lost treasures 3

…and a few more recreated backgrounds from disney’s animated classics

1945 three caballeros-bahia

1948 melody time-once upon a wintertime

1940 fantasia-nutcracker suite

1937 don donald

1947 fun and fancy free-happy valley

1939 ugly duckling

1936 donald and pluto

1935 music land

1940 fantasia-nutcracker suite

1938 donald’s better self

1948 melody time-johnny appleseed

1947 fun and fancy free-happy valley

© disney enterprises, inc

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more lost treasures

below are more recreated backgrounds, as far as I know the originals don’t exist anymore in the disney archives. in case you are interested in those recreated treasures, I posted a lot more in the past.

1948 so dear to my heart

1945 tiger trouble

1936 three little wolves

1938 farmyard symphony

1938 the fox hunt

1939 donald’s lucky day

1946 casey at the bat

1936 three little wolves

1940 fantasia-pastoral symphony

1935 music land

1954 the vanishing prairie-opening

1948 so dear to my heart

1936 elmer elephant

1947 fun and fancy free-bongo

1948 bumble boogie

1939 practical pig

1939 donald’s cousin gus

1940 tugboat mickey

1935 who killed cock robin

© disney enterprises, inc

basics

floorplan, scene planning, color script, storyboard
from THE ART OF WALT DISNEY, ROBERT D.FEILD, 1942

© disney enterprises, inc

composition studies 2

screen captured composition studies from a variety of commercials

old collections 1

it’s a wild life…

in some earlier posts I showed artwork from the shelved disaster production WILD LIFE that disney feature animation had in preproduction for nearly 2 years, starting early 1999 till 2000. it was supposed to be disney’s first CG-animated feature film. I remember these 2 years that I worked on this project as probably the most creative and most chaotic time I ever spent on a film in this business. the majority of the creative team was amazing, a few less inclusive the directors. anyway, the biggest problem were stupid decisions and missing control of management in the highest levels. they let us run into the disaster, not one of them listened to my concerns about the content problems. but, visually the whole film was after a while so stunning, so new and never conceived before, that most of the creative team did not really care about the major story problems.
I was head of the development and production designer with a team of the best layout and BG artists in the studio, BUCK LEWIS, an illustrator from new york, worked on all the character designs. if there is interest you can read more about the project in my book DREAM WORLDS and CHARLES SOLOMON’S book DISNEY LOST AND FOUND. from what I heard seventy million dollars went down the drain because of ignorance and stupidity, and in the end 200 artists were laid off. too bad, amazing talent that disappeared into the rest of the world. I found recently tons of sketches from the production. it will take a while to scan them – here are the first ones…

© disney enterprises, inc

you can find some earlier articles here, here, and here.
more soon…

early spring 1993 london

over christmas I had some time to dig through my archives, and I found a lot of historic stuff that you might like to see. it’s amazing to look at drawings again after so many years, lots of memories come alive. I want to start with BALTO, an animated feature film about husky dogs in alaska and the famous iditarod dog-sled race. I worked on it from 1992 on, production started in 1993. all that in london, acton town, a very interesting and ‘alive’ part of london. the following designs were all done by a young kid, early twenties, french, one of the most amazing character designers I ever met, and a brilliant animator as well – you might have seen his work in recent films from DREAMWORKS, like the trained dragon and the panda series. I am talking about a master – NICOLAS MARLET. there will be more, especially from CATS. but for now BALTO, or as it was called at that time SNOWBALLS…

© nicolas marlet / universal pictures / amblin entertainment

2016