Animation &Animation Artifacts &Disney 27 Apr 2011 06:49 am

Hicks’ Hippo – Part 1

- Last week we had Milt Kahl‘s hilarious Llama. So this week, keeping up the comedy, here’s part 1 (of 2) of Hicks Lokey‘s hippopotamus & alligator from Fantasia. (Jim Will is also credited for doing the effects animation in this scene.) This is actually the last half of the scene. It starts with the hippo on the couch with the alligator making a dive for her. She runs far into the bg, then leaps forward where the alligator catches her at the start of our drawings. It’s all about weight.

The practical problem for me came down to registration. There are no registration marks or punched holes evident on these xeroxed copies. It’s like a big flipbook (14×17) that I had to try to register. There’s also the problem that at lest 1/3 of the drawings have no numbers. This made it hard to guess how long the drawings would stay on screen (since I obviously also didn’t have exposure sheets).

Nevertheless, it seems to work as is, here. I also had a lot of cleaning up to do. The drawings had a lot of xerox markings on the pages. Hence, although there are about 60 drawings, I had to break it into two. The second half will follow next week. The QT movie, below, includes all drawings for the entire scene.

The real fun here is in looking at the individual drawings. They’re all a great laugh.

202

227

228

229

205

206

207

208a

208b

209

211

214

216

218

240

241

242

243

244

245

247

248

249

251

253

255

257

________________________
.
The following is a QT of the entire scene with all the drawings (Parts 1 & 2) included.

7 Responses to “Hicks’ Hippo – Part 1”

  1. on 27 Apr 2011 at 8:25 am 1.Sandro Cleuzo said …

    This is great animation and it shows that there were other terrific animators at Disney besides the 9 Old Men.
    We should know more about these other great unknown animators.
    Thanks for posting this, Michael.

  2. on 28 Apr 2011 at 1:13 pm 2.Rodney said …

    Truly amazing. What great sense of weight and resistance in so few drawings. Encore!

  3. on 28 Apr 2011 at 1:13 pm 3.Steven Hartley said …

    I like the scene of the Hippo running and then the aligator prepares for a catch and then BOOM! Perhaps the aligator should’ve been flat like a pancake and brought back up – but that wouldn’t be “believable” to an audience watching “Fantasia”.

    I’m currently on the mosaics for “Dance of the Hours” and I’ve not reached that sequence yet. Perhaps, I don’t need to do a breakdown on that scene – since the drawings are being posted.

  4. on 30 Apr 2011 at 8:39 am 4.Robert Dress said …

    And all this time I thought Preston Blair animated the Hippo in this scene. Thanks for posting this.

  5. on 04 Aug 2011 at 8:28 pm 5.Nicholas Pozega said …

    Wonderful stuff! Thanks for these grabs, they’ll be helpful to study! Keep it up, Micheal Sporn!

  6. on 04 Aug 2011 at 10:34 pm 6.Michael said …

    These aren’t “grabs” they are scans of original artwork.

  7. on 31 Aug 2015 at 2:49 pm 7.UniverStudy said …

    Excellent weblog right here! Also your website loads up fast! What web host are you the use of? Can I am getting your associate hyperlink for your host? I desire my web site loaded up as quickly as yours lol

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed

Leave a Reply

eXTReMe Tracker
click for free hit counter

hit counter