise appears to be making facial expressions of the tortoise giggling, and rather ticklish. The birds, then appear to be taking the piece of clothing away to dry it off, and as the chipmunk wasn't finished, they have a tug of war completion fighting over the sleeve (with the tortoise supporting the chipmunk's strength). Frames 12 to 14, show a clear example of squash and stretch. Frame 15 shows the chipmunk being forced into the turtle's shell - and that shows excellent timing. In roughly 3 frames shown of the chipmunk with the force to throw him into the turtle shell, is one of Kahl's best scenes - and excellent comedy work that he does.

The sequence ends with Snow White dusting outside the house with the multiplane shot trucking back with a view of the animals cleaning the house and Snow White continuing her song, and enjoying the fun while cleaning the house. As the song in the lyrics, explain how cleaning can be fun and they are happily tidying up the cottage.

This is all for my commentary, the next sequence is the first appearance of the seven dwarfs, and Heigh-Ho. I won't be probably posting (again) until July 15th because I have to stay a school weekend (again), it's not my fault - because my parents are going to Denmark for a week, and I can't stay at home on my own otherwise it's against the law.

New "T&J" Golden Collection DVD

2011-07-01T15:21:00.000-07:00

While I had been away for two weeks, I took a look at Cartoon Brew's site - and noticed that on one of their posts - that there was going to be an upcoming DVD collection called the Tom & Jerry Golden Collection and from what I heard, I feel that it's going to be bigger and better. From the older DVD collections there used to be like the Spotlight Collections or the Classic Collection. I remember that they would leave out a few shorts in the original series, and that had always used to really tick me off - when cartoons like Mouse Cleaning or The Million Dollar Cat were excluded, and I used to think - why? Now, those cartoons will be included in the Golden Collection - and Mouse Cleaning will be hopefully be restored for the second Golden Collection set.

Here is the cover, for the new set - and I really like this. It sticks to the original Tom and Jerry animation from the early 1940's, and I feel that this cover explains that the original Bob Allen designs of Tom and Jerry show that this IS the 1st edition - while in the next one, it'll show the designs that we know T&J today. The designs here is basically a take from The Midnight Snack which is probably the first "official" Tom and Jerry short - where they are named, designed, and with producer Fred Quimby.

Here is the episode list of what is going to be at the new box set:

This should sound exciting for me, but I do feel that Mouse Cleaning could be at least included in the box set, but I'll just have to wait and see. I've heard that in the DVD set, that they are going to be shown in their original 1.33:1 aspect ratio from their theatrical releases, well at least according to Jerry Beck. It would mean that probably the original title cards will be shown - probably. It means that the original Lillian Randolph dialogue for Mammy Two-Shoes will be included, apart from modernized African-American actresses that were called in to make the voices more appropriate, and even excluding the re-animated scenes with a white woman involved. I've always thought that Mammy Two-Shoes was a fun character to me, it's the dialogue that she says that makes me laugh - but that's another story.

Anyways, I'll be looking forward to the DVD coming out with some documentaries with one called Vaudeville, Slapstick and Tom and Jerry - and I'm wondering - when does this reach overseas at the United Kingdom?

Del Connell Still Around?

2011-06-28T09:46:00.000-07:00

Hi folks,

Sorry that I haven't been posting in the weekend because I had my Duke of Edinburgh "Qualifying" Expedition in that weekend and I left you with no notice - sorry.

While checking my home e-mails, I noticed an interesting one by Didier Ghez, and it mentions about Del Connell is still alive, and even mentions so in this blog post. Del Connell is a Disney artist, mostly famous for his comic book work in the 1950's for Disney comics, and also did some story work on Alice in Wonderland and The Three Caballeros.

From what I've heard, Del doesn't appear to be in very good shape at the moment - and it doesn't seem to be the right time for interviews, if anyone out there knows any more - ask me. It's very sad to hear from what I've heard, he's got Alzheimer's, which means that he can't even remember anything about his career and so forth.

"Super Size Me" Review!

2011-06-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

In my Science lessons at school - I'm currently studying Biology, and we were taking a look about obesity and health issues. We have been watching parts of the documentary Super Size Me on YouTube, and I thought it was a very interesting documentary, that today I decided to watch all of it from the beginning to end.

Super Size Me is a 2004 documentary written, produced, directed and featuring Morgan Spurlock. The documentary is sort of about controversy about the very popular fast-food chain company - McDonald's. Morgan is one of the Americans who are fit and healthy, and he decided (as a test) to try out and eat 30 days of nothing but McDonald's food, for breakfast, lunch and supper.

As he had several blood tests and fitness tests, his results of his normal diet show him as a healthy man in excellent shape. Morgan had actually been planning on the 30-day trial after the lawsuit against two obese teenage girls: aged 14 and 19, who tried to sue McDonald's about their obesity, before it was made illegal to do so. While doing the trial, he had to eat everything that was ordered on the menu for one of the 30 days period. If he was ordering his meal and was offered a "Super Size" meal, he was to accept all of it. He also had to try out walking like a typical American person would walk per day (1.5 mile) while Morgan walked 3 miles.

The documentary didn't just show clips of him eating his McDonald's meals - it shows some interesting footage on people's thoughts of fast food restaurants, and that the health effects on the American people. Morgan also mentioned that, America may be the most "fattest nation" but it was already becoming an unintelligent country. I'm not saying that to offend them, but this was from Morgan's words - to be honest - Britain is actually catching up as being a fat nation with health problems. Japan remains a country with the highest life expectancy rate, at around 82 or 83 - because of their good health, and the amount of rice they have, Canada is also at a pretty good life expectancy rate, too.

What really interested me was the fact that everywhere you go around the country, or anywhere - there would be a McDonald's restaurant everywhere. The advertisements with Ronald McDonald and other characters would be encouraging children to eat more of their food products which would mean that they would gain more weight. To be honest, I always thought of Ronald McDonald as some sort of pedophile character - even though I don't think he's done anything THAT harmful to kids.

As I recall, watching it from the beginning - I saw a group of 8-9 year old kids that appear to be sitting at the steps at some park and they are singing "McDonalds! Pizza Hut! KFC!" and singing that this was the food that people eat and that everyone enjoy. Erm? Really kids - I'm still a kid - a teenager perhaps, and to tell you the truth - I never ever go to McDonald's, the only time I would be ever go there if it was ARRANGED in a trip, and I only ever go there about 3 times a year. I would only go in there if there was a McFlurry there, and have that on such an occasion and walk out - myself eating a Big Mac or cheeseburger? That's very rarely ever seen of me doing so. I prefer getting some steak bakes at a bakery shop to take away and eat - if I was out in town, or lunch at Sainsbury's with some cocktail sausages or nice, saucy chicken legs - as a rare treat.

It seems that there are quite a number of people that were interviewed that were questioned on "How much fast food do you eat", and one person said, "Oh, every once in a while", and then Morgan replied "How often?" and the man replied, "Once every two weeks." Two weeks??? That doesn't sound like once in a while to me - it sounds like 'often' to me. There were some locals who were boasting about how cool McDonald's is and that they would be heading off for a burger right now. There was one guy who looked like a hippie named Don Gorske who is most well known for eating more than 25'000 Big Macs in his lifetime. To be honest, I don't think that it is an achievement of eating all those Big Macs - it's just years wasted on buying burgers. What's amazing is that he hasn't had any health problems and he looks very slim. Unless, he burned a lot of calories if he does any fitness activities?

Another part of the documentary, when Morgan had reported that United States is becoming a more unintelligent nation, and there were some extract footage showing these kids that were roughly aged 6-8 years old (some of them looked very unhealthy, comparing to how very little amount of teeth they have), and Morgan was showing a variety of pictures of Notable people from America and McDonald's advertisement characters. Some of them only vaguely knew George Washington in the picture. There was one picture where all the kids said "Nope, don;t know who he is", and Morgan turned the picture around and there was a picture of Jesus Christ - at that part with the picture of Jesus, I just burst out laughing at the fact and wondering, "Surely, they can't be THAT thick?"

After, days had past - Morgan Spurlock was becoming ill more and more, and he was gaining a bit of weight. The amount of food that he ate at McDonald's lead to him in a state of depression, migraines, sexual problems and became frigid, and had to take numerous blood tests inbetween those 30 days to show the consistency and comparison in the previous blood tests.

What I found interesting was the fact, that it wasn't only McDonald's causing the problems of the people's health and physical features, schools were providing junk food and a lack of a good, balanced diet. There would be pupils who would rather eat chips or nuggets, and not go for any of the goodies like fruit salad, vegetables, etc. There was a behaviour school in Wisconsin where the school provided excellent diets for the family, with enough peas and carrots, meat, vegetables, fruit salad, lasagne, etc. It was very interesting for me because they were providing a diet that most schools didn't provide, which is disappointing in a way.

After Spurlock completed his final McDonald's meal in the 30th day - there was a celebration party, and Murgon was delighted and his physician said that he ate 90 meals of McDonald's in that month which is about 8 years of an ordinary person eating it once a month. Incredible.

After watching it, I thought that it was a very inspiring documentary - and Morgan and the McDonald's opponents made a very good point on the effect of your health. It wasn't the food that was the problem, it was sort of the people with the addiction, as it was mentioned in the film. It's one of the best documentary films that I've seen, and I do think Morgan Spurlock is an excellent documentary presenter, and I'm starting to become a fan of his material.

I also felt some pity with the people that were overweight, who couldn't help that, and I can't blame them for that.

The entire film is on YouTube, I suggest you should go and watch it - it's definately worth watching and reciting.

I wasn't writing this review with a snooty attitude, but I was trying to make a point on how it's becoming a problem and that people should realize that. I hope you have enjoyed my review on that documentary written.

Snow White Mosaic: Part 5

2011-06-17T23:04:00.000-07:00

Sorry, that I haven't been able to post a mosaic in quite a while - but here is a treat of a new sequence in Snow White.

As far as we have got up to, Snow White and the animal creatures have became friends and they agree to find a place for Snow White to live for a short while, and there, she finds a beautiful cottage (home to the Seven Dwarfs) and admires the house quickly, and takes a look inside. Now, from the outside view of the cottage, the house looks beautiful with a river flowing and butterflies flying around the house (animated by Cy Young). Therefore, the looks of the house from the outside appeals to Snow White and the animals, so they take a look inside the house. All to Snow White and the animal's surprise - the house is dirty, unorganized, and dark.

Snow White, although she still wants a place to stay and still determined not to go back to the castle where she would be surrounded with danger by the Queen, or the scary forest where she could be scared out of her wits. She mistaken the Seven Dwarfs as "seven little children", and believing that the so-called "children" are orphans and that was probably the case of why that the cottage was a slum. Hoping, that the "seven children" would offer her a place to stay at the cottage, and by doing that - she and the forest animals will clean up the house for the dwarfs and that she'll be liked a lot by them, and she'll be able to get a place there for sure.

Shot 1, with the butterflies appear to have been animated by two animators: a character animator and an effects animator: Ham Luske and Cy Young - now, I'm not sure what Ham Luske is doing there because the butterflies flittering around the cottage would be done by an effects artist, unless Ham Luske supervised the earlier shots. Cy could very well have done the river stream in that shot that's in the background.

Ham Luske's earlier scenes (again) demonstrate on how he handles the title character child looking. Shot 2 with the line "just like a doll's house" and the actions show, gives a very clear example on a Ham Luske scene. Tell you what, how about we could have a small game throughout the mosaic on spotting a Ham Luske scene and once the sequences get posted, the answers come.

Yet again, it appears to be that Jack Campbell takes over a lot of Snow White shots, and even a lot of scenes supported by his assistant Tony Rivera. It appears to be that Tony was Campbell's key assistant, I wonder why he wasn't in the screen credits since he contributed a chunk of Snow White there, although I suppose the reason why was because since his shots were supported mostly from character animator, Jack Campbell - the Board decided that it didn't count for Tony to merit credit.

The single-shots of the animals looking at the pile of dishes, is a great way of explaining the story through with the dirty dishes, without the Snow White having to animate the explanations, the layout artist and animal animators did a great job with showing what was going on - e.g. "Cobwebs everywhere - my, my, my!" the chipmunk is covered up with cobwebs and struggles to free himself shows of how dirty the house really is.

Another example shows the dirtiness of the house, is at the shelf of the fireplace with dust - it appears that dead skin had gone onto that fireplace - and another example on how the animals show you how it's dirty, is that the squirrels are sneezing over the dust, and there is some neat amount of weight used in there. The taller squirrels sneeze due to the reactions of dust, and they are big and strong enough to sneeze it out, while the little one is so small and weaker that it sneezes itself into the jat. It's an entertaining shot in its way.

Well, it appears to be that a few of the shots with the turtle wasn't all animated by James Algar, there were several shots of the turtle approaching into the dwarf's cottage and the animals running out - and the turtle was by Eric Larson.

I will leave it for now, and next up Whistle While You Work.

My Visit to see The Rite of Spring

2011-06-12T13:16:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, 8 June 2011 - I was at a school trip and I was lucky enough to be invited by the Music Group to go to the Royal Opera Hall to watch Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. At school, I don't take Music as a subject - but the music teacher knew that I was a fan of Stravinsky, myself - and I was originally invited to go to it back in February. Around a month ago, I was told that I couldn't go because there wasn't a spare ticket. Until a week ago, there was a student that was absent from going and my luck turned and I was able to watch The Rite of Spring - I was in heaven when I found out that I was able to go.

We took our journey by the train and all the way to East Croydon, and we walked to the Royal Opera House in London - I couldn't believe that I was going to be going to one of the world's most famous opera houses in the world. I had been there before when I went to see The Rake's Progress - also composed by Stravinsky.

I was told that there were going to three music pieces going to be performed, and The Rite of Spring - and I had to wait until the end and watch through the first two boring pieces. While at the seats, and the show began - I was pretty infuriated with constant sounds in the audience, and I turned to find that it came from disabled people - I felt pity for them because I knew they couldn't help that - so I just had to get on and try and listen to the piece and ignore, like a gentlemen. While there were intermissions going back, the teachers had asked students for any ice-creams and only those with money could buy some - I didn't care really that I didn't have any money because I was looking forward to the final piece with Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

I already knew the history of it's premiere that there was a riot during the beginning of the performance, with the heavy dance steps, and the music in it, that they ended up throwing food at the dancers and the curtains had to be closed. I was glad to see that none of this happened at the premiere. ;-)

I had made a bet with another teacher on what the instrument at the very beginning was, I was sure that it was the oboe, and the teacher was sure it was a bassoon. Until the presenter came to talk to the audience, he said that he was a high bassoon, I was wrong - but it was difficult because both instruments sounded similar.

We are mostly familiar with The Rite of Spring in Disney's Fantasia with the dinosaurs and the growth of life. When I heard the music, I was visualizing the music as if it was going through the movie and it was excellent. However, I was pretty disappointed to discover with the Stravinsky piece that the music for Fantasia had been reorganized and I do understand why Stravinsky didn't like that. I noticed that there were music in the original piece that never got into the movie.

I remember walking out of the theater thinking what a great piece it was and that it was a real treat for me to be off school not doing lessons and enjoying listening to classical music at the Royal Opera House in London.

Here is a piece on YouTube to celebrate The Rite of Spring in three parts with the original costumes:

Part One.

Part Two.

Part Three.

Enjoy.

New Blog, New Inspiration

2011-06-11T21:19:00.000-07:00

I know that I said that I wasn't going to post until June 17th, but I thought I was staying a school weekend, but it turned out that I was going home. So, I can post a bit more then.

While going home today, and to find out some news on the animation blogs, I heard about the Fred Kopietz interview and I managed to read it at school, but there were a lot of people screaming and excited about later Disney animator Andreas Deja who has opened up an animation blog, and he's created it about a week ago and it's already making excellent progress and a lot of readers attracted.

For those who don't know Andreas well, here is a brief info - Andreas Deja is an Animator who arrived at Disney in 1980 as a mentor for Eric Larson, and then went on to animate on The Black Cauldron and later became a Directing Animator on The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, etc. I somehow usually thought of him as a villain animator - like when he worked on Jafar, Gaston, Scar, etc.

I've seen his blog posts on the Nine Old Men like Milt Kahl or Eric Larson, and Marc Davis - and they're all very neat and inspiring - and he's got production drawings of them and pictures. He sure is lucky to have met them and own these drawings - I wonder if they were worth a fortune collecting those. He's got some amazing posts coming up - and even mentioned to me in a comment about an upcoming post on Woolie Reitherman, which I will be looking forward to a lot.

This will be interesting to find about.

2011-06-05T08:46:00.001-07:00

A quick note to tell you that next week I have a school fete, so this blog may not be updated until June 17th.

One Year Today

2011-06-04T23:23:00.000-07:00

With 195 posts being posted so far, and more than 350 comments being published (inc. my responses), and with more than 50'000 page views. My blog Blabbing on Arts and Culture has reached one year ever since I created it and my very first post.

You could say that I've contributed a lot of posts in a year's worth of posting, even though I may have been away at boarding school in many weeks. Heck, this won't stop me from retiring, I've still got tons more stuff to share with you and write about. I've even enjoyed the happy comments I've received and I hope that it will continue.

What do you think has been the peak of my blog, like what particular post have I written that has been your favourite in a year, so far? Some might say that my posts on Don Lusk or mosaics have been my peak, but I'd like to hear your thoughts?

Well, this is one year completed, and I'll continue to look forward another year.

Snow White Mosaic Part 4

2011-06-03T23:27:00.000-07:00

Snow White has gone far off into the woods, and she already expressed her fears through the scary eyes and trees in the forest, but somehow a group of eyes turn out to be lovely, harmless forest animals who befriends Snow White.

It appears to be that Disney and his Story crew wanted a sequence from the previous where there was a dark setting with Snow White in the forest and how scary it was, and this time they wanted a rather more light-hearted sequence. The audience will recognize some animals in there, and they'll go "Aww" and admiring how "cute" the animals would be.

Snow White immediately breaks down into tears after all the horror she is going through. The dark atmosphere of the forest fades away and there come a group of eyes through the darkness of the forest. The eyes appear much closer and we reveal forest animals and they are appalled, "What is this creature doing in the forest?" They approach much closer while Snow White is continuously bursting with tears. Snow White accidentally scares all the animals away as she reacts to the rabbit sniffing her. She has already been through some tough experience like the most recent one through the spooky forest, and the cold Queen stopping at nothing but to kill Snow White. She hopes that she doesn't go through any worse, but get some help from the animals and a sing-song will lighten her up.

As a result, the atmosphere lightened and the animals are very happy for her, and determined to help her find where she will stay as long as the Queen doesn't find her. This is a good sequence in which the emotions change well. Of course, there are methods and theories that singing makes people feel better, and it shows here with Snow White, as she was "white" with fear, and after breaking down from sobbing.

I have to admit that some of Snow White's dialogue written in the film just don't feel as if it matches what she is saying. It feels that every verse she writes ends up as a rhyme, for example "It's all because I was afraid, I'm so ashamed of the fuss I've made." or "What do you do when things go wrong? Oh you sing a song!" The best dialogue and the best poems don't rhyme. I know that, but I suppose Disney wanted it that way. Of course, it doesn't appear very much in the film, but suppose that this was probably one of the earliest sequences with story work finished.

Some nice animation from all the animators. This is another sequence in which Jack Campbell animates a lot of the animation. Ham Luske animates the earlier scenes of Snow White apologizing to the animals for scaring them and explaining about the depression she would be going through. While Snow White, starts singing to the little bluebird, Jack Campbell (and his assistant) Tony Rivera immediately take over the animation. I just wonder what Tony Rivera is doing, credited for a lot of Campbell scenes - could Campbell he supervising the animation and Tony "filling in the blanks", it certainly shows that Tony was Jack Campbell's key assistant on that film. In between Campbell's animation - Grim Natwick animates one scene of Snow White, and it's a pretty vital scene.

Campbell's animation of Snow White show some sophistication here, and he seemed very capable of animating the character. He certainly animates the character much more maturely and human-like than Ham Luske, some of Luske's scenes were pretty good - but not as grown up as Campbell was. It goes to show that mystery animators like Jack were very capable of animating. Funny enough, with Jack Campbell being a mystery, there is another "Jack" that is indeed a mystery - but an illustrious mystery, it's "Jack the Ripper".

The animal animators on this sequence are Eric Larson, James Algar, Milt Kahl and Bernard Garbutt. Each of those animators appear to be typecast here: Eric Larson animates mostly birds around here, and Bernard Garbutt animating a lot of deers and even the group of animators leading Snow White to a location where she could stay; Milt Kahl animating bunny rabbits or chipmunks, and Jim Algar animating chipmunks and even the turtle. Notice how every shot featuring the turtle appears to be animated by James Algar. We might see if there's other animators doing the turtle. You even notice that Ham Luske does some scenes of the animals here - Hollywood Cartoons says that Ham Luske supervised the animal animation as well as Snow White.

Eric Larson and James Algar appear to be the main animators on this sequence doing chunks of animation, with Milt Kahl and Bernard Garbutt supporting the scenes. Eric Larson handles a lot of birds and does some great animation of the little bird singing to Snow White - I wonder if this is the same bird from the previous sequence. Shot 15BBBB does excellent exaggeration of the pigeons reacting to the baby pigeon going out of tune. Besides, notice how the draft writes the scene numbers strangely starting from 15B to 15BBBBB? Is it really that normal?

Is that Max Gray animating on Shot 6, if so then I'm going to say that he did Snow White - since he worked with Ham Luske on the Huntsman. We are seeing quite a bit of uncredited folks on Snow White already - we might come across some more later.

Is it just me or is it the way that Adrianna Caselotti sings the song With a Smile and a Song that it sounds like Betty Boop a bit, or will it be me imagining things? There is an interesting part with Adrianna singing that song in Brian Sibley's interview with Adrianna in Walt's People - Volume 7. There's also an interesting video I saw on The Illusion of Life documentary (not the book) where Adrianna remembers the lines off by heart.

Scenes 1 and 3 are both done by the Multiplane camera as the draft completely labels "MULTIPLANE" on the Background data on those scenes in the draft. I can see that shot 1 was definitely used by the multiplane camera. I feel that shot 29 was also done by the multiplane camera as well.

Interesting Kimball Reponse to Younger Animators

2011-06-02T23:35:00.000-07:00

While I was reading through a very interesting Ward Kimball interview by Thorkil B. Rasmaussen in Walt's People - Volume 3. There was one part of the volume that really interested me and the way Kimball explained it. The interview was conducted in 1978, and at the time Ward was teaching an art class once a week.

Here is a part of the interview that I like:

TR: I know that you (the Disney Studio) are looking for new talents for future productions?

Ward Kimball: Yes, but you see, today we don't have that great training ground called the shorts. We all worked on shorts, but we didn't have to be quite so exact; we could get away with small tricks, but you can't do that on a feature. So they don't trust new guys to take over whole sequences. But when you rehearsed and were trained on the shorts in the early days, you began to be noticed as a qualified animator. Then you graduated to the features. It was a stepwise evolution that they don't have today. You just don't learn everything sitting next to an animator. You learn by doing the stuff yourself.

The person conducting the interview, was talking about the future generations when that the old animators will have to retire and the newer generations of animators will have to take over. It seems that from Ward's point of view that he was explaining about that the problem with new animators is that in the 1970's - there wasn't any animated shorts being produced, and only animated features and live-action movies. The great animators that were considered veterans by the 1970's, all learnt from working on the shorts like a Silly Symphony short or Mickey Mouse. The process was being made until shorts were abandoned by Disney mostly until the early 1960's.

Of course, there were good animators at the time who were very capable of animating whole sequences like Don Bluth, although as Floyd Norman has mentioned: Don was one of the animators in the "middle group". While there were the older, more experienced animators (born around 1900's and early 1920's) and there's the younger animators (1940's and 1950's), and the middle group were born around (late 1920's and 1930's).

Ward is right in a way that if you were working on a short, you could get away with the crude animation in it, even though there were tons of animated shorts produced in the Golden Age with some crudeness into it. Walt Disney has always wanted realism into his shorts, so that's probably why the 1930's shorts resulted with some crude animation, either because an animator attempted to do its best and ended up animating as a bad result, or that they knew they knew they would get away into it.

That's probably why younger animators were not trusted by the directors and the producers to animate and plan the entire sequence, because they feared of the little amount of experience they had and that the results will be bad. The supervising animator planning a sequence is clearly shown in The Rescuers where there were junior animators like Gary Goldman, Andy Gaskill, Ron Clements, etc. doing bits of animation in several sequences. About every sequence in the film has a Supervising Animator or a veteran animator planning and animating much of the sequence, making sure that the character animators wouldn't screw up a scene - it seems that guys like Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Milt Kahl or Cliff Nordberg kept a special eye on them.

I suppose that the "shorts" was no longer created for Disney animation in the 1970's and it led to Eric Larson becoming a mentor for the all-new Disney training program. By the The Fox and the Hound and Pete's Dragon. The young animators were on their own, it was up to them to have the confidence to make these pictures real - and Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, or Woolie Reitherman were not there to help them as they would be in retirement, with Eric Larson preparing them by mentoring them.

Even Kimball mentioned that you "couldn't do tricks" on a feature. I wasn't too sure what me meant but I suppose he was talking about that crude animation wasn't allowed on a feature. Of course, there has been crude animation that somehow survived into an animated feature, even at Disney.

I'm going to leave my little talk. This is part of a Ward Kimball interview in Walt's People - Volume 3. I definitely recommend that you should collect the series of them edited by Didier Ghez. He's published ten volumes of these so far, and they're all worthy. I haven't got all the books myself, but I'm slowly collecting the series, I'm currently looking forward to Volume 11 for some more surprises.

They Call Him Merlin Jones!

2011-06-01T14:46:00.000-07:00

Here is what I found while I was typing up "Merlin Jones on YouTube, and I found the entire movie on YouTube which is The Misadventure of Merlin Jones (1964). I thought that it was brilliant, and I spent my time watching the movie. I thought it was a decent Disney movie, and it's like a typical popular movie that teens and kids would go to see in the cinemas.

Probably my favourite part is the very beginning in the film with the special titles by Bill Justice and Xavier Atencio, I might make some estimates on what I thought who did who on the special titles. The song by the Sherman Brothers are just wonderful, and it's surprising that not many people know that song well.

I suppose some of the characters in the film remind me of characters from Jerry Lewis' The Nutty Professor except it's not as genius and as funny as that film. Merlin Jones here as made an invention here of a machine in which electromagnetic waves would show - later, Merlin discovered that he could read people's minds.

The film was later followed by a sequel The Monkey's Uncle a year later with the guests such as The Beach Boys.
<p>&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;Here is what I found on &amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;</p>

Snow White Mosaic Part 3

2011-05-31T22:57:00.000-07:00

This is continued from yesterday's post.

While I was making the mosaic and looking through the draft at the "Description of action" section. I noticed that there were quite a number of scenes that were in the picture, but got into the Cutting department. Some scenes that survived the picture were not attributed into the draft for some reason - and further more, there were surviving scenes where there were no animators credited. So for me, it's been a difficult mosaic to create and that's why it took me more than a few days. There must have been a lot of editing on the film before it was completed, especially in this sequence.

The scene starts off from the previous dark sequence. From the previous shot, there is a cold scene of the Queen demanding to the Huntsman "Bring back her heart in this", the next shot after that is a bit more relaxing and brighter. The audience know that Snow White has been taken to the garden in favour to pick up some flowers for an unknown reason to her, and she doesn't suspect anything. In fact, she doesn't even notice the Huntsman is standing there. This is what I feel is a Story problem: the Queen is saying to her "Take her far out into the forest", and yes, Snow White is in the forest picking up flowers but she doesn't notice the Huntsman is there. Was she there in the first place when the Huntsman found her, or was Snow White taken to the forest by the Queen, with the Huntsman following on a while later. It is not explained, and that is why it's confusing me.

While Snow White is picking up pretty flowers, there is a little bluebird crying for help, and Snow White notices it and cheers the bird up with her sophistication. This was great timing for the Huntsman, as he could kill the princess on time, without her running away or noticing, or anybody witnessing the incident. As Snow White turns around as she is overlapped by the Huntsman's shadow. She cowards herself, with fears of her being killed. As the Huntsman is ready to stab her, his emotions rise back again, and realizes that she is too beautiful to be killed. He immediately drops the dagger, and apologizes to Snow White for that incident. Snow White is puzzled, the Huntsman informs her that the Wicked Queen is jealous of her, and wants to be the fairest and the most beautiful if it's the last thing she does. In order for Snow White to be safe, the Huntsman advices her to run into the woods or any other land and never return to the castle, as it's more dangerous.

Snow White is very frightened of the fact that the Queen is attempting to kill her, and as she runs into the woods - her fears are worse than ever, when she comes across scary looking creatures, and sworn by bats. She realizes that going back to the castle would make things worse for her, and she still has to keep going until she could reach an end point in the scary woodlands.

There has been an awful lot of pacing going on in these sequences, and the draft information here must have been an early document. The director of this sequence (unfortunately we do not know who) has made a lot of quick pacing, and moving around the scenes from the original storyboards. From the style of Ferdinand Hovarth - you could say that he did the conceptual designs of the hideous faces of the trees. The hideous faces in this scene are probably the highlight and the main pinnacle to the scary woodlands. It's a shame that there is no animator credited on that, but it is most likely to have been done by an effects animator.

There are four animators who take control of animating the heroine. Grim Natwick takes control of Snow White by animating the scenes of Snow White picking up the flowers (which has been reported to have been Natwick's scenes), and the scenes of Snow White and the little bird with Eric Larson animating it. Ham Luske takes control of the Huntsman in this sequence and some Snow White scenes. Jack Campbell is the main animator on Snow White in the scary woodlands, in which appears to be that his assistant Tony Rivera is doing some scenes for him, he appears to get one big scene of his own like on shot 23.

It always seems that Grim Natwick is cast on the emotion scenes of Snow White, he animates literally all of her before she runs off in the woods. He really makes the character very believable, and that's why Grim is one of the best animators. He gives Snow White the sophisticated quality of the character, he really gives her personality - like with Snow White and the little bird.

Jack Campbell gets a huge chunk of Snow White animation to do when she if in the woods. Campbell does an excellent job of Snow White in different ways. The way he animates Snow White in the woods and struggling is a sacred feeling to the audience on how you would feel if you were stranded in the woods. Campbell shows Snow White's emotions here, of her screaming at the hideous faces or the eyes glaring at her. Again, Campbell doesn't animate the character the way Grim Natwick usually would do it. Campbell does do an excellent job with Snow White in the woods, but what makes it excellent is the movement of her in the woods. Taking a look again, shot 13 of Jack Campbell told to run off in the woods, is excellent acting. She has so many items loading into her head, and the Huntsman telling her to run into the woods, means that her conscience is telling her to run away immediately. That is a great, executed shot.

Shot 21, is a clear example on how Ham Luske draws Snow White like a child, while Grim Natwick and Jack Campbell show more realism.

It appears that Eric Larson takes control of the scary creatures that are to do with movement in the animation. I have to admit, the scenes of the log turning into alligators is not one of my favourite scenes. It just doesn't feel real to me, and the audience just wouldn't believe that they are reptiles, they just look like a log. Eric, also takes some control of the little bluebird. Eric didn't need to do much on the animation, except how that the little bird is lost.

Taking a look at Campbell's animation on Snow White, I noticed that in the shots where Snow White reacts to the creatures surrounding her. The reaction shots make her look ugly to me, don't believe me - then take a look at shot 42A, her nose there look's like a pig's snout. Shot 28 with Snow White's hands is poorly animated, the hand just really feels so cartoonie, and the animator couldn't have escaped the cartoon side of animation. Explaining that, the animator probably had difficulties with the shots, as they were probably difficult to animate with her turning around, and Jack Campbell probably just gave it his best shot. His scenes of Snow White whirling is just very well animated and timed.

The audience probably didn't think the character looked too ugly in the scenes, is because they are so quick paced, and they won't have enough time to see the details of Snow White because the shots just go by very quickly, and less than 24fps, even less than half a second.

This was the sequence which was apparently reported to have scared so many youngsters that they couldn't even control their bladder while sitting on the cinema seats, the rest of the information is read on the Internet Movie Database:

Was the first of many Disney films to have its premiere engagement at New York City's Radio City Music Hall. At the end of the film's initial engagement there, all the velvet seat upholstery had to be replaced. It seems that young children were so frightened by the sequence of Snow White lost in the forest that they wet their pants, and consequently the seats, at each and every showing of the film.

How lovely.

Snow White Mosaic Part 2

2011-05-30T23:15:00.000-07:00

It's only a short sequence today - so it may be not so much commentary. Besides, I still have a long way to go on finishing off the "Snow White in the Woods" sequence, and it may take some time.

This sequence has now reached a story part. The Wicked Queen has realized that Snow White in rags hasn't stopped her beauty, and even the charming and sophisticated Prince is still attracted to her. Which makes the Queen even more jealous of her beauty and this time she has another plan - a very obnoxious plan. You see, the Queen is a very obnoxious and cold character, that her step step has gone too dramatic - she plans to kill Snow White.

She then orders a huntsman and hires her to kill Snow White. At first, the Queen explains to the Huntsman in the throne room and she's sitting in her throne chair. She simply asks the Huntsman to take her away from the castle in the forest, and tell her to pick up wild flowers as a distraction so that the Huntsman can kill her on time. The Huntsman was immediately about to reject, and thought the Queen was going too far with the plan. So, the Queen threatens to the Huntsman that if he fails his job badly, his fate will end up into execution. The Huntsman, feeling very helpless and feeling weaker, says "Yes, your majesty". BUT, the Queen was further evidence so that in case the Huntsman doesn't try to trick her - the astute Queen orders her to bring Snow White's heart into a box where the sign appears to be a "heart box".

This sequence is rather dark and cold to me. Of course, a lot of the audience praise it for storytelling. The personality of the Huntsman is very good, and the Queen is as wicked and as wicked as she gets. But I always felt the story part was too cold. The Queen couldn't have thought of anything else fair and instead kill her own step daughter. I wonder if the story department had that problem in this sequence. I suppose the director had to make some pacings in the film, and that this sequence was the right time for it to be shown. In my opinion, I felt that the Wicked Queen ordering the Huntsman to kill Snow White was too early for the picture.

When I was re watching the film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and I was making some studies and analyzing, I was surprised to find out that the Wicked Queen appears very little in the film, until she is turned into a Witch. We rarely get to find out much of her personality, except that all we need to know is her jealousy of the princess. There is no background detail - and all we need to is her jealousy towards Snow White, and how she feels that she's the Queen and as if she should be fairest of all the kingdom. Well, there is the saying "Some you win, some you lose", and the Wicked Queen probably doesn't care about that, and what really makes her determined is that she should be the fairest of them all.

Art Babbitt appears again and he animates the Queen. Babbitt had to animate the Queen very carefully, because she was a character that would move very little, and Shot 2 will give you an example of stiffness of the Queen. That's what probably made it very complicating for Art Babbitt, and he must've studied a lot of live-action references for the Queen.

The Queen was a very fragile character to animate, it could be easily messed up while animating, while for example: the forest animals or the dwarfs would be easier to animate, and not too much screwing it up. Art had to make sure, that the animation of the Queen had to be right. Art Babbitt's Queen in shot 4A look very much like Greta Garbo who was a popular celebrity in the 1930's who would often avoid the public.

Here is what I thought the Queen was a type of Greta Garbo take. Of course, I don't think Babbitt did that on purpose or even thought about that. He probably just did it off the model sheets.

The Huntsman is pretty well animated and he was animated by a Gray? Well, I've been looking at two possible Grays are Max Gray and Erroll Gray in Albertopage - but they only list those animators as early as 1939, so I didn't know which possible Gray there was. But it says that Max Gray was a character animator on Donald Duck while Erroll Gray was doing assistant work, and I thought that Max would be a more likely result, but it's not the final case.

Shot 8 is what I call excellent animation. Oh, and another note: what made the Queen a very hard character to animate was witnessed by Bill Justice who was the inbetweener on the Queen.

Animation Casting on Dumbo and Bambi

2011-05-29T20:49:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, while I was at school. I was looking through the book Hollywood Cartoons by Michael Barrier, and I was reading bits through pages, on what I find interesting. There was one section that really interests me which is about the way animators and people were cast on films like Dumbo and Bambi.
I'll start off and explain on what I mean, in this extract from the book by Walt Disney on a story meeting in Bambi.

Dumbo, he said at a 27 February meeting on Bambi was "an obvious straight cartoon," and so a natural fit for certain kings of animators. It's caricature all the way through," he said. "I've got the men for it"-animators, he said, who "don't fit here," on Bambi. "Tytla, I'm afraid of, on these things. I'm afraid he is going to get tied up to a knot...He's a caricaturist. Fergy [Norm Ferguson] is a caricaturist, too. Other familiar names - Art Babbitt, Ward Kimball - floated into conversations, categorized in the same way. These were not animators, Disney was saying, whose work could rise to the elevated level that Bambi required. "Caricature" - the banner he he had raised in his December 1935 memo to Don Graham - had acquired a slight but unmistakable shabbiness in his eyes, compared with "straight drawing."

What I find interesting is what Walt Disney is describing and judging on the animator's work. Of course, Dumbo is a very cartoonie film, and it maybe easy to animate. But the scenes like the roustabouts in the tent building sequence are not caricatured at all - and that it was perfect casting even to Jack Campbell. It seemed that Walt Disney was fearing the worst for Bill Tytla, and thinks that he couldn't handle a project like Bambi. Ward Kimball and Norm Ferguson were caricaturists, but that doesn't mean that they are not animators. If they are not animators, then how come they are animators for the films. I believe that what Walt Disney is saying that he only wants his best and real animators working on Bambi, not caricature artists. The most talented ones that are considered as too good to work on Dumbo.

It often appears that Walt Disney wasn't too enthusiastic about Dumbo, and often pressured the animators to finish their work - while on Bambi he patiently let the animators take their time and remarked, "The stuff is pure gold."

Of course, the film Dumbo has a lot of cartoonish stuff into it - like Ward Kimball's crows, Berny Wolf or Ray Patterson's clowns, or Woolie Reitherman and Fred Moore's Timothy Mouse. They've all got a lot of cartoon feel to it. But yet again, there was artistic sequences that would suit to Bambi's taste like the Mr. Stork sequence and the Roustabouts song. Harvey Toombs' animation of the animals with their cute baby animals are not too much caricature - and it's more realistically drawn that Claude Smith's animals in the Casey Junior sequence.

However, when you come across a beautiful picture like Bambi. You'll find that there are a few bits of caricature in there. Thumper and the rabbits are a bit cartoonie and cute, but they are believable to an audience. A good use of caricature is used in the "Twitterpated" sequence, with some funny animation of Thumper being easily flattered by a female bunny. That's some great caricature into it - although I'm not sure who the animator is on that. I do know that Marc Davis did some beautiful conceptual designs to those scenes.

Of course, there were animators who were very good with realism in their drawings like Frank Thomas, Milt Kahl, Ollie Johnston and Eric Larson who were the Animation Directors of Bambi. But, it's supposedly true that if they worked on Dumbo they would make their animation much more realistic in their scenes. That's why Walt probably cast a lot of second-rate animators onto the film - so they get to show what they are good at. To me, I feel that if an animator like Frank Thomas worked on the clowns - it wouldn't work as he probably would focus too much on it, while Grant Simmons and Ray Patterson don't need to do much with the animation and they makes it good animation when it was appropriate.

There is also another bit of judgment on the animators from Dumbo and Bambi in the famous Bill Peet interview by John Province, and yes I'm going to say it again:

I was one of the "poor boys." [on Dumbo] They put all the rich boys, the top animators making the big salaries, working on Bambi. They wanted to make it a gem. Originally Dumbo was going to be only a half-hour, sort of a special. When Walt saw what we were doing with it, he said it might make a good feature. Well, Dumbo made money. In fact, it was the only Disney film to make money until Cinderella.

JP: Were budgets monitored closely?

Walt got a little stingy with us on Dumbo because they had a showpiece with Bambi. They could play around with the little things like the raindrops: beautiful, but slow and expensive. We weren't allowed any trimmings. Bambi was a wedding cake. Dumbo was one layer with a little bit of icing. Ours was more successful because it had the common appeal, even though the animation was crude in some places. Dumbo didn't make big money. It had only cost $800,000, so all it had to do to make its cost back was to go a little over $1 million. The features had cost $3 million, plus the cost of the prints, and with no foreign market because of the war.

Here the interview makes things more interesting. What Bill said about the top animators on Bambi could be true - although there were already top people at the time like Art Babbitt, Norm Ferguson, Bill Tytla or Fred Moore that all worked on Dumbo. The animators with the biggest salaries was wrong, since Babbitt and Tytla were the highest paid animators at the time worked on Dumbo and not on Bambi. Even though there was probably a good amount of well-paid animators on Bambi.

I agree with Bill Peet that Dumbo did have more common appeal than Bambi did. Dumbo just had a simple story line and it wasn't supposed to be difficult - it just had to be finished. While on Bambi there was more than a story to it and that it didn't matter to the animators if they made a mistake on a scene - they could just redo it. While on Dumbo the animators had to do their real best on the film and try not make mistakes, and maybe that ended up with a few crudeness or so.

Bill Peet says that Walt Disney wanted to make Bambi a "real gem". Of course, Bambi is a gem in many ways. But, I still consider Dumbo as a real artistic film. I've always felt that the most famous animators and crewman worked on Dumbo than on Bambi, maybe there was a difference with talent. Walt Disney used his great directors to work on Dumbo while Walt Disney had cast new directors to do the Bambi sequences, and new talents. Dumbo had the usual animators working on the film - the ones who knew what to do.

Of course, Dumbo proved to be a popular successful film that has appealed to many worldwide audiences, and the same with Bambi - despite the fact that it didn't do very well at the box office to begin with.

I could probably go on forever talking about this, but I'm afraid that I've got to put a stop somewhere, and I feel I've analyzed enough in the history and casting to the animators in both films. I hope to talk a bit more about these.

Grandfather in Old 1950's Article

2011-05-28T19:59:00.000-07:00

Today while I was cleaning up my room as I spent all day doing. I came across my great-grandfather's diary and his diary was dated back to 1951 - and there are a few of his diary entries in there. The diary entries were actually not written in until 1953. While looking through the pages, I stumbled across a very small newspaper article dated around 1953/54 - and my great grandfather's name is in there, and even my own father's name was in the article, and he was 7 at the time.

I've currently got the article inside me, and it's amazing how it's survived for many years. At the time, my father and grandfather were living in Papua New Guinea for a few years where my dad's older brother - Charlie owned a company in that country.

I thought that the article is certainly a keeper to me, and here is what it says, by an anonymous journalist.

LLANDUDNO

TO NEW GUINEA VIA AUSTRALIA

Mr. H.I. Hartley [Henry Ireland Hartley] and his youngest son, Graham, [my dad] aged 7, sailed from Woolwich on Thursday on the S.S. Mooltan for Australia. They will fly on to New Guinea to join Mr. Hartley's elder son, Mr. Charles Hartley, who is a plantation manager on the Western (Ninigos) Islands.

Mr. Hartley was formerly head gardener at Shimdda Hir, Craigside, Llandudno, and was a popular member of the Colwyn Bay Old Time Dance Club and the Penrhyn Bay Social Club. Before sailing he spent two weeks with his son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. A. R. Fawcett, of Maldon, Essex, where Mr. Fawcett formerly of the Llandudno Advertiser is now the Southend Standard representive.

Pretty interesting article for my relatives to be there. I wasn't too sure what the article was about really - but it seems to be about business abroad or something. I will need to talk to my dad about this article.

The reason why my grandfather and father made it to the newspaper article was because they were travelling to Papua New Guinea which is a country in Australasia, and that was quite some news at the time, since not very many people travelled there from England.

Snow White Mosaic Part 1

2011-05-27T23:18:00.000-07:00

"Magic Mirror on the Wall,

What is the fairest Disney animated feature of them all?

-Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the fairest of course!

Sorry if I've been away for two weeks - I was at my camping trip last week which was "far away from computers and bloggers". But as promised, here is a new feature length mosaic which I going to be presenting over the next few months and that's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

We are all familiar with the fact that this was Walt Disney's first ever animated film and it was the biggest peak of his career at that point. This is what led him to go on and produce dozens of animated pictures throughout his career, and tons of over films. This was the picture that started it all (well not exactly), but the animated feature that started it all.

You'll be surprised to learn that these drafts that I'm going to be posting will not have any director credit, or layout credit - and you may come across a layout artist or art director on that film. You'll just have to wait and see.

Imagine, back 73 years ago and you are attending the premiere of Snow White at the Carthay Circle Theatre, the curtains rose and the motion picture began. We first start of with a little prologue of a book cover telling the introduction to the Grimm brother's fairy tale. It gives us a detailed explanation of the Queen jealous of Snow White - as she got older, she got more beautiful. So, she was dressed in rags and placed as her scullery.

As the real movie gets going, we see a long shot view of the Queen's castle on a quiet morning, and it's placed by a lovely coast - and as we truck in through the window. We see the Queen's throne room and it was a typical day for the Queen, and every day she would go to her Magic Mirror and say the usual question, "Magic Mirror on the Wall - who is the fairest of them all." The Slave of the Magic Mirror would tell her in a rather deep voice the same results as she gets usually, "Snow White is the fairest of them all." Here, the Magic Mirror tells her name by giving blues with colours - "lips read the rose", "hair black as ebony", and "skin white as snow". The "skin" clue obviously gave it away for the Queen as she reacts to the name in disgrace and mutters "Snow White!".

It was a rather short sequence that was animated by Art Babbitt, who animates the Queen and the Magic Mirror animated by Woolie Reitherman. I wasn't sure for the fire effect scene was done by either John McManus or Dan MacManus, but the iMDB credits lists it as John McManus as an uncredited animator.

Both animators, Babbitt and Woolie are given very stiff characters to animate. Of course, the Magic Mirror doesn't move or twtich at all - the only movement that that Magic Mirror is doing is moving his lips while talking to the response of the Queen's daily repetitive question. This was one of Woolie Reitherman's hardest assignment and the Internet Movie Database says that it took Woolie roughly 9 times just to get the timing and the animation just correct. To get the staging and the shape of the Magic Mirror's face correct - he had to fold the paper in half - and he'd draw the face in the half edge of the paper, and draw the head on the other half of the folded paper. It probably took him months and months for him to finish the Magic Mirror animation, by folding up the paper thousands and thousands of times. This took a lot of knowledge and thought to get the animation just right.

Notice how the shape of the Magic Mirror is shown on shot 5 - and in shot 7, when there is a close-up of the Magic Mirror responding to the Queen. The detailed shapes of the mirror shapes slightly, and the background colours appear to be darker and much more gold. The colours of the Magic Mirror also changed in Shot 7, with the top of his head much more darker blue - and the bottom of his face had a much more yellower colour, compare that to Shot 5 - when the colours were much more brighter - and in my opinion much more appealing and suitable.

While the flames rise up as the Queen orders the Mirror to see her - the rim of the mirror as the flame reflecting in shot 5, and that is some very good effects animation for back in the 1930's - and interesting how very, very little people would've noticed that.

Art Babbitt's animation of the Queen is also just as stiff as the Magic Mirror, except that she would move slightly while standing - and that was what made her difficult to draw. Both Woolie and Babbitt were regular Goofy animators at the time - and yet again they were assigned to animate such stiff characters. That's some strange casting here for the unknown director to do - I have to say.

Moving on to the next sequence, which is a larger portion than the first sequence. It is the first time that we reveal Snow White. The audience know that it's Snow White. But hang on a minute, she's not wearing her pretty dress, she's dressed in rags and scrubbing the back garden. What is she doing there. Well, it still shows that Snow White is the Queen's scullery - due to her jealousy. She seems to have a group of bird friends who like to keep her company. While she sings at the wishing well, the Prince is riding along minding his own business and notices a beautiful singing voice.

Snow White is singing at a wishing well, and she tells a secret to a group of turtle doves, that if you make a wish into a well - and hearing it echo - your wish will have a very high probability that it will come true. So, she wishes for her love to find her and take her away from the Wicked Queen. As the echoes come, the Prince just happened to come in the spot and Snow White's wish comes true as she sees him. The Queen looks through the balcony and knew that Snow White as a scullery wouldn't last long. She closes the curtains for a "Plan B".

Once she sees the handsome Prince, she is embarrassed to see that he's arrived while she's still in rags. She runs back into the castle in embarrassment, and the Prince sings to her while Snow White confronts her fears and look down at the Prince from a view at the balcony. She's flattered by the Prince, and they both have a connection. Even the doves admire the Prince, since he looks buffed up - he's very gentle with animals and they also admire him.

We first see Snow White with her scrubbing the steps, and Shot 1 of Sequence 2-A is very well animated by Jack Campbell, even though he very well could've done that all on rotoscope. Each of the Snow White animators have some specific casting on the scenes. Jack Campbell animates the early scenes of Snow White washing and at the wishing-well - those scenes were the scenes he was long time credited for - despite his mystery. Paul Busch handles some scenes of Snow White's reflection from the wishing well - for some reason, when I was very young watching it, those scenes used to scare me. Grim Natwick immediately takes over the animation when Snow White encounters the Prince, and animates the rest of the scenes of Snow White and the Prince from the very end. There is also a scene each given to assistants Marc Davis and Hugh Fraser. That's odd - for Hugh to be animating a scene of Snow White, since he was a squishy and expressive animator. The draft for scene 2 is credited as "FRASER" and I thought it was Marc Davis as in "Fraser Davis", but they would've labeled that as "DAVIS", so it seems that Hugh Fraser is a possibility then. He probably must have done that scene before he did cartoonie stuff - he was probably one of the assistants for Jack Campbell.

The doves are animated mainly by the main animal animators of the film, Eric Larson and Milt Kahl. Both men were just animators at the time - and this was before they had successful careers in animation and before they were dubbed as the "Nine Old Men". It appears to be that Milt Kahl animates a lot of the scenes where the doves have character, and personality - for example: Shot 30 of the blushing dove is a clear explanation to what I have said. Eric Larson just handles a lot of the background scenes of the doves, with a lot of realism and study to the timing of the doves. Shot 12 of the dove scattering from the echo sound of the Wishing well is just excellently timed. It's really believable to an audience - and that's why Eric was known as "the bird man".

Is that Eric Larson doing effects on shot 16A and 19? It couldn't have been Paul Busch. Neither of those animators were effects artists. I don't know what Eric could be doing there - unless there was another effects animator called Eric.

You'll be surprised to know, that a lot of people have always said that Milt Kahl animated the Prince in Snow White, and that he was always stuck on the Princes. Well, he was really only stuck on a Prince like Sleeping Beauty. Here, the Prince are by the Snow White animators: Jack Campbell and Grim Natwick. Grim Natwick shows a rather more realistic and human-like prince than Campbell. Shot 17 of the Prince climbing through a wall - just feels strangely drawn, not the sophisticated look of the Prince - as Grim Natwick does.

Grim Natwick also does a better Snow White than Jack Campbell does. I'm not saying that Campbell is a bad animator, he certainly is good. He did some good animation of the wishing-well stuff. But what I'm saying is that, Grim Natwick gets the good stuff in there - he makes Snow White much more human in his scenes. Shot 23 is another example, she is standing behind a curtain and she's in love with the prince, and realizes what a terrible state she is wearing. This is way Grim was the main guy that lead Snow White - he was more experienced than the other animators, and he certainly did a believable princess. As with Jack Campbell, his scenes with Snow White at the wishing well, didn't really require much emotions or much at all. Shot 1, has some good emotions and acting by Campbell when she pours the rest of the bucket of water on the ground. But that said it, Campbell didn't need to do much - except animate her singing at the wishing well - and making a wish at a wishing well.

I hope you have enjoyed my commentary on an all-new animated feature mosaic that I'm doing. I'm hoping for a larger audience, as Snow White is a very popular Disney animated feature. With no director or layout credit - I hope the animator's work is at least helpful.

School Mosaic Article

2011-05-15T16:10:00.000-07:00

Here is a local newspaper article that reached the local papers. It is at my school and it shows that we have completed making some mosaics as part of our Art project. This photo was taken about a week and a half ago on May 4th 2011 - but it wasn't published until about a week later. Here at Moor House School, my GCSE Art option have had the privilege with a mosaic artist to help produce some mosaics for two whole days. This photograph was taken when our Art group presented an assembly on how we made the mosaics.

To make a mosaic, you had to go over a drawing, and trace it. The design would be sent off to the mosaic artist, and would transfer it onto a large piece of word. You get these little chips of broken stuff like plates, etc. and you use "cutters" to cut the pieces, and stick it onto the wood, glue it, grout it - and there's a mosaic.

Making those mosaics was very difficult, it took me ages just to make them - it's not like the "Mark Mayerson style" mosaics. It's actually making them, and cutting them. I also got a blood blister from making the mosaics - and using the cutter was probably slowing me down because I was scared that I was going to get another blood blister.

I was actually the last person of the Art group that completed the mosaic - and I was pressured to finish the mosaic - and I had to rush to finish it. A lot of others completed theirs early either because it was simple and less detailed, while I made a mistake by choosing a complicating one! But, I finished it in the end. My mosaic was a mushroom lying on top of a lettuce with a bit of a tomato sticking out. Boy, it sure was complicating.

From the photo of the students (inc. me) with the mosaics in the background and holding the certficates. My face is second to right, standing. I'm wearing a fleece, and you should recognize from my profile Blogger picture. For numerous reasons, I will not mention the rest of the students their names - because I may not have had their permission. You only need to know where I am, for the time being. Besides, none of us had our names on which rows we sat in.

Photo by Kevin Black.

I won't be posting again until 27th May because I'm going to be away ALL next weekend, because I'm doing a Duke of Edinburgh Expedition Course, and I'll be off camping in the woods and completing a journey. Therefore, as my comback on May 27th - I will be posting Snow White.

The Mysterious Jack...

2011-05-13T22:29:00.000-07:00

What's occurred to me for quite a while and even longer is that fact about one Disney animator who seems to be very unknown in the Disney legacy. He's one animator that I've tried to research on and it's all been difficult. His style in animation is fairly recognizable, but the person isn't. The animator that I'm referring to is the mysterious Jack Campbell.

Why Jack in my head today? Well, he's an animator that's style somehow interests me - it's very unique from the other Disney animators. His animation is somewhat best known for "rotoscoping". A lot of his animation was heavily rotoscoped and he seems to be often cast as a "human animator". Although, not ALL his assignments were rotoscoped and human cast. He has had some animation that was squishy and cartoonie but he rarely does that type of animation.

Since the animator really interests me, but I hardly know anything about him. Even Disney animation historians know extremely little about the animator which I find very strange, even in a century like this. There isn't any birth records of him known, and only an estimated death date that I heard. I've even tried asking Joe Campana some information and he was surprised to find that there was very little found. However, I'm going to write as much as I know about Campbell and his animation assignments.

Since, I have no idea what date he was born in or family relatives. I can tell that as far as Campbell's arrival at the Disney Studios was sometime around 1934. He was actually named "John Campbell" as his birth record but always known as "Jack". I wasn't sure if his middle name had a "D" initial or "Charles", as told by Joe. He was originally Grim Natwick's assistant for the first Disney animated feature Snow White. According to Grim, Jack was unhappy on the position he was in and he wanted to animate. Since there were few animators who could draw the girl, Jack was later promoted to an fully-fledged animator and was working on Ham Luske's unit who was the Supervisor.

Jack's animation on the film had a very use of "rotoscoping" in his footage. Rotoscoping is a technique where he studied live-action from the characters and he studied the movements. A lot of scenes often feel "traced", here is an example of Jack's scenes. He did the early scenes of Snow White and the wishing well. A lot of the animation was heavily rotoscoped. Also some footage scenes of the Prince and Snow White walk back to the castle at the very end. Jack provided some animation of Snow White in the woods and various other scenes - as I will do in the upcoming mosaic. Grim Natwick has described Jack as a "rather astute person" in Michael Barrier's book The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney, when discussing about "rice dolling" and that it disturbed Walt and Jack came to work one day with big rubber dice with no sound.

Jack did a lot of important scenes on the heroine on Snow White along with Grim Natwick and Ham Luske. There is a lot of helpful information on the article by David Johnson, The Four Faces of Snow White. There is one known caricature of him that I have - although I don't know who did the drawing, but it gives an explanation of what Jack probably looked like.

Picture of the camera reluctant Jack Campbell. It's a pretty amusing caricature.

Campbell was also caricatured again on Ferdinand the Bull by Ward Kimball when he animated a scene of the predators walking into the arena - he caricatured himself, Ham Luske, Jack Campbell, Art Babbitt, Bill Tytla and Walt himself as the madator. Jack looked like the caricature himself as the predators which interests me - he seems to he tall and lanky.

Jack was working on shorts like Ferdinand the Bull, Mother Goose Goes Hollywood, The Riveter, etc. Those shorts that he worked on have his animation done in a broad way which you don't see Jack do often. Campbell did some animation of Pete in The Riveter of a squash and stretch scene with Pete rolling his stomach up and bounces to the ground saying "So a tough guy, eh?" That scene was demonstrated in The Illusion of Life.

One of his famous assignments was animating much of the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio - that also gives a real clue of his style in films. The Blue Fairy is a character that really feels like it was traced into live-action and done really well. The character was modelled by Art Babbitt's then-wife Marge Champion. Campbell must have studied the movement and traced some drawings onto animation paper. Jack later contributed to the Pastoral Symphony section in Fantasia animating that very long scene of the centaurettes bathing in the pond nude.

Campbell later contributed onto The Reluctant Dragon and was credited as animator and even including his signature and his signature is the same on Clair Week's goodbye booklet. Campbell was later cast on animating the roustabouts in Dumbo during the working song. Campbell does some excellent animation of the roustabouts and a real piece of his work, although we never see the faces of them. The animation seemed to have been controversial since they were black. I was actually considering taking a look at the roustabouts sometime.

After, Dumbo - it seems that Jack Campbell took part in the Disney animator's strike according on Alberto's page and was either laid off or joined the military. Campbell later returned to Disney to work on Make Mine Music, Song of the South, and Fun and Fancy Free. He seemed to have banished after Fun and Fancy Free probably doing some primary work at the Studios - he was available in 1952 for the Clair Weeks' goodbye booklet with his message saying "Happy landings, Clair - Jack Campbell". It's right here.

He later went on to do a bit of work in the 1950's, and one of his main ones was his last animation assignment on a feature in Lady and the Tramp. He animated the character Aunt Sarah around the middle of the picture. It surprised me when I heard that from Michael Barrier, because some Jim Dear and Darling scenes had some Campbell scenes that looked very familiar to me, and hearing that he did Aunt Sarah, who is more cartoonie and easier to draw. I wonder if he did other animation asides the Aunt.

He did some animation on TV for the Disneyland shows like The Plausible Impossible and working with Cliff Nordberg on Our Friend the Atom. Afterwards, he appeared to have worked on UPA from 1958 to 1959 on the Mr. Magoo feature 1001 Arabian Nights. After that, that's probably the last we hear about Campbell's career in animation.

Since then, I have no idea when or what happened in his final years. I was told an estimated death date - which was around May 1961. However, if it was proved - I checked on the California Death Records and the Social Security Index and no luck on digging into further sources - I'm afraid.

It's strange to find that he's contributed quite a bit at the Disney Studios and yet no-one really knows about him. Although, I suppose that the Social Security Index doesn't have everyone's social security number online - and his is probably not on there. Of course, maybe his birth certificate was destroyed because sometimes maybe in World War II hospitals were bombed and birth certificates were destroyed, but I wouldn't have any idea what was his death certificate. He seems to be a REAL mystery.

If anyone was any other additional info they could add - please notify me. I'd be very grateful and you'll be rewarded in the next life.

Happy Friday the 13th everyone.

Update on Snow White

2011-05-11T10:55:00.000-07:00

QUICK NOTE! I probably won't start posting the mosaics for Snow White until May 27th. I will still write posts, but not mosaics. One, I have a Duke of Edinburgh Expedition coming up in May 20-21st and I'll be away all weekend. So, I want to get that done and then I will start on Snow White.

The Fairest of Them All Is Up Next

2011-05-07T10:16:00.000-07:00

Hello folks,

Just to let you know that of course yesterday, I finished and completed the entire mosaics for Fantasia. I asked if there was any suggestions on what to do for my line-up. I've given it some thought. Eric Noble suggested to do some shorts on Make Mine Music. I've decided that I will post a mosaic for the short Casey at the Bat. Which is part of Make Mine Music. I've also wanted to do one for the short Canine Caddy. I will do these shorts soon.

I've been suggested by Hans Perk, today to do Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Cinderella. It was a very hard choice for me, as I like both films. So, as I couldn't choose. I had to do this fairly - a coin-tossing match on "Heads and Tails". Snow White for being "heads" and Cinderella for being "tails". I flipped the coin and I got the answer.

It was heads.

So, just to let to let you know, that I will be posting Snow White for numerous reasons. First, it's a very popular Disney film with lots of great animation to analyze. Second, I have a feeling that this could have a stronger audience and commenters to tune in and watch this. Third, it's a very interesting draft. I should warn you that the draft has no director or layout credit. Only animators.

"Bring back your mosaics in THIS!"

I hope Snow White will be a good choice and I will start posting it shortly. Maybe in a few weeks.

Fantasia Mosaic (XXVII)

2011-05-06T23:18:00.000-07:00

We are now at the final sequence of Fantasia. It is one of my favourite sequences in the film, and one of the best endings ever to me. It's a tour de force, and it was all animated perfectly by John McManus.

The "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence has concluded, and all the ghosts and souls to the grave, as the devil went back to it's mountain shape. It appeared to be very early in the morning - maybe sometime like 5 in the morning. A lot of processions are crossing lands and bridges heading off to church and they appear to be singing the Ave Maria verse.

This always reminds me of a religious sequence to me. Of course, in its way, it's very religious because it shows these processions who are arriving at a Catholic church. Walt Disney was originally going to have the idea for the final shot to actually enter inside a Cathedral with the stained glass church windows inside it, but Walt Disney felt that he didn't want the sequence to be too religious.

There is a lot of interesting facts on this sequence, for example - I heard from John Canemaker that while Disney was preparing a storyboards for the sequence, one story artist remarked, "Y'know, we're not using the cartoon medium as we should be." Walt immediately got his attention on that man, and he remarked "We have worlds to conquer here, this isn't exactly how a cartoon should look like." I thought that the story man was absolutely correct of him to say that and I wish that he was attributed for that contribution.

I always liked the history of the final shot in this sequence, where it was all completely shot and finished just hours before the New York premiere. It was described as the longest-continuous shot in animation history, and also one of the hardest to film. There were two people credited for the special camera effects here named Gail Pappineau and Leonard Pickley and the first shot was when there was a minor earthquake that hit the Studio and destoyed the filming. Also, when there was camera errors. Pappineau and Pickley put in a load of bloomin' effort just to get that scene completed and they probably used up every bit of their energy for that final shot just to be filmed. After that, the entire shot was completed and approved with just hours to spare from the New York premiere. The two cameraman later went to sleep after spending days just filming that damn scene.

John McManus' animation of the processions with the torches is pretty powerful animation here. It's not character animation, but it's just very believable to an audience. It's strong and it just makes the sequence very amazing. McManus was very good at this type of animation. He gets roughly an estimated amount of 320 feet of animation here in this sequence, with the shots very, very long. Shot 21 is more than 100 feet which is more than a minute of animation.

I always thought the chorus singing here was the best part of the sequence, although I know that the lyrics and music was altered, but I thought it was the best version that I know of Ave Maria. True, I'm not a religious person and that it doesn't really bother me - but that religious sequence is just a gem. It's just treasure and it's really worth being put in film. It's too good to be thrown away in the rubbish. The vocalist for the final shot of the Ave Maria shot was by Julietta Novis and she does an excellent performance there, powerful vocal chords here.

What I like a lot about the ending about Fantasia is the fact that it's not really like any other Disney ending with a "happily ever after ending" in it. It's such a unique and wonderful ending, which is like never really been seen in films before, and in a way it strikes people.

Well, this all concludes my postings for the overall Fantasia mosaics. It has been some fun, and I've thoroughly enjoyed posting every sequence, sharing what I have to offer. I've once again watched the film from the very beginning to the very end. I feel that while making the mosaics, I have made improvements on what to do in mosaics. Always check out on Hans Perk's postings on the draft to Fantasia which inspired me to make these mosaics.

Despite the lack of comments I received overall, I still want to thank some commenters for taking their time to comment and share. Now the big question is, since I've finished Fantasia - what shall I do next? What would you like me to do as a mosaic?

Thanks everybody.

Fantasia Mosaic (XXVI)

2011-05-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

Here is Deems Taylor's introduction to the last segment of this Fantasia production. Night on Bald Mountain composed by Modest Mussorgsky. It's also combined with another brilliant piece by Franz Schubert's famous Ave Maria, which is a popular song at weddings. It's based on Virgin Mary and her son, Jesus.

Here is a very exciting but rather scary sequence directed by the definative Wilfred Jackson. Of course, the star of the sequence is Bill Tytla, who is probably best remembered for his animation on the devil, Chernabog who is a very powerful demon on the tip of the mountain.

This part of Fantasia always used to scare me when I was very young, the way the devil looked was very frightening and even the music was pretty edgy. It all went together perfectly and there is so many effects animation in this sequence. To me, the effects animation on this sequence has some of the most unique, distinctive and realistic effects throughout the entire film. Of course, there were great effects on the Sam Armstrong sequences, and The Sorcerer's Apprentice - but I like the effects here much better. It fits with the style to this sequence, and the layout styling by Terrell Stapp and Thor Putman.

A lot of these animators working on this sequence is cast well and Wilfred Jackson has obviously cast his crew from Pinocchio like Stapp, Putman, Jacques, Tytla, Carlson, etc. to work on this sequence along with the other animators. Although, I must say - that Jaxon is one of the best directors to work at the Disney Studio. The animators are casted differently. Although, most of the character animators are mainly animating the goon creatures in the mountain tip stuff. Bill Shull animates most of the ghosts arriving to the mountain. Some very rough animation by Shull, and marvellous stuff. Shot 38 is a favourite Bill Shull shot of mine.

Bob Carlson animates most of the goon stuff but really with with the ghosts, skulls, harpies, and spirits coming right at the screen. That's all by Bob Carlson, and he did a terrific job there. I always thought that Don Patterson worked on the spirits coming up at the screen - but I was glad to see that Bob Carlson doing it. I thought it was unusual for Carlson working on there - because he was a regular Donald Duck animator.

Funny how the sectretary has mistakes in typing the draft here. Shot 20 is completely unattributed to an artist because the typer for the draft, Elsie Jane has somehow made a mistake by typing the footage result on that scene which was "18-06". There's another error on one of the Bill Shull scenes which was spelt as "Skull" and I thought that was pretty coincidentally funny since you see skulls and skeletons in this sequence. Although, I still assume it was an accident in typing. Even the scene of the Devil with the flames coming up has no credit. Although, it's safe to say that Bill Tytla did that.

One of the most scariest Disney characters of all time is in fact Chernabog, who is the Satan of this sequence. Deems mentions that the Satan comes up every year on Walpurgisnacht and he seems ghosts from the grave and other goon creatures to rise up to the crater and celebrate the party. The devil could control them into doing dances and showing that the Devil is their master and they worship him. He is pure evil, he brings dead creautres back from the dead and to dance for the while and kills them again by throwing them into the fire.

However, it seems that Chernabog was about to do something until the sounds of church bells spoiled the fun for him. His weaknesses was the light and the church bells, and it meant that the people in the village would be waking up and it seems that he didn't want people to find up - so all the ghosts go back to their graves and rest in peace again. Chernabog was a very powerful villain that nothing could killed him since he has all the power - even the flames did nothing to him. He's such an extraordinary Disney villain. Many critics rank him as one of the greatest Disney villains of all time - and he sure is.

Bill Tytla does some of the best stuff in this sequence. He handles the Devil and he does an excellent job on it. The first shot of the Devil wakening and unfolding his wings is excellent timing on the music. Tytla could make the audience frightened by the Devil and that's why he did an excellent job on it. I have to say, but he did put in a lot of "bloody" effort into this. My favourite part of Tytla's animation of the Devil is when the church bells come and the light reflects on him and he cringes himself. A lot of very strong emotions here, and that's what makes Tytla a great animator - he really put a lot of strong emotions into his work.

One of my favourite shots in this sequence is actually the scenes of the flames turning into dancers, very beautiful animation and sensitive timing, here. It appears to look like three naked girl dancers with their flames as their hair. It's all very nice, and it's one of my favorites here. I was actually surprised to find that Bill Tytla worked on that scene and that's what make me think he's a brilliant animator. Tytla works on a fair amount of the goon animation in some shots as well as the Devil.

Of course, the original model for the live-action reference was Bela Lugosi, and Tytla wasn't happy with the way he was acting the scenes, and Tytla wanted Wilfred Jackson to do the live action for the devil. It seems that the actor for the final live-action was the staff director Wilfred Jackson.

The effects animation here is brilliant. It seems that animators like Miles Pike and Dan MacManus do most of the fire animation. John Reed does a lot of the smoke and fire stuff as well. They all did very well in those scenes. Josh Meador was another effects animator who was credited for that sequence, but it turned out that he does little work here. Throughout the film, Josh animates a lot of effects animation but spread in all the sequences by a few scenes. Of course, Josh was the main effects guy on Fantasia and was probably supervising a lot of effects animator, leaving him with not much to do. John Reed, appears to do a lot of the light of the spirits and souls.

Animators like Les Novros and Don Patterson don't do a lot of animation but Novros does a good job with the goon creatures reacting to the light and church bells. Don Patterson animates the scenes of the departure of the ghosts and spirits. To be honest, I'm not a fan of Patterson's scenes here - it feel unrealistic here and it would've been better if that was done with the special effects process used earlier in the sequence. Don's spirits feels cartoonish to me in a way - and I wonder how it ended up in the final film. It's a shame that he wasn't given much to do in this sequence.

It seems that Bob Broughton did a lot of the special effects here with the camera. All very well done. We hadn't seen the "Spec. efx" sign in the draft since The Rite of Spring - hadn't we? This is just a wonderful sequence which was all set up perfectly and the Tytla scenes are a tour-de-force. We'll come across another tour-de-force sequence with John McManus' Ave Maria sequence.

This is my talk done, and it was pretty difficult to make this mosaic so far. We are nearing the end, and that would be the conclusion to my Fantasia mosaics. Any ideas on what new mosaic to make after wards?

Death to Americans is No Longer

2011-05-02T01:47:00.000-07:00

Woop. Woop!

Excellent news! Almost 10 year ago, America was at a very depressing time when the two Twin Towers collided and terrorists hijacked four planes and no survivors. Osama bin Laden was the accusor and he said "Deaths to Americans". Then we went to war on Afghanistan, bin Laden has been in his secret hiding places in caves of Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. recording videos about plotting to kill America.

Well, it's all over now, because Osama bin Laden is FINALLY DEAD! Yipee! That took nearly 10 years for that to happen, and "Well, it's about time!"

A New Draft

2011-05-01T02:14:00.000-07:00

It's that time when we get a treat to see a feature draft - and now we have one coming. Hans Perk is going through a busy time directing a stop-motion feature called Miffy the Movie and he's giving up his free time by generously posting the draft for the Disney film Cinderella.

This is going to be very exciting for me to see because I'm interested in who does what in the scenes, and I actually have a soft spot for the film, although it may not be my favourite, but I like the film and animation and I'm interests in who does my favourite scenes. That's what I find interesting. Although, I doubt that I will make a mosaic for the film because I've already done three features and still on Fantasia. Maybe, but I'm planning a break on mosaics.

You can take a look at the draft that he will be posting here. I will be looking forward to his future posts and see what he has to offer. Take a look at his stuff on A. Film L.A.

Let the Royal Wedding Begin...

2011-04-29T02:05:00.000-07:00

...and the balcony kiss to begin at 1.00pm.

Fantasia Mosaic (XXV)

2011-04-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

Here is the final sequence of the Dance of the Hours segment - it includes the alligator dance and the finale sequence where all the elephants, hippos, ostriches and the alligators all reprise together into the final dance. I must say that I do want to get this mosaic finished by May 13th because I have a Duke of Edinburgh Practice Expedition which happens on 20-21st May.

This is probably my favourite part of the segment because all the dancers appear in the finale - straight after the alligator dance. We see lots more animators from the previous sequences come back again - and even the first time seeing the likes of John Lounsbery, or Art Elliott. Probably the most memorable animation in this segment is John Lounsbery's alligator ballet. The timing and staging of the animation is brilliant including the angles in Lounsbery's scenes. Shot 23 with the alligator jumping off the pole, is another one of Lounsbery's squash and stretch.

It's good to find that we see more of animators like Norm Tate appearing again (as Tate appeared one scene earlier) he animates some of the finale scenes of the Hippo and Alligator chase, including a scene of the elephants holding on to their tails and dancing. Art Elliott appears in three shots here although he doesn't get much footage here. He doesn't seem to do any acting scenes and maybe that's why he wasn't brought much. Although, Fantasia was a difficult film to animate and maybe that they needed animators to do few footage - and he ended up in the credits. I always thought for some reason that Elliott was an effects animator and he is a character animator instead, I don't know why I thought of that.

Each of those animators appear cast again: John Lounsbery animates a lot of the alligators here and he's the star of the sequence, obviously. Hicks Lokey, Norm Tate, Howard Swift, Preston Blair and Art Elliott animate Hippos and Alligators combined in the scene. Hugh Fraser animates the alligators, ostriches and elephants.Harvey Toombs does a scene here of the elephants and alligators. Howard Swift seemed to be the main animator overall the Dance of the Hours segment, followed by Preston Blair and John Lounsbery.

Hicks Lokey animates a very funny shot of the alligator and the hippo with the hippo running up and the croc tries to catch it - but ends up being squashed by the hippo. That is a great shot in terms of weight. The hippo obviously weights tons more than an alligator, and that's what makes it entertaining. Although, what's interesting is shot 50 by Preston Blair and the alligator seems to have a lot of strength to hold the hippo, while the Lokey alligator struggled. I think Hicks Lokey handles the shot better because it shows that Ben Ali Gator is struggling to lift the Hippo up. However, when Blair handles the shots, the alligator seems to do some very quick movement and changing round the positions of the hippo and then finally drops to the ground. I suppose, that he finally had the strength for the final dance and then drops the ground and concluding the finale and the show. It goes to show that there are unknown animators back in those days who were as great as the Nine Old Men were.

John Lounsbery animates a very beautiful shot in scene 28 with the alligator moving the hippo carefully in a circle like a ballerina in a music box - when I showed that to a therapist, she described it as "cute", I described it as excellent timing. It's a very long scene which is 39 feet long and more than 600 drawings there, and also 26 seconds in. Lounsbery seems to have animated loads of several shots with the small footage output, but he gets a very large output for the 39 feet and 37 feet scene (shot 15). He has contributed so much to this sequence, and he was the only member of the Nine Old Men working on this segment.

Norm Tate's scenes are interesting to me, I always thought that the shot with the pole, with the hippo and alligator peeking in and out is a funny shot. It really fits well with the music and good music and animation timing. Tate had to be careful that it was a comedy shot and not concentrate on its broadness, but the music as well. Norm Tate is an animator that we don't hear much about these days, but he was a Pluto animator in the early '40s on the Clyde Geronimi shorts. He was Shamus Culhane's original assistant on Pinocchio before taking over the final animation. He later had a career in advertising and died in 2006 at the age of 91.

Hugh Fraser pops back up and he animates the alligator struggling to get the elephant stuck on the two narrow poles. Good comedy here, and Hugh was a squishy animator, who also animates the ostriches here, also.

Cornett Wood takes over the final shot of the finale sequence, and the whole segment ends with the doors colliding each other with a BANG! Since I was 8 years old when I first saw that, I sure thought that it was a funny shot. T. Hee couldn't escape the sound effects here. It seems that Wood was the main effects animator here or Brad Case and haven't had luck of their names in the screen credits.

Well, that's the whole segment completed. Next up is the final segment which is the scary Night on Bald Mountain and Ave Maria segment, we are nearing completion I have to say.

Fantasia Mosaic (XXIV)

2011-04-25T20:51:00.000-07:00

Here is a new sequence for the Dance of the Hours segment and this time the hippo ballerina goes to sleep and a ballet of elephants step in to do their dance of the evening. This is a very interesting sequence, with a number of gags with the bubbles.

The elephants have stepped in and they are doing their own dance, by squirting out bubbles out of their trunks. Of course, we know that elephants squirt water, but here I they inhale the water from their trunk, but they don't seem to squirt out water - only bubbles. How does that work for an elephant? Did they just blow the bubbles out with their trunks gently or something?

Is is a short sequence, and a heck of a lot of long footage scenes in there also. What's very interesting is to find a lot of character animators here in a few shots. Harvey Toombs animates more shots here but not as much footage as others, perhaps. Interesting casting here on who does what in the elephants sequence.

The elephant animators here like Ray Patterson, Frank Grundeen and Howard Swift animate the hippo sleeping when there are elephants in the scene. Hicks Lokey animates the scene of the hippo yawning and the bubbles inhaling when there are no elephants present in the shot. Ray Patterson handles the shot of the elephants entering with the hippo sleeping, Howard Swift does the elephants walking to the hippo and blowing bubbles at the sleeping hippo. Frank Grundeen animates a funny shot here of the elephants with tons of bubbles as the hippo is sleeping and not noticing anything. It was funny looking that shot, not as I call it, "funny moving". Like a lot of animators do in this segment.

What's interesting here is that there are quite a bit of animators here that work on this sequence and don't come back in the "Finale sequence". Here, Ray Patterson only animates two scenes here, and ends up with about 59 feet of animation. Here, Grant Simmons is only credited for one scene of the elephant's foot caught in a bubble. It was a 25 feet scene. Simmons only animated roughly 16 seconds out of the original 122 minute Fantasia. I always found it odd that Simmons did only one scene in the segment when I first saw the draft and somehow he ended up getting screen credit. While, Van Kaufman and Jerry Hatchcock got more footage than him. Although, I guess it's not only the footage but the quality of the animation, and Disney standard to merit the screen credit.

A lot of gag stuff with the bubbles here in this sequence. In shot 28, animated by Harvey Toombs - the pool from where the bubbles were blown, one of the elephants blew a bubble with a fish inside it. That was an amusing shot because the fish was inhaled inside the elephant's trunk, and wouldn't have a clue why it was in a bubble. Shot 28.1 shows the elephants walking up to the sleeping ballerina and blows bubbles out and tiptoe away, I don't know what the gag is there.

Shot 30 is a tour-de-force shot with the sleepy hippo yawning so big that the bubbles all inhale inside her mouth. That is a forceful shot, Hicks Lokey does a good job on that shot. It is believable that she is so large that she could inhale all the bubbles inside her breath. That is a good, exaggerated gag with the bubbles. Hicks deserves a round of applause here.

Shot 34 has got some fun stuff with the elephants dancing with the bubbles, they produce bubbles orbiting their bodies and they spin around, and it seems that the bubbles have the force to attach to the bodies, like a magnet or a gravitational poll. It's like the bubbles have tutus on them - I wonder if that was part of the gag. Another elephant walks by and blows bubbles around, and kicks them away. The bubbles goes by his legs, as he misses the kick and he ends up doing the splits spontaneously. That was an amusing shot, but to me the facial expressions but it's not the best looking, I dare say.

Shot 36, is a very expressive shot with the bubble stuck in the elephant's foot and he tries to put in all his effort to get the bubble out of his foot by shaking it, but fails. He keeps up a line of elephant dancer and continues to dance with the bubble still stuck in the foot. Grant Simmons handles the shot pretty good, although the shapes of the head in that shot is not the most appealing, also. Although, it's a shame that he doesn't have any more footage to animate.

In Shot 41, the scene by Howard Swift of the elephants piling up on a poll is funny, but the elephant inside the bubble by Harvey Toombs is funnier. It's just so exaggerated, although it isn't explained in this sequence why the elephant got caught in the bubble. Could that have something to do with shot 36 with maybe the bubble expanding because of the cape's gust of wind.

In fact, I don't really understand how the curtain (the alligator's cape) could give a force to blow all the elephants away from the garden. Yet, only the hippo in the air stayed afloat in the air for a while before descending back down to the ground. Oh yes, there is a bubble gag there with the bed. Pretty funny Aardal effects.

Interesting to find Frank Grundeen here as he's the one associated here on Dance of the Hours. Also, that we found him animating a few shots on The Rite of Spring. He seems to have animated more footage on Spring than Dance here. Although, I guess that it's the quality that deserves it and that he already appeared in a different segment. Although, I have to admit that his animation here is not the most attractive animation here.

Well, that's my talk done and I may come back and post another mosaic on either Thursday or Friday. I'm back to school tomorrow for a new term, but I will be back again on Thursday because of the famous Royal Wedding with Kate Middleton. Everyone in the country was given a day off for that special day. I've also got a wedding to attend on Saturday, my step sister's wedding. So, I should be around besides Saturday. See me posting back on Thursday.

Holiday

2011-04-21T01:10:00.000-07:00

I'm going away to Carden Park Hotel in Chester for 4 days. I may not update my blog until April 25. Ta-ta for now.

20 April Anniversary Notes

2011-04-20T23:11:00.000-07:00

Like on April 15, there some pretty rotten memories on that date that happened in the past. For instance, it was Adolf Hitler's birthday and he was born on April 20, 1889. We all know him as a Nazi leader and later became Chancellor and President of Germany in 1934. He wanted Germany a greater country with the "Aryan" race ruling the country. Of course, he wasn't blonde haired or blue eyed himself, so he couldn't talk! He persecuted Jews, Communists, Homosexuals, gypsies, etc. because he thought they were responsible for the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 during the Weimar Republic years. He was a mad man, who went mad with power. So, he started invading countries and Josef Goebbels made propaganda posters about how great Germany was and how bad the Jewish were - very, very tough times. The sad thing about that date was Hitler being born, and later became a wicked, vile, horrible person.

Another sad event that took place is the 12th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre. There were two killers who attended the school named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who stormed into the school and opened fire with their guns and weapons and the facility results ended up with 12 students and a teacher killed. About an hour after the massacre started, they turned the guns on themselves with a total of 15 people dead.

It was a horrific event that occurred as those two teenagers were regarded as unpopular kids at school - or one of the "outcast" people. They were bullied by jocks and sports guys. They never had girlfriends and were isolated from the popular kids at the school. In my opinion, if that didn't happen - there probably wouldn't be a killing spree at the school. It wasn't the first time that they committed a crime, they were caught red handed in 1998 for breaking into a van and stealing equipments. They were sentenced to community service, while Eric was to control his anger and take anger management classes.

Anyways, these are sad events, and let's see what there is on the brighter side. I discovered that George Takei was born on that date in 1937 - and became a successful Star Trek actor.

Fantasia Mosaic (XXIII)

2011-04-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

Here I'm going to post another sequence - but it's a rather short one and I may not go into lengthy details that I usually do.

This is the afternoon sequence of the Dance of the Hours segment in Fantasia. To tell you, this is a sequence that I least look at in the segment because I prefer the other ones. There doesn't seem to be much gags as there are in the other sequences, but the footage is very long. You can say that the main guy on this sequence is Preston Blair and he does a good chunk of work - while he previously worked on The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

The ostriches are still fighting over the piece of grapes and they all equally lost when the grapes fall down to the pool where the hippo is sleeping and all the ostriches panic since there are bubbles snorkling out and they flee away. Until the hippo eats the grapes, puts on make-up, dances and then takes an afternoon nap when it reaches evening.

There seems to be two camera cuts in this sequence - and I don't recall camera cuts in the Fantasia draft so far. I'll need to wait and see if there will be anymore. Interesting how Norm Ferguson actually animates two scenes here of the Hippo putting make-up on her face and putting away the make up. Fergy is not credited for any of the directing and only T. Hee is. This is similar in Pinocchio when T. Hee was directing the sequences and Fergy was animating a few scenes. I assume that Fergy was just supervising the animators while T. Hee was in charge of the production. Maybe, Fergy was just animating scenes what he found in the lot. In total, Fergy animates roughly only 10 feet of the segment with the hippo putting away the make-up and that's about it.

It's interesting to find Van Kaufman (an uncredited artist) animating two shots of the hippos with the make up and placing the tutu around the hippo's body. Kaufman was another unknown animator who we have seen before handle some good animation. I believe he served in the military after departing the Disney Studios in 1941. He handles the hippos here pretty well even though he was a lesser-known animator that we hardly know about.

The star of the sequence is obviously Preston Blair and he mainly handles the dance scenes. Notice how the scenes he animates - the shots are few - but the footage is very long. He averages about 30 feet of animation in each scene. Van Kaufman handles the hippo holding the makeup and giving it to the main hipo. Fergy handles the ballerina with the make-up on and putting away the make-up. Then, Preston Blair handles the dancing movements.

I have to say, that some of the hippos dancing is pretty amusing - it's not what the audience would expect in Fantasia - that's why there are funny animators and guys working on the segment because they know what to do. I particularly like shot 23 a lot with the hippo's weight spins upwards and then spins back down to it's normal weight. That is wonderfully timed although I'm afraid that I didn't get time to do breakdowns on that scene - but if you do watch the sequence and take a look at the scene you can study the movements of what Preston Blair animates. He does some very excellent timing on the gag here. I like it very much. That is probably the best part of the sequence.

Preston Blair later did some work on Bambi and then leaving Disney in 1941 to work on some MGM cartoons. I hear about that Preston Blair which helps you how to animate and the movements, which is strongly suggested by one of my commenters, Eric Noble. I will try and take a look out for the book and see the pages on the ASIFA Hollywood Archive blog. The book does seem a help, and hopefully it will improve on my drawing and analyzing skills ;-).

I must admit that I'm not a fan of the close-up zooming in on the hippos' tonsils showing when she is yawning. The close-up just doesn't feel right, and do we need to see her tonsils showing? Although, it is also exaggerated, but if you want to see an exaggerated yawn - look at the next sequence when she yawns so big that bubbles enter the hippo's body. That was a Hicks Lokey scene.

That is really my commentary on the mosaics done and if you have something to say and please tell me because I'd be happy to hear.

[[I've reached more than the 50'000 web hit mark - let's see if we can get to 100'000 anytime soon?]]

Drawing Disney

2011-04-18T21:56:00.000-07:00

This isn't a post that I was supposed to do ages ago, but over the past few days I did some drawings from Disney films such as Lady and the Tramp, The Sword in the Stone and The Fox and the Hound. There are a couple of frames in the films that I took a look at and I carefully tried to copy what it looked like. I thought that drawing the tough dogs in Lady and the Tramp would've been difficult, and I carefully copied it from the screen - no tracings and it gives a great effect.

I didn't choose specific scenes to draw - I just found some stuff on YouTube from the films that I quietly got on and drew, although I'm probably most proud of drawings that I did in Lady and the Tramp where the Tramp fights the outnumbered tough dogs to defend Lady. That was animated by Woolie Reitherman and Woolie rocks my world (when it comes to animating). I felt that my drawings of the dogs that I copied over at my computer screen felt real, and I want to share it to you.

That there is a scene where the Tramp warns and encounters the tough dogs, and they are preparing to fight and growl. It is a tour-de-force shot, and I liked it a lot. I didn't think that I could copy the drawings, but from what I drew, it really does look great. You do have to agree with me.

This is a small scene from The Sword in the Stone where Merlin, Archimedes and the Wart are leaving Merlin's cottage to head to the castle, while the Wolf unsuccessfully tries to chase after the Wart. Merlin says the line, "By the way, what direction is this castle of yours?" Archimedes (the highly educated owl) raises his eyebrows one way to another. I like the rough drawings in that scene, and it was animated by John Lounsbery. Sorry, if I drew Merlin's hat pretty bad. I did this very quickly.

This is a scene in The Fox and the Hound where the Chief tries to chase after Todd, on the highway railway tracks, Chief is run over by an incoming locomotive and falls down and injures himself. In this drawing, this is Copper when he discovers that Chief is hurt and very disappointed that Todd caused this incident.

This is another great action scene where the Tramp is fighting one of the dogs, and he bites one of his legs like eating a bone - this is a cross between violence and a gag and Woolie Reitherman is very good at assignments like this. You may think that I haven't drawn all of the dogs there, well I got a framegrab online and that was a scene that I found. Of course, I added bits on the dog to add some stuff, but I had to be careful, and adding it does add the final touch.

This is another Archimedes drawing done in the same sequence as I drew the owl. Also done by Lounsbery.

This is a great sequence in The Sword in the Stone and it's the sequence where Merlin and Wart transform into squirrels and learning about the life of a squirrel - but it turns out that their learning period was cut short when they are attracted by female squirrels, as Merlin points out that female and male squirrels are mated for like. That I didn't know, but I know that swans are mated for life - but I never heard about squirrels.

The scene was brilliantly animated by Frank Thomas - who animated most of the squirrels here. To me, I think this animation that really gets me from Frank Thomas. I think that's probably his best on this sequence. This has tender acting here, when the Wart is hiding behind Merlin's tail and the girl squirrel is looking for Wart and Merlin sort of tricks Wart into believing him and he points to where the Wart is hiding. I did some drawings here - and mind you that I ended up rubbing out some of the female squirrels because it didn't feel right, and then I did what I could do. My Merlin squirrel probably looks clumsy but I did what I could do.

This is a scene in The Fox and the Hound where Boomer, who is a scatterbrained woodpecker (voiced by Paul Winchell, who also does Tigger), and he is after Squeeks the caterpillar. The shot is only roughly 8 frames long (if it's true - I will need to see the draft soon), and his intelligent, wise friend Dinky, a canary are trying to go after Squeeks for breakfast. If I'm not mistaken, this is a Cliff Nordberg scene and it was his last film that he worked on before dying of a heart attack in 1979 after his rough animation was completed. It was reported that while working on the film, he was at the top of the footage report list, since he was the most experienced animator on the film. I believe that Jerry Rees, John Musker and Brad Bird also did some work on Boomer and Dinky, and Squeeks the caterpillar.

This is all my stuff that I've posted here. I'd really appreciate if I hear your comments on my collection of drawings that I did Disney style.