Happy Birthday, Fess Parker!

Today is the birthday of Fess Parker, the actor who gained great fame in Disney's three-part, made for TV movie, Davy Crockett - King of the Wild Frontier, later edited into a theatrical release. Fess had only done some small roles in movies, and it was from viewing him in the sci-fi 'B' movie, Them! that Walt Disney himself thought that Fess had the right look and personality to play the frontiersman, Davy Crockett. The film was a huge hit with viewers, and young kids created a mass demand for coonskin caps so they could play at being Davy too. For Fess Parker, it was the role that made him a star, and he went on to doing several more films for Disney, including the sequel, Davy Crockett and the River Pirates.

This caricature of Fess as Davy, I first drew for a publication called Persistence of Vision, a first rate historical journal from the early 90s that was created by Paul F. Anderson, a very knowledgable historian on the Disney films and Disneyland park attractions from the era when Walt Disney himself was still running the studio. Though the publication has run its course, Paul continues to document the studio's classic films and attractions on his Disney History Institute blogsite. I highly recommend it!

More recently, this caricature was also used on the cover art I did for one of the volumes of Walt's People, a series of books published and edited by Didier Ghez, collecting interviews with various notables from Disney animated and live-action films, as well as those involved in the development of the Disney theme parks. Didier currently operates the Disney History blog, also devoted to the films and attractions of classic Disney.

Here's a clip of Fess Parker in his iconic role of Davy Crockett, with Buddy Ebsen (famous as Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies) as his friend, George Russel:

Seeing Red

Frankly, I can't see what all the fuss is about regarding the new Merida makeover...

By the way, for those out of the loop, here's the silly controversy I'm referencing regarding a perceived makeover of Merida from Disney/Pixar's Brave. And here's my take on the subject that I had posted on Facebook that I think is worth reposting here:

I must admit I feel that everybody is getting their knickers in a knot unnecessarily about this supposed makeover of Merida. I suspect it is nothing more than a less than faithful final rendering done by an outside illustrator based on a much better and accurate drawing by the talented Jennifer Gwynne Oliver, not a deliberate, insidious attempt to sex her up at all. Part of the problem is that, in order to fit into "The Disney Princess" merchandising program, Merida (like Rapunzel before her) has to be translated from CG to drawing to be consistent with the others. In so doing, some of the subtleties of the design are lost, notably the complex frizzy hair, as well as the need to define her eyes more graphically with an outline.
I think it's fair to say that even the traditionally animated Disney girls have lost some of their likeness as they've been homogenized into a consistent art style for this merchandising program. Aurora in particular has been rounded out more from her original, more graphic design. To be honest, I've never much liked the mentality of "The Disney Princess" program to begin with, as it takes these characters out of context of their respective cartoon universes, as well as away from the unique variety of shapes and sizes of their respective co-stars. It then places them together alongside their similarly shaped sorority in what looks like a Vanity Fair photo shoot, not allowing any of them to acknowledge or interact with each other in any way. Artistically it's a pretty dumb concept, however little girls just love it and, since they're the target market for all the dolls and accessories, I say let it be. Personally I don't give a rat's ass about them being "role models" - that's just a lot of ultraliberal claptrap. 

Happy 100th Birthday, Marc Davis!

Yes, today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Marc Davis, one of "The Nine Old Men", Disney's celebrated group of veteran animators. Andreas Deja has been writing up some great posts on his blog, so I'm not about to compete with that. But I also love and admire the work that Marc did after his career as an animator, when he moved on to design and create many of the best attractions at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Attractions such as The Haunted Mansion, It's A Small World, and The Pirates of the Caribbean were all a big part of my childhood in those early years of family road trips from Ottawa, Canada, down to the brand new Walt Disney World in Florida in the early 1970s. Actually, though, my personal favourite attraction that Marc designed was The Country Bear Jamboree, that had its debut at Walt Disney World before also being built for the Bear Country area in Disneyland.

Marc Davis concept art.....

At that time in the 70s, both my Dad and I were big fans of country music, so The Country Bear Jamboree was a well appreciated parody of Nashville's beloved Grand Ole Opry, with its caricatures of familiar character types from that era of country in the form of cartoon bears in various shapes and sizes. To this day I still love vintage country music (although not its vapid pop/rock incarnation as "New Country"), and The Country Bear Jamboree in its heyday remains a favourite of mine. Sadly, I hear that the show has been recently pared down in length by the philistines who currently run Disney, as they feel that they can get more performances crammed in per day in this abbreviated form.

....Translated into the actual show!

On a similar theme, I recall onetime going down to WDW and seeing a diorama with models on display in The Walt Disney Story on Main Street, of a new proposed attraction called The Western River Expedition. This would have been another water based ride featuring audio-animatronic characters, similar to The Pirates of the Caribbean, then only at Disneyland. Sadly, it was never to see the light of day, as they figured that it would be more cost effective to instead recreate the Pirates ride for the Florida audience.

Marc Davis working on The Western River Expedition model

Concept art for the saloon scene

Many years later, I had finally achieved my dream of working down at WDW as a character illustrator in the Marketing Art Dept in 1990. A couple years later in 1992, I took a vacation out to Disneyland to attend a convention put on by The Mouse Club, a fan club not officially associated with The Disney Company. They had quite a roster of guest speakers lined up, including Marc Davis who was to take part in a panel discussion on the creation of several of the Disneyland attractions. I was staying in the Disneyland Hotel where the convention was being held, and as I was making my way to the room where this event was to take place, I luckily bumped into Marc Davis and his wife Alice just as they were entering the hotel lobby. Since they weren't sure where the room was, I gladly offered to escort them there, taking the opportunity to chat with them along the way. 

Western desperadoes!

The room was on the second floor, but Marc, though walking slowly with a cane, did not want to take the elevator and insisted he could make it up the stairway, which fortunately had shallow wide steps. The hotel had recently been renovated, and there had been some panels of park concept art put up as decoration, so when Marc and Alice arrived at the top of the stairway, there facing them on the landing were a series of large panels featuring the above concept art from the never built Western River Expedition with the masked desperadoes on their horses, also comically wearing masks. I'll never forget Marc's reaction to seeing this art he'd created so many years before. He gazed slowly across the panels, then gradually smiled and started to quietly chuckle to himself. I could tell that he was getting some great amusement from seeing his work again and seemed quite touched that it was on display quite large for people to enjoy. I only met Marc Davis that one time, but I'll never forget witnessing that sweet moment with Marc and his wonderful cartoon art. Happy Birthday to Marc Davis, a genuine Disney Legend!

Anthropomorphism in Animation

In the 1946 Disney animated feature, Make Mine Music, there was a rather delightful sequence called Johnny Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet. It was a terrific example of anthropomorphism - giving human traits and personality to that which is not human. Usually we think of anthropomorphism as it relates to cartoon animals who wear clothes, talk, and walk upright on their two hind legs. But there are plenty of samples of objects that are also brought to life with human traits, like the enchanted clock, candlestick and tea pot in Beauty and the Beast, or the brooms that overwhelm poor Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

But getting back to the film I cited above, here are some stills from Johnny Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet that show what it is that I love about their design and treatment in the animation.

In the stills above, you can see how the two hats really lend themselves to being cast as human "types". Alice has a bow on the back, just as a girl might have a big bow tying up the back of her hair. The rest of the ribbon hangs down gracefully and can be utilized as girlish arms as demonstrated. Also, the lace around her brim suggests a frilly collar on a dress. Johnny is certainly a lot simpler in design, but the eyes exist where there would be the shadowed indentations on a fedora, and the opening of the hat acts as his mouth. The hatband even suggests a mustache, I suppose.

What I particularly enjoy though about Johnny's design is the use of a visual "cheat" - an element that goes deliberately against the rules of 3 dimensional structure (like Mickey's always round ears, for example). In Johnny's case the cheat is in the way his face actually encompasses two separate planes of the hat: the eyes are on the front, while the mouth is on the underside of the brim. Because a drawing is a 2 dimensional representation of 3D form, the artists can easily get away with this optical illusion of the two planes working as one when the hat is tilted up, as in the two stills above. Also, note how Johnny is able to exhibit emotion in the way the brim is pushed and pulled to achieve different mouth shapes, with the eyes reacting accordingly. This is the magic of traditional, hand drawn animation, and one of the reasons I will always vastly prefer it to CG animation, which so often is trying to mimic the literalness of live-action film. Additionally, so long as Hollywood continues to pursue creating these CG films in 3D, such visual"cheats" cannot possibly work as effectively.

This brings me to a subject that is bound to rub some people the wrong way, but I believe the criticism is warranted. Because of the trend in current animated features to try to emulate live-action cinematography, I feel that we're losing the very definition of what it means to be an animated film. My own interest in animation as a young kid was that it was the illusion of a drawing seemingly springing to life upon the screen. That was truly magical to me, and was certainly one of the factors contributing to my love of drawing and hopes to one day becoming a cartoonist. For me, it was always "The Animated Cartoon" - take "Cartoon" out of the equation and I really wasn't that interested. Sure, I liked some stop-motion animation back then, but it was always drawn cartoon animation that intrigued me.

So hopefully you can understand why I might not be particularly impressed with the latest short that Pixar is working on called The Blue Umbrella, which seems like a watered down (so to speak) variation on the classic Disney segment cited above. I came across this teaser clip on Cartoon Brew today and I must say it just leaves me cold. For a start, though it's technically CG animation, it might as well be live-action footage from the way it looks. The animated faces appear merely pasted on, rather than being physically integrated into the umbrellas themselves, and these objects only twist and turn a bit, not exhibiting any of the whimsical "Squash and Stretch" we associate with classic drawn animated performance. In short, this film clip holds about as much charm for me as a typical TV commercial for Kool-Aid, which it sadly puts me in mind of. For the record, I remain equally unimpressed with Pixar's two Cars features, as they also come across as live-action films with some animated elements pasted on top, again exhibiting no exaggeration of form and movement of the various car characters, thus not taking proper advantage of the animation medium.

By the way, I've heard that this short film may be the work of the satellite studio that Pixar set up in Vancouver. If so, it is likely that some of the folks involved in the animation may be former students of mine at Sheridan. Please understand that my criticism is not targeted toward those involved in bringing the film to fruition. My issue with the film is in the concept and art direction that was decided upon by the powers-that-be. Animation that tries this hard to look like its live-action film cousin just isn't really "animation" in the true sense of the word, not in my book anyway. Sorry, but this stuff needs to be said.

Happy 30th Anniversary, EPCOT!

Today, October 1st 2012, marks the 30th anniversary of EPCOT, the second park to open as part of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Though I'll always love The Magic Kingdom best of all, EPCOT runs a very close second for me, and I feel a particularly close connection to that park. You see, back on opening day, Oct. 1st 1982, I was gathered along with my parents and sister in the huge crowd of thousands patiently waiting outside the gate, incredibly excited to know that we would be among the first guests to enter this long anticipated new theme park that had such an interesting evolution.

Originally EPCOT had started out to be something far more ambitious, the "Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow", the personal model of an actual working city as envisioned by Walt Disney himself. Sadly, Walt passed away before this grand experiment could be put into motion, and the plan for an actual working and living community was ultimately decided to be too great a challenge for those who were now in charge of running Walt Disney Productions. To be honest, I don't blame them a bit. It would have been a huge venture, fraught with potential problems and financial risk, and without Walt there to guide them they seriously doubted whether they could make it work.  

So instead, they re-envisioned EPCOT Center as more of a permanent World's Fair, a showcase for new ideas in the area to be known as Future World, and a second area featuring a series of international pavilions circling a manmade lagoon to be called World Showcase. I would imagine that the success of Canada's own EXPO '67, that was a keystone of our centennial celebrations built in Montreal, was also a huge influence on how EPCOT Center evolved into the new theme park it would become.

I loved EPCOT in that first visit on opening day, as it was a thrill of a lifetime to see Disney history unfolding before my eyes. I have several favourite memories of that visit, including that first time experiencing The Universe of Energy, where the guests were directed to their seats in the large theatre before a film began on the history of oil formation during the age of the dinosaurs. As the film ended, the curtains parted and, much to our surprise, the "theatre" broke up into a series of huge ride vehicles that then lined up one by one to enter through the curtains into a fog-filled, musty smelling land of life-sized audio-animatronic dinosaurs. Perhaps audiences today are somewhat jaded, but back in 1982 this ride was truly state of the art! 

My other very fond personal memory happened at the finale of The American Adventure show in the American pavilion in World Showcase. Aside from the technical marvel of the very sophisticated audio-animatronic historic figures that told the story of America's turbulent beginnings and evolution, what really sticks with me is what happened during the filmed portion that plays out afterward. As the attraction's theme music swells majestically, images fade in and out toward us of many key moments in the 20th Century. When filmed images of John F. Kennedy, then Martin Luther King appear, there was spontaneous applause from the audience. But when they are followed not long thereafter by Walt Disney himself, the crowd rose to its feet applauding wildly. It was one of those moments where you had to be there to feel the huge emotional response in that theatre.

Two years after visiting EPCOT, I was to begin my own career at Disney, working initially in the Canadian Merchandising Division in Toronto for 6 years, then transferring to Florida to work in Walt Disney World's Marketing Art Department for an additional 4 years. I started in WDW in 1990, and in 1992 EPCOT celebrated its 10th Anniversary. As one of the character illustrators in that department, I was asked to illustrate the article about EPCOT's 10th that was featured in The Disney News magazine. They wanted a painting that would promote the celebration show that took place around The Seven Seas Lagoon in World Showcase, but in a cartoon style featuring the Disney characters. The show admittedly had some problems that would become apparent a couple weeks after its debut. For one thing, it took place at midday, and I have to say that fireworks are not too impressive at that time - more visible smoke than light display against the sunny Florida sky! Additionally, they had performers flying around in para-planes above the lagoon, dressed in Disney character costumes. Though the character heads were constructed of a lightweight mesh, rather than solid fibreglass like the walkaround versions, the pilots found that their vision was still not that great through the coloured mesh, and Disney decided to cancel that part of the show before the possibility of some tragic accident occurring!

I enjoyed doing the illustration immensely, and the article below shows the stages of the creative process in the way an illustration evolves from concept sketch through to final painting:

Disney Big Figurines

Over on the blog by my friend, Kevin Kidney, longtime Disney artist, Kevin has just posted some photos of the "Big Figs" or Big Figurines that were created over the years for the Disney Catalogue and Disney Stores merchandise. Kevin and fellow artist, Jody Daily did the initial concept drawings for the figures, establishing the pose usually based on a specific moment from the film they appeared in. After that, rotation drawings would be created from the concepts in several views in order to visually aid the sculptor who would be crafting the figure dimensionally out of clay. Kevin has kindly pointed out that I did the rotation drawings for a number of them and, if memory serves, I think this is an accurate list of the ones I had a hand in that are pictured in his post:

Jiminy Cricket (in hobo garb)

Mickey Mouse Club Morty (one of Mickey's two nephews, though it could be Ferdy)

Penguin Waiter (from Mary Poppins)

Pluto

Pinocchio and Jiminy

Minnie and Goofy as Disneyland tourists (Did I do Mickey and Donald as well? I can't recall!)

The White Rabbit 

Dumbo and Timothy

The Three Caballeros

I'd previously posted the rotations for Pinocchio and The White Rabbit a few years ago here. More recently I had posted the ones of The Three Caballeros here.

Here are several of the others that I've managed to find among my files of past Disney work: 

Happy Birthday, Donald Duck!

I thought I'd acknowledge Donald Duck's 78th anniversary by posting some of the Disney merchandise that I had a hand in helping to create a few years back. Though most of my Disney work was in the form of traditional cartoon illustration, there were also many figural projects that required a series of rotational drawings in order to help the sculptor visualize it in three dimensions before going to work on it.

MMC Donald Duck Rotations

This piece was to celebrate The Mickey Mouse Club TV show from the 1950s, and I did rotations for both this Donald with the gong and a Mickey figure in bandleader costume, as the two were featured in the opening titles of that show. 

Mickey Mouse Club Donald Duck Figurine

I was quite happy with the way this figurine turned out, and the pic above was taken of the actual piece that I'd bought at The Disney Store at the time it was made available for purchase. I only wish I'd bought the one of Mickey as well!

Snow Globes Rotations

This was a commemorative snow globe that was created for the 65th Anniversary of Donald Duck in 1999, called "Donald Duck - 65 Feisty Years". I remember doing a lot of art for that merchandising programme featuring the duck in his various incarnations through the years.

Donald Duck Snow Globes Figurine

I must admit I was a bit disappointed in the sculpture of the large Donald Duck figure in the armchair, as I felt the face wasn't quite right and overall he looked a bit thick and lumpy. Still, it was likely due to the constraints of the mould-making process.

Three Caballeros Rotations

This was a fun project to work on, as the original concepts for these Big Figurines of The Three Caballeros were by the exceptionally talented Disney artists, Kevin Kidney and Jody Daily, and their poses were so expressive to translate into dimensional drawings.

Three Caballeros Big Figurines

Here's a pic of the finished sculpted figurines that I've borrowed from Kevin's site. As you can see, the poses were modified a bit from my drawings - Panchito's hands not on his hips with eyes straight ahead, and José's beak is closed, but otherwise are quite faithful to the way I'd drawn the rotations.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed seeing the process behind creating these sculpted figurines of Donald Duck. I have other examples of my rotation drawings of various Disney characters that I'll continue to post from time to time.

RIP Robert B. Sherman

I read the sad news on one of my favourite sites, Cinemaretro, that Robert B. Sherman has passed away. Robert along with his brother, Richard, were the talented songwriters who wrote much of the music that we all loved from the Disney films and theme park attractions throughout the 60's, 70's and even into the 80's. Since I was a child of the 1960's, Disney films such as The Sword in the Stone, The Jungle Book, and The Aristocats were very much a part of my formative years, as well as their absolute masterpiece, Mary Poppins. Actually, I had just screened my DVD of Mary Poppins over the Christmas holidays, watching it for the first time on my big HDTV, and was awestruck by the sheer craftsmanship that is in abundance at every level in that film. I was a bit teary eyed in fact as I listened to "Feed The Birds", remembering that it was the song that Walt Disney would often request that Bob and Dick play for him in his office when he was in a reflective mood.

The music of the Sherman Brothers is strongly melodic with witty and whimsical lyrics, making everything they wrote memorable and timeless. For me, their songs, combined with the orchestral scores by composer George Bruns, were so much a part of that warm and wonderful era of Disney, and I am grateful to these talented men for the legacy they have left us. Bob, I hope you're now enjoying a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow!

Drawn Animation Still Matters

My good friend and colleague, Mark Mayerson, has written his well reasoned theory on why today's audiences may have forsaken traditional, hand-drawn animation in favour of the ever increasing use of CG. I think he's correct, but only up to a point, as he uses the new French film, The Artist, to make an analogy between the decline of silent film after the introduction of sound with the current decline in popularity of drawn animation. I just finished putting my own thoughts into an impassioned (if longwinded) comment in response to his post. Since I'd been wanting to say something regarding drawn animation vs CG here on my own blog, I figured I'd repost my thoughts here in order to get more mileage out of them. For what it's worth, here's what I said on the matter:

I haven't seen The Artist as yet, although it's top of my list to see. (Actually, it's about the ONLY film that I'm planning to see these days, sad to say). I have to quibble with you on one thing, though. There's no question that it is an "affectation", as you describe, but I'd argue that it was never meant to be anything more than that. It is undoubtedly meant as a loving homage to those simpler times of the silent films, but it is a one-shot novelty, not in any way hoping to bring about a return of the silent, black and white film as a form of popular entertainment. I think that's quite obvious from the fact that it's set in the 1920s, not using the format to tell a contemporary story. Back in 1976, Mel Brooks gave us Silent Movie, which was also a love letter to silent films, though one set deliberately in modern day in order to parody it in the Mel Brooks style of absurdity. But that film too was never intended to usher in a new wave of silent pictures.

That's why I think your analogy to handdrawn animated films may ring a bit false here, Mark, with due respect. Whereas nobody would want to bring back the silent film as an ongoing form of popular entertainment, recognizing its inherent limitations that no longer exist since the advent of sound and colour, those of us who champion drawn animation still believe it will always be a valid form of the art. Also, I don't think that opinion is limited to just those of us who work in animation or related fields of visual art. A lot of people, particularly mothers of young kids, do see the difference between traditional drawn animation and CG and have told me that they do indeed miss the former.

Animation may have started out as a novelty on screen, but once Disney and Fleischer popularized the illusion of moving cartoon drawings as a legitimate form of entertainment, it was recognized as a distinct art form in itself, a completely different experience to that of a live-action film. Even the technological advances in features like Pinocchio, Fantasia and especially Bambi, did not so much blur the line between drawing and live-action, but rather, treated the resulting imagery more like moving paintings, still far removed from live-action cinematography in their graphic visual clarity.

This is why I cringe at what is being done today in the name of "animation", utilizing the computer to replicate everything in live-action: light, shadow, texture, and now, with the introduction of mo-cap, slavishly realistic movement, devoid of creativity and caricature. In short, there really is no such thing as animation anymore, as the industry honchos have decided that the inherent charm of a cartoon drawing seemingly springing to life on the screen is passé, and must never be see again. The rules of photography can be the only goal to aspire to if one is to remain working in Hollywood.

What a sad state our industry has fallen into. Even sadder because nobody working in it has the courage of their convictions to fight back against the madness of it all.


There's more I want to say on this topic, but I need to gather my thoughts together first and grab some visuals to illustrate it. In the meantime, please leave your own thoughts in my comments section.

Floyd Norman!

One of my favourite regular reads has been the blog of Disney cartoonist and gagman, Floyd Norman, AKA "Mr. Fun". Recently, Floyd had mentioned on his blogsite that he might be retiring from blogging, due to the blog's host site being phased out. That would have been a real shame, as I and many others have come to really enjoy his posts relating his many years working for Disney. Floyd is a genuine link to Disney's illustrious past, as he started working for the Disney Studio back when Sleeping Beauty was still in production. Fortunately, Floyd gave it some more thought and decided to keep on blogging using a new hosting service.

I have a special fondness for Floyd Norman, as he was a story artist on my alltime favourite Disney feature, 1967's The Jungle Book. Many of his posts are warmly nostalgic about that era of animation, and his personal recollections of attending story meetings presided over by Walt Disney himself help to give the reader a good sense of what Walt was really like. I also enjoy his stories of that master animator, Milt Kahl, who had a reputation for being a pretty colourful old curmudgeon.

Anyway, I'm personally overjoyed to see that Floyd Norman will still be regaling us with his tales from the Disney Studio back in its glory years. I've just updated the url to his new site in my list of blog links to the right. I hope you folks enjoy his stories and cartoons as much as I do!

Floyd Norman!

One of my favourite regular reads has been the blog of Disney cartoonist and gagman, Floyd Norman, AKA "Mr. Fun". Recently, Floyd had mentioned on his blogsite that he might be retiring from blogging, due to the blog's host site being phased out. That would have been a real shame, as I and many others have come to really enjoy his posts relating his many years working for Disney. Floyd is a genuine link to Disney's illustrious past, as he started working for the Disney Studio back when Sleeping Beauty was still in production. Fortunately, Floyd gave it some more thought and decided to keep on blogging using a new hosting service.

I have a special fondness for Floyd Norman, as he was a story artist on my alltime favourite Disney feature, 1967's The Jungle Book. Many of his posts are warmly nostalgic about that era of animation, and his personal recollections of attending story meetings presided over by Walt Disney himself help to give the reader a good sense of what Walt was really like. I also enjoy his stories of that master animator, Milt Kahl, who had a reputation for being a pretty colourful old curmudgeon.

Anyway, I'm personally overjoyed to see that Floyd Norman will still be regaling us with his tales from the Disney Studio back in its glory years. I've just updated the url to his new site in my list of blog links to the right. I hope you folks enjoy his stories and cartoons as much as I do!

A Disney Halloween!

Since tomorrow is Halloween, I thought I'd post up some of my Disney illustrations that were created to that theme. The two illustrations below featuring the characters from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and The Lion King were both done for a Random House childrens' book entitled Don't Go Bump in the Night!, which was a book full of Halloween safety tips illustrated with scenes from several Disney films and Pixar films too.



These illustrations featuring characters from The Little Mermaid appeared in another book from Random House entitled The Fairest of the Fall. This book was in the Disney Princess line of merchandising, and consisted of two stories with an autumn theme, the first featuring Ariel and the second featuring Princess Aurora (AKA Briar Rose) from Sleeping Beauty.

The story with Ariel is about her discovering a Jack-o-lantern floating in the waves which she then takes to Scuttle the seagull to see if he knows what it is for. He explains the concept of Halloween being celebrated by the villagers onshore, thereby inspiring Ariel and her friends to then stage their own aquatic variation on the festival.

(Sorry I gave away the ending, but please go buy the book anyway, okay?)

More Walt Disney World Art

The above image was the very first illustration I did for Walt Disney World Marketing, although it was created about a year before I was actually hired on staff, which would place it as being done around 1989. I was still working for Disney's merchandising division here in Toronto full-time when this project was offered to me as a freelance assignment. I was being considered for a permanent staff position in Florida at the time, so I really poured my heart and soul into this illustration. I wanted the painting to really capture the look of the film, so I treated the background more like watercolour, using dilute glazes of gouache to create that translucent look. The Dwarfs were painted with gouache full strength, to give them more opacity like animation cels.

This is how the project looked in full, as my illustration was just the centerpiece within a graphic design that had been put together by one of the Walt Disney World designers at the excellent WDW Resorts Design division. They produced many holiday posters over several years, which were printed up and given out to guests in the various Disney resort hotels. Once I was working at WDW full-time, I contributed to several more of these, although this one will always remain my sentimental favourite.

Soon after first joining the WDW Marketing Art division I remember getting this fun assignment from their travel agency. Originally, I had done the concept art of Donald Duck with his two amigos from The Three Caballeros, José Carioca the parrot and Panchito the rooster, swooping over The Magic Kingdom on their flying serapé. Unfortunately, the client had never seen the film and wondered who the parrot and rooster were and, despite my trying to educate him on the matter, insisted that I change it to Donald's nephews instead. I still enjoyed doing the illustration but I don't think it makes as much sense as the original concept sketch did. Ah well...

This piece was actually done several years after I'd left WDW in Florida and had returned back home to the Toronto area. I was still doing a lot of regular freelance work for WDW, mostly through the Resorts Design division. I remember really enjoying working on this illustration for a chocolate box which would sell in the WDW gift shops. It wasn't often I got to do the 1930's style of Mickey and the gang, so once again there was the novelty in trying to capture that delicate watercolour look of the background, themed to the 1937 cartoon, Hawaiian Holiday. By this time I'd finally gotten myself a computer and had been dabbling with Photoshop a bit in my art. Quite frankly, to this day I'm still far more comfortable painting with real gouache on illustration board and I can't imagine capturing that same feel digitally, so I still paint backgrounds traditionally and scan then in to the computer afterward. However, I do find Photoshop handy for painting the characters, making them look more like animation cels like in the films. I still ink them traditionally, then scan in the linework and use Photoshop to add the colour. That's how this illustration was accomplished, and I have continued using this hybrid method to illustrate a great many children's books for Disney since.

I'm still sorting through folders of old art and printed samples, so I may start posting up more of my Disney work in the near future.

Walt Disney World Kids Menus

Continuing with the theme of Walt Disney World celebrating its 40th Anniversary, here are some more samples of projects I worked on while employed there in the early 1990's. Specifically, these are some of the kids menus I illustrated for the various restaurants in the WDW resort hotels - projects that I particularly enjoyed doing due to their novelty factor.

I always enjoyed illustrating Donald and his nephews, as the ducks are my favourite of the standard Disney characters. This was one of the numerous, more economically produced menus/placemats that were easily printed up on 11 x 17 stock. It was created for Olivia's Café at the Old Key West Resort. The menu items are actually listed on the back of this placemat, in among some illustrated puzzles for the kids to work out while eating. The novelty aspect was the fish that was a separate insert that kids could remove and replace in the net.

In a similar vein, this was another economical novelty menu created for Boatwright's at the Port Orleans Resort (which was originally a separate area known as Dixie Landings Resort). As I mentioned in my previous post, it was always a treat to illustrate the characters from Song of the South, as they were not utilized that often. Again, there is the novelty of the ruler insert with small stencils cut in each end.

As I'm a huge fan of The Jungle Book, it was a particular thrill to get to illustrate this kids menu that was used in one of the restaurants over at The Polynesian Resort. (I can't recall which one, though.) It was about 36" wide, so I decided to illustrate it actual print size just to keep it a manageable size on my drawing table, rather than 25% bigger or so, as I normally chose to work. The only direction I'd gotten from the client was that it had to depict the various characters gathered around a table in the jungle and there had to be room to print the menu items somewhere too. Hmm, that was a tricky problem - how to achieve that directive, yet keep the solution somewhat faithful to the jungle environment itself.

I decided to treat the table as a gigantic stone tablet that might have been part of King Louie's ruined temple. Likewise, the menu items appeared on more tablets suspended by vines overhead. To be sure, the situation with the characters is quite contrived, but I enjoyed coming up with gags that seemed right for each of them, such as Kaa the snake's front end appearing in the first segment while his tail end is shown further along in the scene. The whole scene was painted with gouache on illustration board, and I enjoyed trying to maintain the look of those beautiful backgrounds from the film.

Speaking of Kaa, the reverse side of the menu featured a line drawing of the snake (a segment shown above) for kids to colour in with crayons, then punch out along the perforations to fasten into a loop that could then be placed around the head like he does with Mowgli in the film. Unfortunately, this novelty led to the unintended effect of kids asking for a second intact menu after they ruined the first one by punching out the snake. Ultimately this resulted in the item being discontinued after about a year, as it was costing the restaurant more than their budget had allowed for!

Finally, here is the only item for which I ever got to illustrate the characters from The Rescuers. This menu was created for Port Orleans Resort, if memory serves. The menu items appeared on the reverse side listed on the underside of the gator's belly, as it was the same scene depicted, only as if you were underwater looking up. Very tricky to make it look optically correct, as I recall. Again the novelty involved punching out the gator, then folding down his side panels to end up with a dimensional relief sculpture that the kids could play with while eating. Alas, this one as well often resulted in twice as many menus being requested due to ruining the illustration in the process, thereby being replaced sometime later with a simpler, more economical menu instead.

I look back with a lot of fondness on these kids menus, as they were usually more creative and playful than a lot of the other illustrated assignments I worked on. They were all produced in collaboration with the great design team who worked in the WDW Resort Design Department. To those who are still working there today, I salute you!

Happy 40th Anniversary, Walt Disney World!

Yes, on October 1st 1971, Walt Disney World in Florida officially opened up to an appreciative public. I'm sure that many other Disney enthusiasts are posting articles today that go into the history of the park, so I'm going to do something a bit different. Instead I want to post up some of the artwork I did while employed at the WDW Marketing Art Dept. back in the period of 1990 to 1994. In 1991, of course, WDW was celebrating its 20th anniversary, so there was some special art that was produced for that year-long celebration:

Some of the 20th Anniversary material featured Roger Rabbit, who had made his screen debut just three years earlier. Unfortunately, at this point poor Roger was in the centre of a rather ugly legal battle between Disney and Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, whom had partnered up with Disney to produce the movie. I strongly recall a memo being circulated around our office at that time, informing us that any projects we had on the go involving Roger could be completed and used, but nothing else could be initiated until further notice. I had this painting in progress, so they told me I could keep going on it. The way it ended up, Disney and Amblin were never able to resolve their differences, and Roger Rabbit ended up in a sort of legal limbo. This illustration was one of the last depictions of Roger for quite some time, although there have been some exceptions I've noticed in recent years, notably some sculpted figurines from the Walt Disney Classics Collection.

This colourful phone directory cover was my favourite illustration project that 20th Anniversary year. There was a festive parade featuring the Disney characters in Mardi Gras style costumes. In fact, they'd coined it the "Party Gras Parade", and it was actually recycled from a Disneyland 35th celebration the year before. You can see a bunch of images from it here on the Jim Hill Media site. I was given the happy assignment of creating the Lake Buena Vista phonebook cover art that year where I got to interpret the parade back into cartoon illustration form of the Disney characters.

Though the Splash Mountain attraction actually opened up the following year in 1992, I thought I'd include this illustration I did for the presskit folder that would have heralded the news to the media. I must admit I've had ambivalent feelings about that attraction, as the WDW Marketing Dept. tried to sell it as thrill-packed log flume ride while radically downplaying the theme of the Br'er Rabbit characters from Song of the South. They didn't show the character theming at all in the TV spots promoting it at the time. As we all know, Disney has kept that lovely film locked tightly in the vault out of fear that its time period of the immediate post-Civil War American South would upset and infuriate ultra-sensitive types. I'm just happy that I was able to illustrate the folder cover in a way that paid tribute to a film that has long been a warm memory from my early moviegoing years.

Finally, here is an example of something else we occasionally got to do in my department. Even though there was a separate WDW Merchandise Art Dept. elsewhere on property, sometimes we would get some of their overflow work. This was one of several illustrations I got to do for them which would appear on candy boxes sold in The Magic Kingdom gift shops. They also were novelty items, in that if you flipped the box over, there would be an illustration of the back view of the situation, in this case revealing a lucky horseshoe from Minnie that Mickey is holding behind his back.

Anyway, I might rummage through more boxes and folders of my old Disney artwork to post a few more samples up here in the next few days.

Happy 100th, Freddie Moore!

I've been reading on other blogs that today, Sept. 7 2011, represents the 100th anniversary of the birth of legendary Disney animator, Fred Moore. You can read the thoughts of other artists regarding Freddie on the blogs of Jenny Lerew and Andreas Deja. Aside from his iconic and highly influential Disney character designs and animation, Fred was also famous for his drawings of cute, innocently sexy girls. I've written before on this subject here, and I am proud to own a couple of his originals, bought about 20 years ago through the Howard Lowery auction, one of which is pictured at the head of this post.

Recently, former Disney animator and creator of Electric Tiki, Tracy Lee, has created a beautiful figurine based on one of Fred's sketches of a typical "Freddie Girl", pictured in the above photo. The sketch was interpreted into the 3-dimensional figurine by the brilliant Kent Melton, who has been responsible for many extraordinary sculpted animation maquettes over the years, as well as having sculpted figurines for public purchase with the Disney Classics Collection. I had pre-ordered the Freddie Moore Girl sculpture when it first went on sale, and received it a couple months ago, where it now sits alongside other Fred Moore-inspired figurines of the centaurettes from Fantasia that were among the first set of bisques from The Disney Classics Collection. Just adorable!

Pooh Book Illustrations

Seeing the recent Disney Winnie-The-Pooh feature made me think back on the series of books I'd illustrated for Readers Digest back about 10 years ago. I like the Pooh characters, but I must admit I find them deceptively simple in design, as they're actually quite hard to get just right. (And nobody can draw Tigger absolutely right since Milt Kahl retired from animating - he's really tough to do well!)



This was perhaps my favourite of the handful that I'd illustrated, as I really quite like drawing Rabbit. Perhaps I relate only too well to his curmudgeonly attitude! The fun for me was in keeping Pooh and Rabbit in character as best I could, as well as trying to paint the backgrounds as faithful as possible to the watercolour style in the films. I drew the characters as separate elements, scanning in the pencil art and colouring them in Photoshop, then placing them on top of the hand-painted backgrounds that were done with diluted gouache on illustration board. This process helps to keep the illustrations looking much like cel set-ups, resembling the look of the films as closely as I was able to achieve. Anyway, here are all of the interior pages from Happy New Year, Pooh! - some are single pages, others are double page spreads. The simple text is laid in afterward on top of the illustrations in the wide open areas. These books were available in a book-of-the-month-club format aimed at very young readers.