keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

Cartoon Brew has a photo of Moore I've never seen, Jenny Lerew posts a lovely photo of Moore with his wife Virginia and their infant daughter, and Andreas Deja posts a large sampling of Moore's work. The above is the one Moore from my own collection. Moore is practically a mythical character. His influence is ubiquitous, not only in animation but also in greeting card art of a certain vintage. Because he died before fans and historians could interview him, he's a mystery compared to other Disney artists. His death, often falsely attributed to his alcoholism, has spawned more versions than I can count. He's the Bix Beiderbecke of animation: the flawed boy prince, bursting with a unique talent, who left us too soon. What would we give to have known him?

Except for two shots, one by Walt Kelly and the other by Don Towsley, Ward Kimball and Fred Moore dominate this sequence. Kimball does the entire song, "When I See an Elephant Fly" (except for Kelly's shot 22), including shots of Timothy. Then Moore takes Timothy over for his heartfelt recitation of Dumbo's troubles. Once again, the film is powered by contrast, this time moving from the upbeat song to the plea for understanding. Was Kimball ever better than this and his work in Pinocchio ? The music here allows him to be as broad as he wants to be while the crows' reaction to a flying elephant is perfectly reasonable. As much as I love Kimball's work, there are times I feel his broadness pulls me out of a film. His work here and in Pinocchio has an emotional grounding that keeps him functioning as part of the story. All of Kimball's strengths are on display here: brilliant posing, fantastic accents and eccentric movements. The bottom half of the c...

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.

(Click any image to enlarge.) As the semester draws to a close, I'm getting buried with grading, which is why I haven't updated this blog in a while. Without time to really write something, I'm just going to mark time for a bit. I bought this drawing at Gallery Lainzberg in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1979. At the time I was working at a small animation studio in Waterloo, Iowa, and every few months animators Bob Haack, Bill Barder and I would go to the Gallery. This drawing was obviously fished out of a wastebasket. There are all kinds of notes jotted around the image that have nothing to do with it. It was also folded in half. Clearly, Moore discarded the drawing and then used it for scrap before trashing it. Somebody liked it enough to remove it and take it home. The same day I bought this, Bill Barder bought a drawing from Avery's Dumb Hounded . I tried to buy it from him multiple times, but Bill wouldn't part with it. I was pretty sure the centaurette drawing...