Pencil Tests

I found this buried in the stacks at a local Disney collectibles store. It’s the “year book” of sorts given out to the production crew of “Mulan” after the film wrapped. Mulan was the first feature film completed entirely at the Florida Disney Animation Studio at Disney-MGM Studios. It’s a great little book, filled with lots of photos of animators and producers I recognize, and even more photos of people I don’t. But every one of them helped contribute to one of my favorite animated movies. It also has lots of great little joke sketches in it. I especially like the “girl scouts” one which, while not credited, is obviously by Chris Sanders.

I found a goldmine of my old VHS rough animation tapes in my attic! This is the last scene I animated at #Disney (until Bro Bear). It’s #mushu from the Drawn To Animation attraction that played for over ten years in #Disneyworld, #californiaadventure and #disneyparis

About three years ago I made this chart to illustrate to everyone what studio made which film, and by extension what company owns those characters. After recent events I decided it was in need of an update. Voila.

2D Animation week, day 6. Sorry, I meant to post this on Saturday. “Abu” from Aladdin by Duncan Marjoribanks. #Abu #Disney #aladdin #2danimation #Disney

This is the clean up phase. My drawings were cleaned up and the in-betweens completed by my excellent assistant Dan Tanaka and his team. This version also has some cast shadows done by the effects animators.

The next step is the “tie down” phase. Now I am trying to get the characters “on model” and the volumes consistent. I’m polishing spacing, timing and arcs, as well. Finally, I am adding dialog animation and overlapping and secondary animation. You’ll notice there are a lot of “partial” in-betweens. I draw anything that I think is open to interpretation or doesn’t precisely follow the timing charts. That way, when I pass it of to my assistants, there is no guess work. You’ll also notice some of the animation has changed. Eeyore had to be sitting up at the end of the shot to hook up properly with the next shot.

This is my first “ruff” pass. At this stage I only do key drawings. I’m not concerned with making “beautiful” drawings. I’m just trying to get the feeling and movement down. But I should note that I am concerned with timing. I am already putting timing charts on the artwork to try to nail the timing down.

Pocahontas originally had a turkey named “Redfeather” as her sidekick animal. He was to be voiced by John Candy. But when Candy died in ‘94, they scrapped the character and did away with the talking animals all together.

Percy lost his ability to speak, and they wrote in Meeko and Flit to add a slapstick dynamic. I think it worked out, but it would be interesting to see how the movie would have turned out with a talking turkey in it.

Well kids, take your pick of which Pocahontas you would like to have seen. One is what we got, the other had the leading heroine as a teenager only taking a friendship in John Smith but was a little lighter hearted and, of course, had the critters talk.

Updated with a Facebook video link with original voices (the audio above uses soundalikes) and temp audio for John Candy. Nik Ranieri animated the Redfeather tests and Stephen Fry was going to voice Percy if the animals would have talked.

According to Nik, the decision to make the animals mute wasn’t related to John Candy. Jeffery Katzenberg had watched Snow White again when it was re-released at the time and really liked Dopey. So he insisted that the animals were mute. Jeffery’s crew meeting for it made Nik almost regret turning down animating Lion King for Pocahontas.

“Aladdin” 1992

“Aladdin” 1992

Jafar Pencil tests by Andreas Deja

I finally finished my custom Disney Bluray case project! I did a completely new case for each film, with the year of release on the spine and artwork on front and back of the case. I’m really happy with how most of them came out. Check them out here: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Giselle getting out of her carriage. The drawings for this scene sat on my desk for months waiting for me to finish that crazy dress!

This one gets nice and rough as I started running out of time. She gets a bunch of leaves dumped on her which is why she freaks out at the end.

Narissa: Oh wouldn’t she just love to come crawling back here and steal my crown! Cast me aside like, like so much royal rubbish! Wha…What?! Ah!

Here’s another CalArts lecture test. It never got finished, so you can see some of my rough scribbles in parts.

Benedict puts on a sweater, in what apparently has become an ongoing series of CalArts lecture tests featuring animals messing around with clothes! This one was fun to do!

"Aaahhhhhhhhhhhhh…. True love’s kiss" In case you wanted to know what he’s singing.

I’m going to start posting some of my pencil tests from Enchanted. Here’s the first one.