Prod. 2521 - The Small One (V)  - Section 5 - Money changers in the marketplace

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Animation by Gary Goldman, Bill Hajee, Don Bluth, John Pomeroy, Chuck Harvey and the three merchants by veteran Cliff Nordberg. The others all animated the scenes with the boy and the donkey.

I admit that the three merchants always were my favorite in this picture, with the caricature of director Bluth in a prominent position. In a large part I do attribute it to the song they sing - at least before the PC Police damaged and corrupted it - but they are well timed and they read very clearly.

Clifford Adolph Nordberg was born 4/19/1917 and died 12/20/1979, in the middle of the production of The Fox and the Hound. Animated on most all of Disney's features and not a few featurettes since Make Mine Music, as well as scenes in Richard Williams' Cobbler and the Thief [your favorite title here]. In Heidi Guedel's words "a talented and warm-hearted animator," he obviously was the most experienced animator on The Small One, with more than thirty years under his belt. Was he at the time the oldest animator on staff still animating?

On IMDb I see that Emily Jiuliano is credited as Key Assistant Animator on Princess and the Frog. I wonder what happened with Chuck Harvey and Bill Hajee (who made layouts for the first Dutch feature Bommel, a film I also worked on)...

Comments

  1. Steven HartleyJuly 3, 2010 at 12:06 PM

    It seems that it was one of Cliff Nordberg's last films he'd been in touch with, since he died during production of 'Fox and the Hound'.

    I really like his silly animation in Alice in Wonderland, like when the White Rabbit's clock went all mad and crazy after the Mad Hatter tried to fix it all wrong!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Zartok-35July 3, 2010 at 1:23 PM

    Very interesting! Nordberg is very good at capturing Don Bluth's style. I'm surprised he handles all the merchant scenes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Steven HartleyAugust 13, 2010 at 10:57 AM

    Actually, when I watched it a few days ago, I thought the film was actually very good in terms of story and animation - the merchants' 'Clink Clank' song is very catchy, and I love the ending of the short!!

    I don't blame you for posting the draft!!

    ReplyDelete

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