Monday, December 30, 2013

Classic Animation Roughs


To close out the year I picked animation roughs from Walt Disney's animators, one drawing per artist. The Mickey drawing above is by Les Clark.
It's interesting to compare the different styles and approaches. Of course, each animator changed his way of drawing over the years, as the Disney style changed, too. 
Some of them welcomed the graphic change that transformed the look of Disney animation in the mid 1950s, others found themselves struggling with these modern looking designs. In the end great performances continued all throughout their careers.
They often disagreed on certain character developments, story points or design styles, but when it came to producing a great film, these guys (for the most part) put their egos into their pockets and became team players. Then again Walt Disney had a lot to do with politics not interfering with the film making process.

Happy New Year everybody!


Fred Moore



Woolie Reitherman



Ward Kimball



Milt Kahl



Ollie Johnston



Frank Thomas



John Lounsbery



Marc Davis



Eric Larson



John Sibley



Bill Tytla

23 comments:

  1. Andreas, have you seen the new Disney movie 'Frozen'?
    I try to imagine him in classic animation, I think you would be suitable for Elsa animator supervisor.

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    1. Haven't seen Frozen yet, but I do remember when it was called The Snow Queen, and me and my 2D buddies were going to animate it.

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    2. The handdrawn character pose charts used in the final version of Frozen look so appealing in pencil roughs, that I feel an urge to try to animate them in pencil. I like the way the film looks in CG, it's very beautiful movie, but I guess handdrawn Anna and Elsa would look even better and more emotional.

      From watching the documentary, it seems that much of work is still done in pencil. For example Wayne Unten drawn the key Elsa poses in pencil before animating them in CG. It almost looks like pencil animation is hiding behind the final layer of CG rendering, like it was behind ink and paint before xerox era. A new era may come when people get bored with renders and get interested in sketchy and painterly graphic styles.

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  2. Happy New Year to you also Andreas! Thank you for these. Saying it again, but i love these sketches from Masters. It´s so inspiring to see how they sketching and finding out characters pose.

    Which film are the Milt´s and John Lounsbery´s drawings from?

    Markus

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    1. Milt's rough shows the Fisherman Bear from "Bedknobs and Broomsticks", and Lounsbery's is a Goon from "Sleeping Beauty".

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    3. Thank you very much.
      Never seen that "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" and it seems that they dont sell it here in Finland. Have to find somewhere on Internet.

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    4. You have to start somewhere Markus.

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  3. Andreas did you see the new animated movie by Disney titled 'Frozen'

    Are you aware of that or still busy doing your project. I liked you showed us the rough drawing of Maleficent by Marc Davis. Thanks ;)

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  4. Happy New Year to you too, Andreas!
    And thanks as always for sharing these...I'm always wowed by fine cartoon drawings and the many disparate approaches to getting them on the page. My personal favorites might be Fred Moore's, since lately I am trying to draw more loosely!

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  5. Wish you a happy new year, and further artistic successes and fulfilments to you!
    Thank you for this wonderful blog, looking forward for exciting new posts in 2014!

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  6. Thanks for this great final post! Happy new year!

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  7. -B-

    Thanks for sharing, Andreas.

    By the way, this looks odd:
    http://disneyandmore.blogspot.com/2013/12/disney-animated-famous-characters.html

    Any thoughts?

    -Amir

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  8. Andreas, These roughs are the perfect way to end the year, and the icing on the cake was Tytla's devil. By the way, you forgot to add a classic rough of yours as well! :)

    Happy 2014!

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  9. Happy new year Andreas !! Hope I can get the chance to meet you someday .
    Your blog is so inspiring and amazing ! Thanks for keeping us updated :)
    Much love & respect from Iran

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  10. Happy New Year, everyone! :D Looking forward to another great year of posts.

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  11. Wonderful drawings, Andreas. But I had a question about the "Hook" rough you say is Woolie's. I know Frank and Woolie did 99% of Hook, but I know I checked out a few scenes of Lounsbery's where he animated Hook, very short scenes where Hook was sword fighting and slashing at Pan. Is it possible this is a Lounsbery rough ? ( It looks more like his drawing style to me than Woolie's.) Or possibly a Lounsbery draw over of a Woolie rough?

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    1. I'll look for the scene in the draft and let you know.

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  12. Hi Andreas, just ran across your blog the other day. What a generous endeavor! I wasn't familiar with Wilhelm Bush and I have really enjoyed seeing his work. I hope all is going well for you. I would love to talk more offline if you get the time. You can message me on Facebook.

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  13. I must say Andreas this is one of my favorite posts. I love to see the difference in these artists drawing styles. I love the rough hard edged structure in Frank's drawings compared to the easy flow of Ollie's. Some wonderful stuff. However, do you know if all of these are original drawings or were some of them cleaned up a bit?

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    1. These are all animation roughs except for the last one, which looks like a clean up study, possibly by Tytla himself.

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