Prod. 2011 - The Fabulous Mr. Toad (I) - Seq. 03.0 - MainTitles & Seq. 19.0 - Opening

The first part of the film "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" is this, at first wholly separate, production 2011, called "The Fabulous Mr. Toad." These final draft pages are dated 5/2/49.

Seq. 03.0 (Main Titles) is directed by the Special Effects department, layout by John Hench. This page also notes that there are two other sections to Seq. 3, one between Toad and Ichabod, and one at the end of Ichabod. They are the glue that pulls these two films together as one.

Seq.19.0 (Opening) Directed by Jack Kinney, layout by Al Zinnen, and of special note is the fact that the secretary, "'jane" (there was a Jane Sinclair in the room next to Kinney back in 1946) acts as assistant director, as well. [See Joe's comment!]

Animation by Clair Weeks, Henry Tanous, John Sibley (one action scene) and Harvey Toombs. Not what you could call a star-studded array of animators, especially Weeks and Tanous had by this time still not too much experience animating, but it must be said that they kick off the film nicely. Obviously, this would not be the first bit animated, so they would have a supervising animator to go to. Tanous and Weeks knew each other at least from across the hall.

As usual, I begin my postings with my "standard disclaimer:"
"Animation drafts were never meant to be historical documents. They were meant as go-to documents, showing the responsible artist for a certain scene, who might be able to help in case there would be any need for this further on in the production line. Therefore we often see e.g. that animators who left have been replaced by others, often their assistants, in later versions of a draft. Also for this reason it is most often the actual animator, not the supervising animator, who is mentioned. The drafts may also be directly inaccurate - showing early assignments where the animator actually changed when the scene was finally handed out. Keeping all this in mind, though, the drafts can give us some sort of hands-on insight into the inner workings of the production of some of the most "magical" (in itself an over-used word) motion pictures of all time." This draft originated (as most of my feature drafts) in the Background Morgue, originally situated in the basement under the Ink & Paint building on the Burbank lot.