Story & Storyboards & Animation Artifacts & Frame Grabs 02 Apr 2008 09:12 am
101 Begins
- Excellent news. Now that Hans Perk has been posting the animator drafts of 101 Dalmatians and, as a result of that, Mark Mayerson is putting together one of his fine Mosaics for the film, I’m able to contribute a small bit toward the study of this film. It all coincides nicely with the relatively new dvd package that Disney has released.
Starting Monday, thanks again to the generosity of John Canemaker, I’ll be posting a nice chunk of the storyboard for this film. It starts just after the wedding at the film’s opening and continues on. It’s Bill Peet’s original board, and I’m excited to put it up.
To celebrate, I’ve taken a few frame grabs off the dvd which showcases some of the opening storyboard drawings. Unfortunately, the images aren’t as large as I’d like on the dvd, but they’ll have to do. This is one of my favorite Disney features, and it really pleases me to see all this material come out. Thanks to Hans Perk for starting it all.
(Click any image to enlarge a bit.)________________
on 03 Apr 2008 at 7:26 am 1.Stephen Macquignon said …
Like always these are wonderful, and an inspiration to keep working hard
Thanks
on 03 Apr 2008 at 8:33 am 2.Ray K. said …
John, Michael, these are an absolute treasure.
Bill Peet was a genius, and ‘Dalmations,’ for some reason, feels to me more like a direct, unvarnished, translation of his drawing style than just about any other Disney picture.
Peet had a natural, unmatchable gift for staging both elegant (and often funny) action sequences and perfect still tableaux, as well as for knowing exactly which was right for each moment of the story. (I always think of the beautiful and very funny hold of Pongo, leash in mouth, starring goofily out the window at the landing–to see which way Perdita and Anita are walking–which looks as if it may as well have been drawn by Peet right on the screen. This shot–like so much from this film–could not be simpler or more perfect.)
John–what do you suppose are the odds of Disney’s agreeing to let you do a book of just the annotated storyboard from this film?
on 03 Apr 2008 at 4:56 pm 3.Floyd Norman said …
I remember shooting 35mm color slides of Ken Anderson’s early art direction on “Dalmatians.” We were all so excited about this new film. The fact that I was even able to do this is pretty amazing. Something like that could never happen today.
Things have sure changed. Nowadays, animation development is treated like a national security issue.