Please note: if an earlier link doesn't work, it may have changed following an update! Check the Category Labels in the side-bar on the right! There you can find animator drafts for sixteen complete Disney features and eighty-six shorts,
as well as Action Analysis Classes and many other vintage animation documents!

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Auction (V) - A Little Milt Moment

MiltRescuers(Item #683)
[Did not sell.]
Milt Kahl, the "Michelangelo of animation," seems to have been proudest of his creation of Madame Medusa for the 1977 feature film The Rescuers.

The upcoming auction has above sheet up for grabs. It is Milt's thumbnail staging of a sequence where Medusa tells her henchman Snoops (a caricature of animation historian John Culhane) that he is too soft. Most drawings are of Snoops, and they show Milt's way of sorting out possible drawing problems - they show Milt's way of working in a quite interesting way.

E.g. see the Snoops in the bottom center: you see his mouth through his hand that is in front of his face. First Milt would have drawn the complete face; then he put the hand in front, carefully covering his mouth completely. I say this, because I know plenty of people who would have thought to not draw the mouth as "it won't show anyway."

Milt's control of shapes is, of course as phenomenal as it is legendary. Look at the simplicity of the shapes of Snoops' hands and fingers on the last drawing!

Check out the incomparable Michael Barrier's interview with Milt Kahl!

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Steven Hartley says...

Milt Kahl certainly gives a good performance on his Medusa when we saw his scenes on the draft you posted last summer.

It's a shame he left because he didn't like the Disney Studios after Walt's death.

Thursday, April 21, 2011 at 2:52:00 PM PDT  
Anonymous spokeshave says...

there could be another reason, that Milt changed his mind and drew Snoop's with the hand still on the nose for that key then decided that he wanted his hand out by that key, so adding the mouth to remind himself and it would be the open mouth?

Friday, April 29, 2011 at 4:28:00 AM PDT  

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