Tiger Lily

Tiger Lily is a unique character in the Disney film Peter Pan.

Just like Tinker Bell she doesn't have any dialogue in the movie, but her emotions and attitudes are always clear. She is one courageous young lady. By resisting Captain Hook and not telling him about Peter Pan's hiding-place, she risks her life.

Milt Kahl came up with the final design for the character. He did the drawing above for Ken O'Brien, the animator responsible for most of Tiger Lily's scenes.

These model sheet drawings were done by James P. Miller during the early 1940ies, when Peter Pan was in early pre-production. Actually the final design doesn't differ that much from Miller's beautiful concept.

A couple of stunning animation roughs by Ken O'Brien, who is one of those unsung animation heroes. 

This spirited Tiger Lily dance alone makes him a top animator, and his work over the years deserves further investigating.

A frame from the film shows Tiger Lily next to her father, the Indian Chief, and Peter Pan.

Brom Bones

Singer/Actor Bing Crosby visits Milt Kahl, and he brought his four sons along, Dennis, Phillip, Gary and Lindsay.

Crosby narrated the Disney film The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which made up half of the 1949 feature film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. 

Milt animated the introduction of the town's bully Brom Bones as well as his big song number at the Van Tassel party. 

He is a rich character, full of confidence and full of himself. Milts animation shows just the right amount of dash and bounce. Although the style of the film is pretty cartoony Brom Bones' physique required careful and somewhat realistic draughtsmanship in terms of anatomy.

Milt was just perfect for this kind of an assignment. No live action reference here, that's why the animation feels so wonderfully loose.

This was great inspiration for myself, when I started work on Gaston in Beauty & The Beast.

Although I did end up using some live action reference, I tried to avoid rotoscoped looking animation.

Brom Bones and Gaston have a few things in common such as an overbearing personality, and they are both after one girl. Then again Brom ends up with Katrina while Gaston fell to his death…or did he?

A Vis. Dev. character line up of Brom Bones and his buddies.

Milt explores staging ideas, showing Brom Bones frustrated during a scene at the party.

These are copies of Milt's key drawings, the clean up was done right over his roughs.

During this song Brom is intimidating and scaring Ichabod Crane.

Beautifully timed to the rythm of the music with a daring perspective shot at the end.

Dial. : "He swears to the longest day he's dead!"

Blog reader Henry created this pencil test:

http://penciltests.tumblr.com/post/36504343760/from-the-legend-of-sleepy-hollow-part-of-the

Ichabod

Happy Thanksgiving to everybody!

To post sketches from Disney's 1949 featurette "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" seems appropriate for today. Though the film's theme has more to do with Halloween, but turkey is being served in several scenes, so what the heck!

Above are Frank Thomas' design drawings for the main character and his horse. That scary ride home from the party is some of Frank's best work. He told me once that he animated the sequence faster than anything else before that. I forgot the actual footage now, but I believe it was around thirty feet a week.

A couple of animation roughs showing Ichabod escorting Katrina, who would be animated on a separate level. My guess is that these are by Ollie Johnston.

Design sketches of Katrina by Frank. He is trying to avoid any definition of her nose to achieve a soft, youthful appearance. The concept didn't hold up in the animation.

Fred Moore had something to do with her final look as well.

Great staging studies for key poses by Frank. Beautiful, clear compositions.

Ward Kimball's concept for Brom Bones. He looks much cartoonier here, before Milt Kahl turned him into a more handsome dude. 

By the way, when I did Gaston, the same kind of alteration was asked for.

A Frank Thomas sketch incorporating Kimball's Brom Bones.
(On second thought, this could be a Kimball drawing).

A Milt Kahl's rough of Tilda.

For a brief moment Brom Bones gets to dance with Katrina in this Kahl sketch.

Here Milt is helping Frank and Ollie to resolve drawing issues in their scenes.

Team Disney

Here is a heck of an assembly of top Disney talent.

The photo was taken during the early 1950ies on a soundstage at the studio. 

Walt Disney is getting his miniature train fired up with animation personal looking on.

Standing from left to right are Walt Disney, unknown, producer Harry Tytle, Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball, Ham Luske, Eric Larson, Ollie Johnston and John Lounsbery.

Let me know when they invent time travel, because I'd love to be in on this gathering.

Sir Ector

Frank and Ollie said in their book "Illusion of Life" that the humans in Sword and the Stone were animated without the benefit of live action reference, and the results are beautiful.

For the most part Sir Ector , Wart's foster-father, was animated by Milt Kahl. 

John Lounsbery and Eric Larson also did key scenes with the character.

In the scene pictured below, Ector has a few words of warning for young Wart, who claims  to have pulled the sword in the stone: "You're making a fool of us, boy! Now tell the truth!"

This could have been a very ordinary continuity scene, but Milt found ways to add subtle personality touches.

After the crowds laugh in disbelief of Wart's statement, Ector turns his head toward camera, gathers his thoughts for a brief moment before addressing the young boy, who is staged off screen right.

On "Tell the truth" Milt uses a strong head nod, which causes Ector's hat to follow through on the main action. The result is slightly comedic and helps to turn this into a personality scene. 

The way his moustache overlaps during dialogue is pretty nifty, too.

These are key drawings from an earlier close up scene in the film. They show a wide range of rich expressions for this boorish and pompous character.