keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

After the emotional confrontation over Dumbo's ears in the last sequence, the film takes things down a notch by following Casey Jr. as he pulls into town. There's an explicit quote from The Little Engine that Could here. What follows is one of the most interesting sequences in Disney history, and one thing that makes it interesting is how little discussion it has provoked. While the crows later in the film have been the subject of much debate, the racial overtones of this sequence seem to have escaped notice. Why is this sequence in the film at all? What follows it is a circle wipe to the circus parading down main street. That could easily have followed Casey Jr. pulling into town. There's a bit of humor in this sequence with Dumbo trying and failing to do the work of the older elephants, but the gags are generic, doing nothing to give us a better idea of who Dumbo is as an individual. This sequence seems to be here to make a comment on race and class. That's r...

(Revisions down below.) It's a shame that the Dumbo draft that Hans Perk has posted (and it's all available now on his blog) is missing many animator identifications. We can guess that Art Babbitt handled the stork in this sequence, but it remains just a guess. We're fortunate, however, in knowing what Bill Tytla animated in this sequence. This sequence keeps the audience in suspense over Mrs. Jumbo's baby until the baby is finally revealed. It's a two stage reveal, first showing us a cute elephant child and once he sneezes, showing us the ears that are his curse and finally his blessing. The female elephants are never named onscreen, but are named in the draft. They are Matriarch, Prissy, Catty and Giggles. They are successors to the seven dwarfs in that their names describe their personalities and that they look similar, so must be differentiated by the way they move. Needless to say, Tytla is up to the task. No explanation is ever given as to where Jumbo, S...

Brian Heater begins a four part interview with Gene Deitch. Here is part two . Here's part three . Here's part four .

In this sequence, we learn that the stork carrying Mrs. Jumbo's baby is running behind schedule. The entire sequence is animated by Art Babbitt. The acting does not require flashy animation, but what's there demonstrates Babbitt's skill. During shot 1, a flying cycle, the stork's entire body stretches and squashes with the beating of his wings. The wing upstroke takes 12 frames while the downstroke takes 8 frames, giving the downstroke a definite accent that is timed to the music. The rest of the sequence is all about weight. While we haven't seen the contents of the stork's bundle yet, we suspect that it's Mrs. Jumbo's baby and the way that Babbitt handles the weight of the bundle reinforces our belief. The bundle appears heavy when the stork drops it on the cloud. Babbitt also gets great contrast in timing in shot 3 between the stork's slow scanning of the earth below and his fast lunge to prevent the bundle from falling. That's contrast...

Daniel Pink is the author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us . It's an excellent book and I recommend it. The above clip is a summary of some of the book's findings and obviously has repercussions for creative fields like animation. It also ties into the bottom-up vs. top-down aspects of comics and animation that I mentioned in the addendum to my post about TCAF and Animation . (If the text is too small to read on your screen, you can either hit the fullscreen button at the bottom right of the video, or you can watch the video on YouTube here . And doesn't this presentation beat the heck out of Powerpoint?)

This sequence is pretty much just exposition. The circus is leaving its winter quarters and the animals are being loaded onto Casey Jr. However, the sequence still emphasizes the parent-child relationships. The babies we have seen delivered in the previous sequence are with their parents and all are quite happy to be together and to be boarding the train. Shot 9, animated by Hugh Fraser, appears fairly straightforward, but actually conveys an enormous amount of story and character information. The lead elephant is as happy as all the other animals we've seen boarding the train. Then comes Mrs. Jumbo, looking depressed. She stands out from all the animals due to her contrasting emotional state and facial expression. She once again looks up at the sky, echoing movements from sequence 1, shot 27, so we know that she's still looking for her baby. The elephant behind her taps her rump. After her surprise reaction, Mrs. Jumbo looks annoyed. Don't they understand what sh...

Last weekend, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival was held at the reference library at Yonge and Bloor. The picture at left is only a portion of the festival. There were three more rooms of exhibitors and three rooms to house panels on various subjects. The enthusiasm and productivity in the comics field these days is staggering. Besides publishers who are specializing in graphic novels, there are hundreds of individuals who are creating work that they self-publish in print or on the web. The work, of course, is of variable quality, but the energy level is high. No one attending could doubt the health of the field or its prospects for the immediate future. Animation artists are some of the people who are gravitating towards comics. Certainly, at Comicon International in San Diego, artists from studios like Disney and Pixar have been publishing and selling personal work. Canadian animation artists are also moving in that direction, including some Sheridan graduates. Sam Bradley (at l...

Metamorphoses animation isn't as common as it once was. It's tough to do in cgi and so much other animation consists of moving around digital cut-outs. Shape changing, whether it's stretch and squash or metamorphoses, is one of animation's strengths, as is synchronizing to music. This film is one of 10 shorts competing at the Cannes Film Festival. The NFB and YouTube have partnered to put them all online. Several of them are animated, with this one being my favorite. It's directed by Andreas Hykade and comes from Germany. You can register and vote for the films here or just watch them here . (Link via Jim Henshaw .)

(Click any image to enlarge.) Here we go again. I'm hoping to complete this mosaic by September, before my teaching load increases. For me, the two crowning achievements of the Disney studio are Pinocchio and Dumbo . That's not to say that I don't admire other films in whole or part, but I don't think that the studio ever bested these two. I enjoy creating these mosaics because they force me to take a closer look at the film. Rather than get caught up in the story, I'm seeing the cutting continuity and getting a much closer look at the animation, not only learning who animated what but also seeing the poses and the spacing between drawings. Of course, none of this would be possible without the generosity of Hans Perk, who has collected these studio documents at his own expense and is unselfishly sharing them with us on his blog . The stories that Disney based his early features on were well known. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a famous fairy tale and Pin...

If you are in Toronto this coming weekend, get to the reference library at Yonge and Bloor for TCAF , a gathering of independent and alternative comics artists who will show their work and participate in many panel discussions . Admission is free. Guests include Daniel Clowes, James Sturm, Seth, Chester Brown, and Jim Woodring . There are several panels that relate to animation, including: The Spirit of Indie: Where Comics Meet Video Games Saturday, May 8th, 2:00 – 2:45pm, The Pilot There’s more to the game industry than blockbuster, multi-system titles just as there’s more to comics than Batman. This panel seeks to explore the ways in which independent comic artists and game developers have influenced each other and spurred each other on to explore the possibilities of their medium. Cartoonists/game contributors and creators Scott Campbell, Jamie McKelvie, Jim Munroe, and Miguel Sternberg will be interviewed by games journalist Matthew Kumar. Spotlight: Graham Annable’s HICKEE...

If you live in the United States, the ninth volume of interviews of people who worked with and for Walt Disney is now available from Xlibris . The book will be available through Amazon in a matter of weeks. This volume, edited by Didier Ghez , contains interviews with Berny Wolf, Art Babbitt, Bill Melendez, Ken O'Connor, Thor Putnam, Art Scott, Ken Anderson, Les Clark, Joe Grant, Walt Peregoy, Frank McSavage, Jack Bradbury, Burny Mattinson, correspondence with Ollie Johnston, and more. Volume 10 is already in the works. These books overflow with history, technique, and opinion and each works as a stand alone volume if you're intimidated by the thought of trying to catch up.

Just a note to acknowledge that today is the fourth anniversary of this blog.

Kevin Parry has posted the opening title to Sheridan's industry screening last week. Besides Kevin, Andrew Murray , Andrew Wilson , Allison Neil and Adam Pockaj were responsible for the concept and execution of this piece, including the voices. It has a playfulness and a spontaneity that exceeds many of the films produced over the course of the full year and it's a reminder to all of us that if we have fun making a film, the odds are that the audience will have fun watching it. Sheridan College Animation Intro 2010 from kevinbparry on Vimeo .