Animation Artifacts &Commentary 03 Apr 2006 07:16 am
2 Beauties
– My favorite site in the last week has definitely been Amid Amidi’s Cartoon Modern. He has been posting a lot of models from Rooty Toot Toot which are just amazing.
Then to break from that film, he gave us Eyvind Earle Bg models for Sleeping Beauty. The artwork posted has been beyond inspirational, and the comments given to Amid are also strong. I hadn’t realized how many people didn’t like Sleeping Beauty. I’d always thought Earle’s Bg styling and Tom Oreb’s angular characters were a perfect match. Since half of the design of tv animation and movies like Pocahontas have ripped into Eyvind Earle’s work, it interests me to see how many people blame him for the film’s failure – if there is one.
The site has provoked argument and information. It’s extraordinary always to see how other people think and feel about these classic films. I love reading it all, and the artwork is sensational. Kudos Amid. This site has become a must visit, daily.
on 03 Apr 2006 at 10:53 am 1.Amid said …
Hey Mike – You’re far too kind with your praise. I’m really glad that you’re enjoying the blog though. It’s fun to hear everybody’s thoughts on various films and artists; I’m learning a lot myself from doing the blog.
on 12 Apr 2006 at 6:38 pm 2.Stephen Worth said …
The Kings in Sleeping Beauty are good examples of two animators working at cross purposes. Lounsbery was a great animator, but he ran hot and cold. His animation of Captain Hook at Skull Rock was masterful and powerful, outshining Frank Thomas’s bumbling, mincing Hook by a mile. But it’s clear that his heart wasn’t in the two kings from Sleeping Beauty. This might be because he was disheartened by the revisions of his work by Kahl. If you look at the drawings from many of these scenes, you’ll see drawing after drawing where Lounsbery’s heads have been erased and Kahl has redrawn them. That sort of thing would make most artists I know either fight like cats and dogs, or lead to one of them giving up and wanting to move on to something else. I suspect that the Kings were a chore for Lounsbery.
This drawing, from the scene where they discover the lackey under the table has escaped Kahl’s revision.
See ya
Steve