One Small Step for Man...

On this day of the 40th anniversary of the landing of the first man on the moon, I would like to offer the patent to the Rocket to the Moon attraction as it was installed in Tomorrowland in Disneyland in 1955 and lasted until 1966. It bears Walt Disney's own name as the inventor, and was filed - just as the Circarama patent - on July 17th, 1956, one year to the day after opening day, the day we celebrated on Friday. For more info see on Yesterland.

I do not know if one of the attorneys was related to Ken Mattingly, the Flight Commander of Apollo 16. Coincidence?I, too, was glued to the tv that day (night!) in 1969 in Holland...

Disneyland 54 Years Today

Congratulations to Disneyland on it's 54th birthday!

Here is a little in-house article from May/June 1964 about the preparation for Disneyland's "Tencennial" celebration in 1965, when a year was still 12 months...

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This morning also marks the retirement of Disney Imagineer Marty Sklar after 54 years with Disney, with a window on City Hall in Town Square. Marty will continue his work for the Ryman Foundation.

Screenland Contest - Feb.1935

Here is one contest that I would not want to win the first prize in!'

Seeing that a pair of large Mickey dolls sold for some $144,000 at Hake's recently, and with even the 11th prize, an uncut Waddle Book being near unaffordable, the $100 first prize is at this time a laugh, to say the least. Any single one of the prizes (except the Hinds products, I would think) is now worth at least several times that. One should, of course, put it in the context of the Great Depression. But still. Look at the three fourth prizes! Suitably framed!

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This February 1935 Screenland magazine also includes an article on Walt Disney, which I will return to shortly.

Happy Bastille Day to all the French readers (if any)!

Prod. UM3 - The Whoopie Party

One of my favorite fun Mickey shorts is the abundantly musical The Whoopee Party, released 09/17/32. Directed by Wilfred "Jaxon" Jackson, it was animated by Hardie Gramatky, Eddie Donnelly, Les Clark, Dave Hand, Johnny Cannon, Norm "Fergy" Ferguson, "Frenchy" de Trémaudan, Ben Sharpsteen (and unnamed crew of trainees), Tom Palmer, Jack King and Dick Lundy.

IMDb mentions Maude Nugent as composer of "Sweet Rosie O'Grady" as part of the score in this upbeat short, which can be found on the 2002 Treasures DVD set Mickey Mouse in Black and White...Happy Fourth of July to all who celebrate it!

Lawrence Tibbett by Ham Luske

In Wikipedia, we find that «Lawrence Mervil Tibbett (1896-1960) was an American opera singer, movie actor, radio personality and recording artist. He sang with the New York Metropolitan Opera from 1923 to 1950. He performed roles ranging from Iago in Otello to Captain Hook in Peter Pan. As a baritone, Tibbett is acknowledged as one of the greatest opera singers produced by the United States, and one of the finest male voices of the past 100 years.»

Ham Luske (1903-1968) started working for Walt Disney in 1931, and soon became one of Walt's key animators, alongside Norm Ferguson and Fred Moore. He animated Max Hare in the 1935 short "The Tortoise and the Hare," and Jenny Wren in "Who Killed Cock Robin?" He also served as supervising co-director on "Pinocchio" and sequence director on "Fantasia," "Cinderella," "Alice in Wonderland," "Peter Pan," "Lady and the Tramp," "101 Dalmatians" and the cartoon sequences featured in "Mary Poppins." Later he directed TV programs for Walt Disney Productions.

Ham drew this cartoon of Lawrence Tibbett in the early 1930s....

<< Click to enlarge!

[Of course, Ham also was crucially important on Snow White, where he shared the title character with Grim Natwick.
I also have a stack of cleanups from his animation on Broken Toys, with half of the drawings initialled MK as in Milt Kahl, the other half OJ as in Ollie Johnston...]

Prod. RM7 - The Boat Builders

The draft for Boat Builders shows none of the star names of many of the other shorts. E.g. we will not find Fred Moore or Norm Ferguson. Small wonder, as at this time they were busy finishing up on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

This Mickey short was therefor animated by Louie [Schmidtt], Chuck Couch, Eddie Strickland, Frenchy de Trémaudan, Gerry Geronimi, Paul Satterfield, Archie Robin and [Don] Patterson.

It does bring home the fact that the experienced animators Frenchy and Geronimi were not considered "good enough" to animate on the feature, as they were animating alongside those who likely used to be their assistants in the early 30s, Schmidtt, Couch, Strickland and Robin, while Satterfield and Patterson were relative newcomers to the Disney studio.

Looking at the numbering of the scenes, it looks like there were quite some adjustments, maybe after preview, especially on draft page two. Where on the draft is the scene "We'll call her the Queen Minnie"? I suspect there are several scenes that are so called "Camera Cuts" where the scene continues on the same background and exposure sheet, but the field shifts without panning, immediately at the new location.
As Mickey says, "All you do is put it together."

The film can be found on the 2001 Treasures DVD - Mickey Mouse in Living Color, or, on YouTube subtitled in Dutch here.

Directed by Ben Sharpsteen, released two months after Snow White's premiere, on 2/25/38. This draft dated 10/26/37...
I excuse my erratic posting schedule with my being busy.
I know, it's a lame excuse...

Prod. UM51 - Mickey's Amateurs

According to IMDb, Mickey's Amateurs was directed by Pinto Colvig (the clarinet-playing clown who was the voice of Goofy), story man Erdman "Ed" Penner and Walt Pfeiffer (Walt Disney's childhood friend who became management and who was manager of Disney's Penthouse Club for many years until after Walt Disney passed away).

Animated by Stan Quackenbush, Ralph J. Somerville, Ed Love, Marvin Woodward, Al Eugster, Les Clark, [Art] Palmer and Art Babbitt. Music by Ollie Wallace. Can be viewed on the 2001 Walt Disney Treasures DVD - Mickey Mouse in Living Color.
Released 04/17/37, this 4th semi-final draft of 1/12/37...

Three Years...

I just noticed that I let my three year anniversary as blogger slip by me unnoticed on May 22nd. After 513 posts, with 6 feature and 76 shorts drafts, as well as Action Analysis Classes, bar sheets, model sheets and a lot of other fun stuff, I can only say that it does not feel that long at all, and I thank my readers for keeping me motivated!

A MoCap Christmas Carol - Bah Humbug!

A week ago today I spent several hours in line to see the Christmas Carol Train Tour exhibit at L.A. Union Station. It marked the beginning of a national tour promoting the new film by Robert Zemekis made for Disney called A Christmas Carol, of course based on Dickens' famous book.
The train exhibit seemed extremely well done. Reference costumes, clips, models and a cute photo opportunity. Best of all, there were original Dickens documents on display.Very popular but less impressive was the "morph yourself into the characters" setup. This last bit did have problems, though: it spoke of "morph yourself into one of four characters," but there were only three, as the female lead was not available. Also, the images have as yet not turned up in my email, I wonder if they ever will...[They did, Monday night, eight days after the event!] After the train exhibit, we got into a new line, this time for the inflatable theater. Oh boy...

Ok, my main bone of contention: it is a Motion Capture production. They call it Performance Capture, but if this is the state of the art, I will still call it Motion Capture. Scrooge was captured from Jim Carrey, an actor who is not my personal favorite, but then I also do not enjoy much of Jerry Lewis.I found this clip on the web, and I must say it underlines my feelings about this method of film making...[Clip no longer available!]

The exhibit in the train showed clearly how this film was produced - pretty much like Polar Express. Now they do claim that "the eye problem is fixed." This only means that the characters seem to look at each other now - but their gaze is just as dead as before.

WHY do the characters need to be so ugly and unappealing? I doubt if we can ever feel anything for them. My favorite Christmas Carol adaptation is the 1971 musical film Scrooge with Albert Finney in the title role. Actually, the stage version with Tommy Steele I liked even better! Animated, I enjoyed Richard Williams' grand opus. Anyway, in Scrooge, you are really set up to like everyone, Scrooge, Marley, Fred, Ghosts - except maybe the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, but that is a small point.

Let me give an example: in Scrooge, we find in Bob Cratchit a vulnerable man who does his best to support his family - he is likable - we WANT him to have a better life. In Zemekis' film, Bob Cratchit seems quite unlikable - Tiny Tim might even be ashamed to have such a wimp as a father! And Tiny Tim? To me he reeks of some young designer saying "hey guys, look how strange I can make this guy?" instead of finding the heart in the story. The models as displayed in the train show a lot of good intentions, but they seem to have a hard time pulling these things off on film!At the exhibit, in the balloon theater, a small film was shown in 3-d stereoscopic, with most of the scenes being inspirational art turned into View-Master® images. Mind you, the backgrounds of Old London are often breathtakingly realistic. Too much so for my taste.Only a few scenes were shown in a sort-of final stage, so we may need to give Zemekis the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, the scenes shown were appallingly unappealing. When the nephew Fred visits Scrooge at the beginning of the story, he was captured from well-known, dependable actor Colin Firth, but who directed him to be irritating and ugly? Underneath his emotionless stare, he seems to be angry, not in a Christmas mood at all! As member of the audience, I felt just as Scrooge: get this guy out of here!
Good day to you, Sir!
If that is what I feel about the LIKEABLE characters, what will I think of the scary ones, or the ones I need to dislike?

The bit with Marley in the clip above shows that I will feel very little. There is hardly any expression. Scrooge seems to have one expression in this sequence, as well. None of the characters is actually THINKING! Why is Marley nodding mechanically as he says "you will be haunted by three spirits?" Now mind you, the music was REALLY LOUD in the theater. Maybe they think that that will make it all more scary?

Here is what *I* think they should have done, if they wanted to keep the MoCap: first get a performance that is based on really acting the part as needed to tell the story well, instead of just action, the moving of dots under the MoCap cameras. Then do as Milt Kahl did: use the live action input as a guide, not as a crutch. Look at it, look at what makes things special, throw stuff out that is superfluous (this part is standard MoCap practice, "cleaning" the data) and then CARICATURE the actions. Change them until they work. Do not just use what you have left after cleaning, because then you have what looks like rotoscoped live-action. Just a copy of a live performance is still and always will be just a copy. It can not, given the current conditions, give you all the nuances of a real live performance - for this you need to add the life back into it. Of course, you can only do this if you have animators doing this work, not data-moving technicians. I have seen Audio-Animatronic figures with more "soul" than the clips I have seen from "A Christmas Carol: An IMAX 3D Experience," and that is saying something. I am quite certain that The Illusion of Life is still in print!

The film will show the building of Big Ben, the landmark London campanile that celebrates its 150th birthday right now.
A program about Big Ben might turn out to be more interesting...I thought the Christmas Carol Train Tour was a great exhibit. I, and everybody I was with at the time, loved the train. And we were all thoroughly disappointed by the clips shown in the theater. Will we see the film when it is released November 6th.? Heck yeah! We need to know if a great big Hollywood movie really can be THIS bad...

Go see UP! You will see a heartwarming, exciting story with stunning yet simplified backgrounds and above all great characters, well animated, appealing and full of heart! Without MoCap!

Things are looking UP

Returned from the D23 event "UP all night" at the El Capitan in Hollywood, where I saw PIXAR and Pete Docter's UP. I loved it! It is a wonderful movie. I thoroughly recommend it, and I hope it does as well as it deserves!! It has an interesting story with fun twists and surprises. Delightful, at times sinister, at times an action/adventure movie. I would say that, except for songs, this film has it all!

The 3-d stereoscopic effect is nicely understated and is only used to help tell the story. The event itself was nice, too, though there was a good long wait first: in line 8:30 pm, doors opened at 10, film started at 11. Once inside we were welcomed by the organ music of Rob Richards, who played an hour non-stop, until the lights went down for a little welcome by D23-head Steven Clark and a nice talk by actor John Ratzenberger, who has the distinction to have voiced characters in all of the Pixar features. Then trailers, including a nice one for The Princess and the Frog, followed by a little live dance show. Then the very nice short film "Partly Cloudy," and finally the main feature. After ten minutes I clearly heard sobs from audience members!
Lots of laughs and cheers, too! Outside again at 1:30...

This event also proved that getting the D23 membership was a good idea, also price-wise, as this event was free - though the normal price including drink & popcorn would be $25, and one could bring a guest, that is $50! Plus the two magazines so far published $32 makes a total thus far of $82, which is less than the $75 membership! And, of course, everyone in the audience got a free event pin (and baloon). With two magazines yet to come and the Expo coming up, the membership has paid for itself already! It's not too late folks, you can still become member! D23 needs your support, so things can happen that probably never will happen again!

[Addition: hear Pete Docter on NPR as RealAudio or WMA!]

[Addition: the more cerebral reviewers point out some things they think are "wrong" with the picture, and I myself could do this around two-thirds in (when my thoughts begin to drift off I attribute it to a bit of dragging repetitivety and lack of clarity that encumbers most otherwise perfect PIXAR movies just over halfway through), but let's face it, I was genuinely entertained by UP, silly or not, and to me that is what counts! It happens so rarely these days...]

From Columbia to United Artists...

Not too long ago, I was lucky enough to be able to acquire this, the invitation to the party at the Disney Studio on Hyperion Ave. on June 25th, 1932 to finally celebrate the start of the distribution agreement with United Artists.

The celebration was just as much about the parting of ways with Columbia, with whom business had gone sour. As Roy Disney stated as early as in April 1930, they were not "overburdened with 'Good Intentions'." Though the deal was signed December 1930, and announced in April 1931, the Disney shorts were still delivered to, and distributed by Columbia until mid 1932, hence the late date of this party.

I especially like the wording, the down-home quality of Mickey's "dialogue" in this invitation. This is how Mickey should talk. If you who read this blog are, or are going to be a writer for Mickey, please realize that Mickey sounds best when he reacts, and remember to use as few words as possible! Now read this invitation, "and make it snappy!"

<< Click to enlarge...

Though I only met Wayne Allwine very few times, I am certain he will be greatly missed, and my thoughts go out to Russi.

[Addition: if you do not know your Mickey history and are taken aback by Mickey's accent, hear it straight from Walt’s own mouth in the Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air here. This is how the Mickey in the invitation sounds - not like a slave at all: he is simply a straight-forward fun-loving country boy mouse with a no-nonsense attitude.]

[For those of you studying animation, remember to check out the many Action Analysis Classes, animator drafts and other documents you can find on this blog! Find out how they timed the short films at Disney, and download my free animation timing metronome!]

Mr. G.O. Graphic

When I visited the Disney studio lot in Burbank for the first time in 1978, I noticed a panel holding a row of nice shadow boxes with paper cutouts explaining the process of animation. I later learned that these were done by legendary Disney animator Bill Justice.

Originally situated just below eye level on the left of the entrance to hallway 1D in the Animation Building, the hallway of the Gods--or the Kings, depending on who is relaying the story (left image), it has since moved up one floor to just left of hallway 2A on the south-east end of the main corridor, a few inches lower than before, something that seems to reflect the sentiments of the company through the nineties. The wood paneling has also been painted white which can be seen in the right two images which I took last week.
The boxes are quite elaborate little works of art that explain the process of animation from story, sound recording, animation, ink & paint, background, camera and editing to projection. They were supposedly created to explain the process in a simple way to visitors to the studio, thereby making extended disruptions unnecessary.
It is very possible that you are familiar with the images, as the boxes were pictured in a Mondadori-originated comic album, and more importantly, they were based on artwork presented in the important August 1963 issue of National Geographic (left image), the magazine with the great article by Robert de Roos, a Stanford alumnus of the same year as Ollie Johnston and James Algar. The article has early images of Walt and a fun fold-out map of Disneyland, and also pictures of Walt's suite above the Disneyland Fire Station and two spreads of Mr. G.O. Graphic explaining the process of animation!The artwork in the magazine as well as in the boxes use Archimedes from the 1963 feature film The Sword in the Stone as example.

Iron Pencil Revisited

At last an image of the infamous Iron Pencil at work! Check out my previous post for details on the workings and patent drawings for this contraption!


Blog reader Gunnar Andreassen pointed out a whole new world of images on Getty Images, and while browsing these, I stumbled over the image of a sound re-recording session at the Disney studio, for the wonderful short film "Toot, Whistle, Plunk & Boom," dated September 1st, 1953!

Note how the gentleman in the center (maybe Jim MacDonald) points with his "iron pencil" which in turn gets the lights on the rail at the top to point at the same spot on the scores of the other gents, the mixers, who turn their dials according to their instructions--the spots are clearly visible on their scores!

[Addition:] More!