Prod. 2521 - The Small One (II)  - Section 2 - Loading wood and journey home

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Animation by John Pomeroy, Heidi Guedel/Ballreich/Garofalo, Lorna Pomeroy, Jerry Rees, Bill Hajee, Gary Goldman and Emily Jiuliano.

Did you read Heidi's 2003 book "Animatrix: A Female Animator - How Laughter Saved My Life?" It has several chapters on her time at Disney's, her first animation on The Rescuers, daily life at the studio, and it basically ends when she left the studio to follow Don Bluth. If you are hoping for a full book describing life at the studio, well, this is not it. There is a lot of very personal stuff in there.
But I wasn't disappointed, as in over 100 pages she describes her time at the studio and puts you right there in that interesting time in the middle of the 70's. In these pagers you get a close-up view that most official books cannot give you.
Heidi, it turns out, is still quite active in the arts, but as a sculptress in Florida.

Looking at this section, I really like Heidi's scene 3, Small One waking up. Simple, but it tells its point well. John Pomeroy's scene 10, of Small One sliding down hill and the boy running after him, is quite nice, while his scene 18, the father asking his question towards the camera, is probably not his proudest moment. Jerry Rees (of Brave Little Toaster and Tron fame) has a nice scene 14 with the boy trying to hold the sticks.

Comments

  1. Russian InsiderJune 30, 2010 at 1:21 PM

    Sadly The Small One is not even mentioned in Heidi's book. But she writes about troubled production of Winnie Pooh and Tigger Too. Wish I have any details about this issue. I tried to write directly to Heidi but unsuccessfully.
    Hans thank you very much for this particular drafts! You are right; it is very interesting to learn about contemporary animator's work. Please continue!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hans PerkJuly 8, 2010 at 12:40 PM

    Actually, she mentions the film once, to guide us to the next chapter. But yes, sadly there is no more info on her work on the film...

    ReplyDelete
  3. John V.October 13, 2010 at 5:43 PM

    A Heidi Guedel claiming to be an animator is on Facebook... worth sending a message and asking if she could give some of her thoughts on working on this film?

    ReplyDelete

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