Monday, November 6, 2017

Milt's Fisherman Bear



One of the greatest scenes in Disney's 1971 release Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Milt Kahl animated the introductory scenes of the Fisherman Bear. Here he pulls back excitedly to find out what this heavy catch out of the ocean might be. I think the dialogue goes something like this:
"This time I really got a whopper (a word I had to look up)!"
The following images are xeroxes from Milt's original animation roughs, before they got touched up -cleaned up- by an assistant. 
You can see how adventurous Milt gets with dialogue, super contrasting mouth configurations.
I love the way the end of the fishing rod rests on his soft belly. So much to admire here.
I will post the second half of the scene in a couple of days.
Just realizing that the bear's striped shirt had to be figured out by Milt's assistant.

This scene was supposed to appear in the Milt Kahl chapter of my Nine Old Men book, but we ran out of room.


















10 comments:

  1. This is wonderful, thanks for sharing with us!

    ReplyDelete
  2. In terms of design, the character looks a little too much like Little John or Baloo for my liking...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I suppose at this point there was already a sort of "house style" that crept into these films and it's very apparent how much they liked keeping to this particular look seen in The Jungle Book, the Aristocats, Robin Hood and others of this period.

      Delete
  3. What a wonderful arrange of expressions! Stunning!Thanks Andreas.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey, I assembled the drawings into a video here
    https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/41124
    Also, is there any reason there are no charts?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My guess is he added the charts later, after his assistant made these copies.

      Delete
    2. yeah I guess so.
      Also, did you see that Eric Larson's desk is being sold?
      https://comics.ha.com/itm/memorabilia/kem-weber-disney-animation-desk-used-by-eric-larson-walt-disney-1939-40-/p/7173-16001.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515

      Delete
    3. Yeah I saw that. I need to compare the desk with photos of Eric actually working.

      Delete
    4. I see the video's gone from that link. Guess I didn't get to it in time.

      Interesting about Eric's desk if that's true.

      Delete
  5. Wow! I Love this! I didn't know Milt animated on this film.

    ReplyDelete