While in Copenhagen...

Two days ago, I was in the neighborhood of Assistens Kirkegaard, the "assisting cemetery," which opened November 6th., 1760 to alleviate the crowded town of Copenhagen from the pressure of burials within the city walls. Since it is relatively close to the city center, I pass this cemetary regularly--our studio has been facing it back in 1990, and right now it's less than a mile away--but I now finally got myself to go inside. Nowadays, it is mainly used as a large park, but people are still being buried here. It's a clean park, but hardly well groomed.

My specific reason to come here was to pay hommage to that great Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, here called H.C. Andersen - pronounced Ho Say (like José!) Andersen. Of course, we remember HCA from Disney's The Little Mermaid, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, The Little Match Girl and The Ugly Duckling, and we at A. Film produced The Ugly Duckling and Me (loosely based on his story, as feature and series), The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep as a 12 minute CG film for Danish TV and Channal Four and we made a TV series from lots of his works (which I found recently at Best Buy) - as did Mike Sporn. In 2005, the H.C. Andersen Year, we received the H.C. Andersen Award for our efforts. Andersen's famous stories are plentiful: The Emperor's New Clothes, The Red Shoes, The Emperor's Nightingale, Thumbelina (we worked on Don Bluth's version as well), The Princess and the Pea. In 1946, The Tinder Box (Fyrtøjet) was the first Danish animated feature and the first Danish feature in color.
I draw the line at Klods Hans (Clumsy Hans), though, come to think of it, he did get the princess...

Below are a shot of his modest plot in the cemetary, a closeup of his stone, a quick portrait of myself with it to give it some dimension and a little map to show the plot in the cemetary and the entrances.
The stone reads (directly translated, though in Danish it rhymes):
The poet
HANS CHRISTIAN
ANDERSEN
B. April 2nd. 1805
D. August 4th 1875
The soul God in his image has created
Is unhurtable, cannot be lost
Our earthlive here is eternity's seed
Our body dies but the soul cannot die
HCA
There is a school very near by, and the noise from the kids in the schoolyard seemed strangely fitting with the image we have of Denmark's Great Poet, however wrong this image may be...I thought some of you might like to see this...
A final note: other famous people buried here range from scientists (Niels Bohr, H.C.Ørsted) to jazz greats (Ben Webster, Kenny Drew).
Don't fear: more Alice to follow shortly!

Prod. 2069 (Alice) - Seq. 03.0 - Doorknob

"Alice and the Doorknob" is directed by Ham Luske, and wonderfully animated by Frank Thomas (Doorknob) and Ollie Johnston (Alice), with scenes by Hal Ambro and George Rowley, an Alice by Les Clark, a hand by Blaine Gibson, with effects animated by Josh Meador, on layouts by Charlie Philippi...

Prod. 2069 (Alice) - Seq. 02.0 - Down...

"Down the Rabbit Hole" continues Wilfred Jackson's opening - a small sequence, animated by Harvey Toombs, Hal King, Judge Whitaker and Don Lusk...

Prod. 2069 (Alice) - Seq. 01.0 - Opening

Released in New York 7/26/51, Alice in Wonderland was the film that Walt felt he HAD to produce - if he wanted to or not. The first Leica Reel with David Hall's paintings was prepared as early as July 1939, and though work on the story virtually stopped during the war, it has always been an obvious choice for the studio, and finally followed the immensely popular Cinderella. It is a classic, though maybe not everybody's favorite - and for the estimated $3,000,000 budget, I believe it pretty much bombed at the box-office, though it became a cult film in the 60's.

We start with the simple front page, and then, after the credits, we have Wilfred "Jaxon" Jackson's Seq. 01.0 which introduces Alice, her cat Dinah, her sister, the White Rabbit and the songs "Cats and Rabbits" and "I'm Late". Assistant director Mike Holoboff, layout the immensely prodigious MacLaren Stewart.

	In this draft of 5/10/51 we find the animators Bill Justice, Eric Larson, Hal King, Hal Ambro, Judge Whitaker and Harvey Toombs, with effects by George Rowley and Dan McManus...

I will post this very regularly: the last page is number 146!

Addition (25 Aug 2015): in a comment, Ross asks - how did they make scene 27? Here is a little explanation. Basically the scene was split into two parts, with an overlay added in the middle of the scene when the camera was at the easternmost field. Though there are several ways of splitting the BGs, the version shown here is how it seems to have been done. On the Blu-Ray you can actually see the cut edges of the overlay. Keeping all water on the same (bottom) BG seems logical for consistency; splitting it can be tricky, since it is a subtle wash, and if it were split where the front right water seems "on top," the leaves of the overlay (or BG2) would pop on. There would not be difference in George Rowley's rather simple water effects either way. However, there seem to be several water levels.
Here are the background and overlay split up:
Click on these two images to see it explained. It's really very simple. Mac Stewart may have had fun with this...

Journey to Saturn Blog

A. Film's feature for 2008 is called Journey to Saturn, and is based on the Danish comic book from the 70's by the late great Claus Deleuran. Director Craig Frank has made a blog highlighting the techniques used in this film that sort of is a return for us to a style we first dabbled with on our successful Terkel in Trouble. Journey to Saturn (in Danish called Rejsen til Saturn) will not be terribly politically correct, I fear, but if it doesn't stray too far from the book, one of my favorites, it will be a lot of fun! (Link added on the right...)

Ray Bradbury Revisited

Since I had a pretty good seat at the event in Club 33 on Halloween night, I was able to use my little photo camera to shoot some video of Mr. Ray Bradbury telling some stories of Walt Disney and Chuck Jones. Excuse the little gap - about ten seconds missing...


Note on Something Wicked This Way Comes: at an event at the Disney Studio theater a week earlier, Mr. Bradbury noted that many others had tried earlier to make the film, and it ended with Ron Miller at Disney - but they got another scriptwriter! This went badly, but the rest of the story can be heard here!

Anyone up for another feature? Since I am in Denmark at this time and working hard, the only one I can more easily show here is Alice in Wonderland. Can you live with that? Happy Thanksgiving!

Prod. RM19 - Donald's Golf Game

Director Jack King picked up this Donald Duck short on 12/6/37. Assistant director Jim Handley, layout by Bill Herwig.
Animation was issued between 12/17/37 and 4/9/38 to Fred Spencer, Bob Wickersham, Jack Hannah, Don Towsley, Lars Calonius and Johnny Cannon.
This draft was prepared 7/22/38, and the film, renumbered as Prod. Nr. 2219, was released 11/4/1938...Trivia from IMDB: "For the first (and only) time, Huey, Dewey and Louie appear wearing, respectively, red, orange and yellow. This proved too confusing, so for their next appearance in "The Hockey Champ" they returned to red, yellow and green."

Prod. CM6 - The Chain Gang

Released 8/18/1930 and directed by Burt Gillett, The Chain Gang mysteriously has Mickey Mouse as convicted criminal, animated by Norm Ferguson, Les Clark, Ben Sharpsteen, Jack Cutting, Jack King, Dick Lundy, Tom Palmer, Johnny Cannon, Wilfred Jaxon, Dave Hand and Charlie Byrne. This was the period where the crew alternated between Mickeys and Silly Symphonies, and scenes were dealt out from the top, first come first serve...For those of you who "arrived late," this is shorts draft number 58 on this blog - you can also find two features (Pinocchio and The Three Caballeros) and three sequences from other features, all as drafts...

Dream Come True for Ray Bradbury

Last night, Halloween night, famed author Ray Bradbury was honored with the dedication of an oak tree in Disneyland's Frontierland in his name as "Halloween Tree." This was his dream come true.
The ceremony at the tree followed a dinner at Club 33 in his honor, "An Evening with Ray Bradbury."

The images depict Mr. Bradbury at the tree, and a close-up of him being very happy. Next to him Imagineer Tim Delaney, who co-hosted the event with Tony Baxter. It was a very warm, sincere evening, and everyone seemed touched by Mr. Bradbury's joy. At the same time, my thoughts went out to Ollie Johnston on his 95th birthday. I hope he is doing well up north with his family...
So many wonderful memories...

Fritz Lang's "M"

Released in Germany on May 11th, 1931, "M" is the gripping story of a child murderer played by Peter Lorre. About 17 minutes into the film, a police investigator asks around in a candy store.
Check out the decorations!

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Ducky Nash on Pantomime Quiz

A still I fell over the day before yesterday: Clarence "Ducky" Nash and his Donald Duck hand puppet with the hosts of the TV show Pantomime Quiz. The date is unknown. Pantomime Quiz ran from 1947, and was later known as Stump the Stars...

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The Duck puppet was made by puppetry legend Bob Jones, who among many other things also made the Pinocchio marionette and maquettes for the Disney studios. I bet the folks living in his old house on Las Palmas in Fullerton do not realize that Stan Laurel swam in their pool!

Somebody Else...

Another thought by Børge Ring:
"HOW DID A NICE GIRL LIKE YOU GET INTO THIS?"

A number of renowned persons in American animation originally set out to become something quite different. Here are some of them:

Walt Disney (director of live action)
Art Babbitt (headshrink)
Joe Barbera (playwright)
Ham Luske (engineer)
Shamus Culhane (archeologist)
Woolie Reitherman (aviator)
Bill Littlejohn (aviator)
Ward Kimball (magazine illustrator)
Eric Larson (writer)
John Canemaker (actor)
Marc Davis (fine arts painter)
Richard Williams (jazz trumpeter)

Of these, Joe Barbera, Bill Littlejohn, Woolie Reitherman, Marc Davis and Richard Williams managed (to varying degrees) to reach both goals.

Some of you probably know of many more;
A select few may have wanted to become jailers or dentists...

Prod. UM9 - The Mad Doctor

Since Jeff Pepper has posted at length here and again here on this short directed by Dave Hand and released 1/20/1933, I thought it topical to post the draft here.

We see animation by Ben Sharpsteen (the junior animators under his supervision are not mentioned here), Tom Palmer, Johnnie Cannon, Hardie Gramatky, Les Clark and Jack King...

Woman Power Revisited

Nearly ten months ago I posted a small article on Bee Selck, a lady assistant director at Disney's in the 40s and 50s, since "women in animation" was the topic around the blogs. It becomes more and more clear to me that this is an area open for a lot more research:
I had a look at who was at the studio in March 1945, and I counted 81 (yes, eighty-one) women at in the animation building alone!!! If we count a handful secretaries, assistant directors and stenographers, we are left with maybe as many as 50 or 60 ladies pushing pencils!

Below is a very short excerpt of the fateful talk Walt held for his employees on February 10th and 11th, 1941. This part deals with the rumour that the studio was hiring women to replace the higher-paid men at the drawing tables. It is still quite male-centric ("Little" Retta Scott), but one senses that he means well...

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The talk itself, which I am not going to reproduce here, by the way, was seemingly fair enough - but the timing and the "angle" were all wrong: it seems to me that if Walt instead of complaining had asked for help from his employees, the strike might not even have occurred. It seems he was councilled poorly - it would have been hard for himself, as Big Boss, to come to this conclusion...