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Showing posts from July, 2010

Dumbo Part 16

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Once again, the film relies on contrast to make a point. The preceding sequence had the clowns celebrating their successful performance. Here, Dumbo is depressed over the very same performance. The performances in this sequence are also contrasting; Timothy is consistently upbeat, failing to rouse Dumbo out of his lethargy. Timothy tries praise and then a peanut, but Dumbo is indifferent to both. Finally, Timothy mentions visiting Dumbo's mother, and that is the only thing that cheers Dumbo up. It doesn't look like Mrs. Jumbo will get a reprieve anytime soon. Her cage is covered in warning signs and within it, she's chained to the walls and weighted down. From an animation standpoint, it is interesting that the personality close-ups of Timothy are done by Fred Moore and Dumbo is done by Bill Tytla, but when both characters share a shot, the are generally done by John Lounsbery and sometimes Tytla. The shared shots contain lots of character interaction, such as Dumbo

Complete Gottfredson Mickey To Be Reprinted

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The Mickey Mouse daily comic strip, done for 46 years by artist Floyd Gottfredson, will be reprinted in its entirety by Fantagraphics Books starting in May 2011.

Dumbo Part 15

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The clowns celebrate their success and toast Dumbo. So far the clowns are the only characters beside Timothy to say anything nice about the elephant. This sequence is wholly animated by Berny Wolf. Take a look at the shapes of the characters in shot 3. The balloon construction could come out of an early '30s Ub Iwerks cartoon, where Wolf worked prior to Disney. Wolf was certainly capable of work more sophisticated than he did at Iwerks; he animated a good chunk of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio . While the designs might be a throwback, the animation is advanced. The poses have beautiful lines of action and read clearly in silhouette. Wolf keeps the arms away from the body so that there is never confusion about the pose. There's great graphic clarity here. Note that there are two colour tones of silhouette, which prevents background elements in shot 3 or the crowd of clowns at the end of shot 6 from being visually confusing. Even viewing the small thumbnails above, there&

Dean Yeagle Interview

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There's an interview with Dean Yeagle over at Super I.T.C.H.

Advice to Young Girls from The Little Mermaid

(link via Boing Boing )

Dumbo Part 14

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Dumbo is now part of the clown's act. There are interesting parallels between this sequence and what's gone before. The clown with the elephant head is shrieking "Save my baby," so Dumbo's situation is a parody of his mother attempting to protect him from kids on the midway earlier in the film. In this act, a clown whacks Dumbo's rear to get him moving as Timothy did to get him moving in the pyramid sequence. However, Timothy was attempting to launch Dumbo as a success, where the clown is forcing Dumbo to take a pratfall. Finally, Dumbo has a rattle clutched in his trunk where he earlier grasped a flag to crown the pyramid. The actions earlier in the film are replayed here as farce. There's no getting around how lame the clowns are. None of the gags is particularly clever and I think that was a conscious decision on the part of the filmmakers. Had the clowns been genuinely entertaining, the audience would have been distracted from Dumbo's situa

Cautionary Tales

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Jack Kirby (left) and Jerry Siegel. Both of their estates are in litigation to recover the copyrights to the comic book characters they created. The comic book business is not the animation business, but both depend on the work of artists whose legal relationship to their creations is often misunderstood or ambiguous. Paul Slade has written a long article on the legal challenges that comics creators have launched against their employers in an attempt to regain ownership of their creations. It brings to mind the quote attributed to Balzac, "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime." (link via Journalista . Image via Booksteve's Library .)

Dumbo Part 13

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The elephants, who have all suffered from the collapse of the pachyderm pyramid, learn that Dumbo has been made a clown and take an oath declaring that he is no longer an elephant. I love the end of shot 13, which is a literal visualization of putting somebody's tail in a sling. Once again, we have Bill Tytla showing off his versatility as an actor, handling the various elephant personalities and keeping them distinct as individuals. In shot 21, when the Verna Felton character barks, "Out with it!" Tytla animates a great, fast accent on Catty before she reveals Dumbo's fate. Catty typically oozes through her movements, so the accent really emphasizes how surprised she is by the command. Throughout the draft, there are shots that are missing in the final film. In this sequence, it apears that shots 17-19 were done and then scrapped. They could be as simple as story panels in a leica reel or could be full colour shots. I wonder if there is Tytla animation from thi

Dumbo Part 12

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There's not much to say about this sequence. The big top has fallen and Casey Jr. slinks away during a stormy night. The colour, the mournful chorus and the rain all contribute to a sequence titled "Sad Casey." Børge Ring emailed me about Milt Neil, who was last seen in this film animating Timothy Mouse. I asked Frank Thomas what became of the fine animator Milt Neil.- "Oh," said Frank. "He went into a Danish restaurant in Hollywood. He met the owners daughter and has not left the place ever since"

Toronto's Starz For Sale

Variety is reporting that Starz Media, which consists of Overture, Anchor Bay Entertainment, Film Roman and Starz Animation are for sale. The companies are available as a group or separately. Starz was formerly owned by IDT and before that was Dan Krech Productions. It is one of the larger employers in the Toronto animation business.

Disney Gag Drawings For Sale

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Head over to Joakim Gunnarsson's blog where he posts Disney gag drawings from the collection of Leslie Brooks that are for sale. The above drawing is by Fred Moore (featuring a caricature of Ward Kimball). Other drawings are by Jack Kinney, Floyd Norman, Webb Smith, Sid Thorne, Paul Murray, Walt Kelly and Warner Bros. animator Jean Blanchard.

Hollywood Accounting

I previously reviewed Edward Jay Epstein's book The Hollywood Economist . One of the most interesting things about it was its explanation of Hollywood accounting and why movies never make a profit. Now Deadline Hollywood Daily has printed a profit and loss sheet for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and it's more of the same. "Though the film grossed $938.2 million worldwide, the accounting statement below conveys that the film is still over $167 million in the red." The film "lost" money because Warner Bros. distribution sucked up all the money, leaving Warner Bros. the producer running a loss. It's a shell game and the pea is never under the producer's shell. I don't know why any independent producer would take a chance on a system that is structurally corrupt. While the web is hardly mature as a distribution medium, its great advantage is that it frees producers from having to deal with distributors. I look forward to the day

Giraf Fest

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Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival (GIRAF) Wednesday, Nov 3-7, 2010 at Plaza Theatre, Calgary, AB Call for Submissions The Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival is the only exclusively independent animation festival in Canada, with a focus on experimental and self-produced animated film. GIRAF plays an essential role in the promotion, education and appreciation of independent animation from around the world, exposing hungry local audiences to the best animated content from at home and abroad. Important Note: Submission deadline August 2nd, 2010 Visit www.giraffest.ca

Complex Characters

In comments to my post on Toy Story 3 , Daniel Caylor asked, "Can you give me some examples of rich characters from animation that have set the bar for you personally?" While animation people are constantly yelling, "story, story story," I think that they have a very limited understanding of certain aspects of it. They understand plot and they understand personality, but I think that animation's understanding of character is pretty perfunctory. Character in animation tends to be linear and go from A to B. Grumpy hates women and ends up loving Snow White. Pinocchio is irresponsible and then he's responsible. The plot moves these characters from one emotional place to another, but their growth is uncomplicated and easy. They don't have to struggle with their emotions in order to grow and don't have to give up anything along the way. It's no sacrifice for Pinocchio to stop being irresponsible. In fact, it's been nothing but a disaster f

Toy Story 3: Some thoughts

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(There are mild spoilers below.) Watching Toy Story 3 , I think I'm getting a clearer understanding of Andrew Stanton's contribution to Pixar. While most people are comparing the latest Toy Story to the two previous films, it seems to me that the new Toy Story relates most closely to Finding Nemo and Wall-E , two films directed by Stanton. Stanton is listed as one of the writers on the latest Toy Story . Toy Story 3 resembles Nemo in that it is about moving to a new stage of life, where old relationships cannot stay the same. Marlin has to loosen his grip on Nemo in order for Nemo to grow. Andy has to let go of his childhood in order to become an adult; the toys have to accept that their time with Andy is over. Both films (and many of the Pixar features Stanton has contributed to) deal with separation. Stanton was adamant about Wall-E not being an ecological fable, yet Toy Story 3 takes the characters to a dump, an endless stretch of society's garbage. It's

Dumbo Part 11

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How many elephants in a pyramid? In shot 1, there are eight elephants standing around the ringmaster. In shot 4, there are seven around the ringmaster. In shot 23, the pyramid consists of six elephants. In shot 40.1, there are eight elephants in the pyramid. In shot 41.1, there are seven, as there are in shot 51.1. All of this takes place before they trip over Dumbo and scatter, so the number should be consistent. Hugh Fraser does excellent work in this sequence. He manages to capture the drawing and the personalities of the elephants in a manner consistent with Bill Tytla's work. He does that while dealing with multiple characters whose weight must be animated believably or the sequence loses its effectiveness. Shot 10.2. gets even more complicated with one of the elephants being swung towards and away from the camera, adding a size change to the rest of the difficulties. While Fraser has Tytla's work as a template, the animation challenges here are possibly great