Animation &Animation Artifacts &Disney 18 Jun 2008 08:16 am
Bambi Bits
Back to Bambi.
Here are some animation bits by Ollie Johnston. They were prepared, I believe, for a book. I don’t know if they made it. If they did, this is another variation.
1a
_________(Click any image to enlarge.)
1b
1c
Talk about breaking of joints, this move is just subtle, superb and distinctive. I would’ve remembered this move after my first time viewing the movie.
2
Here’s a short lifting of the head. Amazing how you can feel the weight even without the body.
3a
3b
3c
3d
Bambi reacts, then turns. Look again at the weight, the breaking of joints, the perspective. The guy drew all of this out of his head. It’s just another tiny example of how brilliant all of these guys were.
4a
4b
Ollie’s point in highlighting this bit is all about the staging of the action. But the action, itself, is pretty damn great.
What a film! You can’t study it enough.
on 18 Jun 2008 at 3:57 pm 1.Jenny Lerew said …
“What a film! You can’t study it enough.”
Isn’t that the truth. Your posts are a great contribution to it.
I think this film is probably the pinnacle of “gollden age” Disney animation and art direction on display.
Given that, over the years it seems to me that “Bambi” has gotten a bit of a raw deal. It seems to be brought up in the popular media more for drive-by gibes and criticism than for the admiration it deserves for its beauty, terrific entertainment or the subtlety of its animation.
I mean, if I read one more time that it fails as a story because Friend Owl doesn’t eat Thumper(come on!)–or that it’s too cutesy and/or sentimental(wrong-unless you’re made of stone imho), or that it can’t make up its mind which kind of film it wants to be(I always figure NONE of those critics have read Felix Salten’s book or in fact have an imagination or patience with a certain kind of “Jungle Book” fantasy)…
It baffles me that the incredible mastery of the animation is so taken for granted. Never before or since have animals like Bambi’s been so finessed; caricatured yet retaining a real feeling of weight and hard bones beneath the skin. It even has a glorious, haunting score-another thing seldom cited.
Maybe that image of Bambi (the much-redrawn, 1970s rerelease version) with a butterfly is all the MSM thinks of in conjunction with this title. Sigh.