Prod. 2179 - Jungle Book (III) - Seq. 003 - Snake
 |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |
Animated by Milt Kahl (Bagheera, Mowgli and Kaa), Frank Thomas (Kaa and Mowgli) and Ollie Johnston (Bagheera and Mowgli).
A lot of wonderful business showing off hand-drawn animation at its finest by some of its greatest masters. ..
Interesting to see they indicated the end of reel 1/start of reel 2 point in the draft. I notice this specifically, since the last films I edited (incl. our now-current Albert) were not reel-based, and the whole frame stack was delivered in one bunch to the lab, as were the sound reels. But it turns out that our distributor NEEDS it split into reels, as the Italian dubbing studio insists on it. I hope the lab fixes this, as they split the film into reels anyway for the DCP, because some older systems cannot run long MXF files... (Am I getting to be too technical here?)
Any comments?
Labels: Draft, JungleBook
posted by Hans Perk at 4:00 AM
7 Comments:
This is one of my favourite sequence in the film, I appreciate you posting this, Hans! I knew the sequence was mostly heavy with Milt Kahl animation, but admittedly I didn't expect Frank Thomas animating the lion's share. Both do exceptional work.
Do you know if this was one of the earliest sequences animated in the film? Kaa was slightly redesigned later in the film where he meets Shere Khan.
Sc. 46 of Bagheera is interesting to me, as both Milt and Ollie have a co-credit. Perhaps Johnstone did the rough animation, and Milt reworked some of the keys?
Another fascinating draft - I love these posts! (But please note 022 & 023 are the wrong way round!)
This is one of the best sequences in the film from a "story" point of view - neatly dramatising Bagheera's warning of the dangers of the jungle, his own vulnerability as Mowgli's protector, and ultimately Mowgli's childish resilience and self-belief, all in a sequence that is both threatening and hilarious thanks to the wonderful characterisation of Kaa.
The sequence was such a hit when sweatboxed that a second appearance of Kaa was added to the storyboard, reprising the same business, when Shere Khan is looking for the Mancub.
Thanks guys - and yes, Peter I had noticed the two switched images - so I renamed them locally AFTER I had uploaded them and forgot to fix the uploaded ones. So after feeling all kinds of stupid, I now fixed it - thanks!
Milt Kahl animates the scenes with Bagheera and Mowgli together. The scenes of Kaa hypnotizing Mowgli are animated by Frank Thomas, but Kahl animates the cutaway to Bagheera, then all three characters when they start interacting.
Finally, Ollie Johnston returns for the last few scenes. I wonder if Woolie pulled a Bob Clampett on that scene Steven mentioned... it comes at the end of Milt's scenes and the start of Ollie's scenes... maybe Milt drew Bagheera's held pose with Ollie taking over for the dialogue. Or maybe the shift is when his facial expression changes. "So you think you can look after yourself, do you?" (cut) "You want to stay in the jungle, do you?"
I was surprised that Milt animated the scenes of Kaa unraveling... I thought they would have been given to a junior animator.
For some reason Bagheera is referred to as a leopard in the description for Sc.13! Did he "change his spots" and become a panther?
I doubt there is an animation switch on the Bagherra shot attributed to Kahl/Johnston. I think animation switching at Disney sort of stopped from the very early SILLY SYMPHONIES (there's a scene I recall from one of them that changed from Jack King to Les Clark). Can anyone back that up?
Since Milt Kahl was likely the most influential animator in the animation department, I don't think Milt would've been pleased if he was given a scene to partly animate, even if it's Ollie Johnston. He liked to keep control of his scenes, as well as keeping the characters on-model. Only way to find the real truth is to see surviving x-sheets of the scene.
As for the animation switching in Clampett's shorts, I'm not an expert on this, but I think it was a footage strategy so animators can meet their footage quota in order to keep them busy.
Strangely, at this point in the DVD commentary they mention that "the design changed, particularly the eyes" and it sounds like they're talking about redesigning Kaa, but in fact they're just talking about the changing trends in character design from the big wide eyes of the 40s to the smaller eyes the characters were given by this point.
I was watching this sequence again..and some of the animation in there is so good I can hardly believe it. Shot 5 of Mowgli climbing the tree is amazing. In the original pencil test on YouTube, you can see it's animated on a vertical set-up. It was panning so Kahl would've had to be careful to keep things on 1's during any pan..and a pretty tight field when you go vertical like that.
In the earliest Leon Schlesinger days, at "Termite Terrace" it was reported that the desks didn't have any rotating disks..which is astounding, for if a scene such as this was approached: it would've been almost impossible or painful to animate on verticals.
Post a Comment
<< Home