Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Embattled Drawings

This is a Frank Thomas scene from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow section, which is a part of the 1949 feature The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. 
The animation is gorgeous. Here are just five drawings from this looong scene. Brom Bones is trying to rid himself of Tilda, who seems glued to the town hunk during the dance. 
In order to save money (and paper), the animator's drawings were rubbed down before a clean up artist added volume research in color pencil on the same sheet of paper. The final graphite line represents the last stage in defining the characters before the drawings were sent to the ink & paint department. 
These drawings show the creative battle animators and clean up artists go through in order to achieve the best results on the screen. Correct anatomy is only slightly compromised to ensure fluidity of motion. 
Since Milt Kahl supervised these two characters, he most definitely did key drawings, so Brom and Tilda look the way he envisioned them. But the animation is all Frank.
So much brainwork on everybody's part. Teamwork!!












Read the note on #411, from Amey to Hillary.  Hilarious!!
This scene is discussed in my book on THE NINE OLD MEN. Just thought I bring this up...