A. Film L.A. test

(Item #33) This one is up for grabs, too, signed by Walt and all. Paint a bit chipped, but that can probably be repaired... Ok - enough about the great auction coming up : how about we see who animated what on Cinderella? Starting tomorrow, we'll find out! Today, we see the front page of this draft, which originally came from the BG morgue that was situated under the Ink & Paint building, as well as the inside of the cover: the list of sequences and a separate list marked "cels" which is stuck to this cover. It does not mention what this list was for. This will be the twelfth feature film draft on this blog! Enjoy!

(Item #274) [Did not sell.] In the upcoming auction , we saw works of Mary Blair , Gustaf Tenggren and Kay Nielsen . One of the least famous of the Great Inspirational Artists of the Disney studios has so far been missing in this list: Ferdinand Huszti Horvath. (Well, and Al Hurter , too). Horvath is represented in the auction with above artwork. On the web, one can read: "Born in Budapest, Hungary on Aug. 28, 1891. Horvath was primarily a book illustrator. He lived in Hollywood, CA in 1937-47 and died in Riverside, CA on Nov. 11, 1973." After the outbreak of WWII, he worked for American Aviation and the Howard Hughes, "in a technical capacity on confidential designs." Joe Campagna found out that Horvath was buried in Hemet, CA. In 1976, Russ Cochran sold a whole lot of Horvath's drawings, and issued a magazine collecting his works, Graphic Gallery 8 . In it, we find these: First page at $150 per drawing, the other two pages at $250 each... Those were the day...

(Item #445) A few years ago, the ASIFA Animation Archives presented the Clair Weeks Goodbye Book : in August(*) 1952, assistant animator Clair Weeks, who started at Disney in 1936, left the studio on an invitation to start India's first animation studio, in Bombay. On the eve of his leaving, he found above note on his desk... Another fine item found in the upcoming auction ! In revisiting the ASIFA Archives, I noticed a blog posting dated two days ago: Animation Archive Temporarily Suspending Operation - I’m sorry to announce that due to lack of funding, the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is temporarily suspending operation. I am aware that opinions about these archives and its leadership are quite strong in either direction. I must say that for some years I felt that the archive's blog's focus should have been more on animation-archive work than on rather obscure illustrators, so as to arouse interest in animation instead of giving the impression that it wasn't in ...

(Item #448) So - Ub Iwerks arrived in Hollywood and started at Disney Bros. Studio in July 1924, as we saw yesterday . The upcoming auction has another landmark document for sale, one that, I believe, has had as big an impact on the Disney future as did the fact of Ub arriving: on January 22nd, 1930, while Walt was in New York negotiating with Pat Powers, Ub quit the studio! Roy Disney then had him sign the release (note: he signed "Ubbe E. Iwwerks"), witnessed by his would-be successor Burt Gillett and an Edythe Vosburgh, and calculated his part of the studio as $2,920, for his share that now would have been worth billions of dollars. These are the papers up for sale ! As animator, Ub's resentment with the studio seems to partly have stemmed from Walt re-timing his drawings, something that may seem trivial to anyone but those in the business. Some artists deal with this matter-of-factly, others go through the roof. It seems Ub kept most of this to himself, then, just a...

Happy Easter, Friends! (Item #450) Today we look at Ub Iwerks, who is, of course, all over my blog. Ub and Walt Disney went back a long way in Kansas City between 1920 and 1923 when Walt left for Hollywood. Then in 1924, June 14th to be exact, Walt wrote a letter to Ub, suggesting how he could get to California, all expenses paid. Recently shown on Cartoon Brew , this landmark letter is now up for sale at the upcoming auction ! Ub had already made up his mind when Walt wrote this happy letter to him asking him not to change his mind about it. One can clearly read how small the studio was - Walt and one assistant doing all drawings, two girls inking and painting, and Roy doing the books - Disney Bros. had quite a way to go to becoming the empire of today! On the last page, "The boys at the Arabian Knights" refers to the Arabian Nights studio ("A Thousand and One Laughs") formed by Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising and Max Maxwell, the "left-overs" of Laugh-O-grams, W...

(Item #427) Another famous illustrator of children's books who made inspirational works for the Disney studio was, of course, Danish Kay Nielsen. I have previously written about him (first here , then here and here ), announcing a new book about him, which has since been delayed and delayed. I can see it is now scheduled for October 2011. Over four years late... I admit I like the above Fantasia storyboards for the Night on Bald Mountain sequence more than the horseman concept for that same sequence: (Item #428) but opinions may differ on that point. All are worthy of a loving home, which I am sure the upcoming auction will provide them. [But no: none of Nielsen's works sold!]

Gustaf Tenggren - Was he right or left-handed?     << Image from auction catalog, and     ...as seen elsewhere on the web. >> Gustaf Adolf Tenggren (1896-1970) is a legend not only in Disney lore, but in children's book illustration, as well. Aged 22 he took over the Swedish series Blandt Tomtar Och Troll after the famous John Bauer who died in a Swedish lake in a storm in 1918. Tenggren moved to the US after a successful exhibition of his works in 1920, never to return to Sweden again, and in 1936 was hired by Walt Disney to make inspirational works for his feature films beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , followed by Pinocchio , as well as several short films. He left Disney in 1940 and would never paint in the Rackham-Bauer inspired style again: from 1942 to 1962 he made a name illustrating many Little Golden Books . (Item #394) [Sold for $70,800!] The first inspirational painting up for auction that I show here, is...

(Item #683) [Did not sell.] Milt Kahl, the "Michelangelo of animation," seems to have been proudest of his creation of Madame Medusa for the 1977 feature film The Rescuers . The upcoming auction has above sheet up for grabs. It is Milt's thumbnail staging of a sequence where Medusa tells her henchman Snoops (a caricature of animation historian John Culhane) that he is too soft. Most drawings are of Snoops, and they show Milt's way of sorting out possible drawing problems - they show Milt's way of working in a quite interesting way. E.g. see the Snoops in the bottom center: you see his mouth through his hand that is in front of his face. First Milt would have drawn the complete face; then he put the hand in front, carefully covering his mouth completely. I say this, because I know plenty of people who would have thought to not draw the mouth as "it won't show anyway." Milt's control of shapes is, of course as phenomenal as it is legendary. Look a...

Remember the Disney shareholder meeting of last month? When asked "When will Song of the South come out on DVD" (by a well-informed person who had heard from Dave Bosschert that the film was restored and ready to be released), CEO Bob Iger said: Now - I captured this - and you know the very first thing my software captured? Intro music - yes, you guessed it! "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah!!!" What are these people thinking? I revisited the film recently, and found that only the white people were "portrayed unfavorably," in this sweet story from the Restoration era, the period after the Civil War, after slavery was abolished. James Baskett, who so wonderfully portrayed Uncle Remus, received an Academy Award®! Walt Disney and his crew put a lot of effort into making this film! Enough said... (Let's not make this a political discussion!) (Item #691) [Sold for $8,850] The catalog of the upcoming auction shows a nice painting by Mary Blair of Bre'r Rabbit hopping ...

Here is another example from the upcoming auction , item #485, a nice, colorful background from the 1939 Donald Duck short The Autograph Hound. Just as yesterday's example (with explanation) , the original on the left, the "streched in Photoshop" version on the right. And again, the left version looks fine by itself, but compared to the stretched version it looks rather bleak. I do need to add that on top of the background there would probably be four levels of cels, subduing the colors even more. Thus is becomes even more evident how much influence the Technicolor process in itself must have had! A technical aside: in Photoshop's "Levels..." I have not even gone as far as choosing levels of 63 and 192 as one could suspect indicated by Sam Armstrong's lecture, since the whites would be burnt out. Still, with four levels of cels on top, it might start to make sense! [Sold for $5,150 incl. 'Buyer's Premium...']

I have previously talked about the use of Technicolor and how the artwork shot in animation was adapted to its use on the screen. This page has a document transcription from a 1936 Disney art class that explains just that. An example from the upcoming auction can maybe clarify this a little, as well. Here are two versions of item #21, a background from the great "Mr. Duck Steps Out," the 1939 short of which I posted the draft back in May 2006. The left image is a regular scan of this wonderful background. What one notices is, that there is less contrast than one would expect to see in a movie background. I read in an explanation by Sam Armstrong (in a transcript I thought I had posted, but which seems to be on my to-do list) that the painters were asked to paint anything between around 25% to 75% of the color array. Technicolor would then stretch it out to from 0% (black) to 100% (white). Thus - no real whites and no real blacks; the painting gets a very elegant veil of lo...

Saturday, May 14th, 2011, at 10 am PDT, the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills. Mark that date, time and place: it is when one of the most significant animation auctions of these times will be held by Profiles in History ! Well, maybe not the greatest catalog cover, but still... Mike van Eaton, everybody's favorite gallery owner and "the least offensive of all animation art sellers," whom through my dealings with him I would even dare call a friend, made me aware of this about a week ago, but I have been so very busy I have not had a second to properly look into this, only noting that some AMAZING things are going to change hands, like Walt Disney's 1924 letter luring Ub Iwerks from Kansas City to Hollywood or the 1930 document that released Ub as partner of Walt and Roy. Truly iconic material! It is my plan to show a few of MY favorite things here in the next days, well, basically so you know what to get me for Christmas. Why, yes - I AM busy, thank you for noticing! I ...