A Disney Sketchbook:

FOREWORD

Hand-drawn Disney animation holds a unique place in the history of modern art and popular culture. The work showcased in this book comes from Disney artists and animators who brought grat performances to the screen by drawing with emotion, sincerity, and intensity. Knowing full-well that many of these sketches would be seeen only in pencil tests and preliminary screenings - or never at all- the artists "drew from within themselves" onto a sheet of papaer or a digital tablet. In the process, they created incredible works of art in their own right. 

While reviewing a few of his own animation drawings made for Peter Pan. Frank Thomas, one of Walt Disney´s original "Nine Old Men", once explained to me that he and hid collagues never thought of their drawings as final works of art. "we were working to communicate the story", he said, "and we were thinking about what the character was thinking and feeling not only in this moment, but in the one before it and the one after it. We weren´t thinking about making drawings. We were thinking about telling a story". 

Unprocessed, uniked, unpainted, and un-rendered, a selection of Disney drawings is reproduced here as if drawn into a sketchbook. This Shetchbook celebrates the very early statges of Disney filmmaking, in  witch the human touch defines both a chracter´s performance and its role in telling a story. Drawings used for story and visual development, animation thumbnails, rought animation drawings, layout drawings, and other works have been organized in a rought chronological order, with the knolegde that many of these films and their producction statges often overlapped.

Works from known Disney artists representing each major period of the Studio's output so far have been included. Here are drawings by Ub Iwerks, Joe Grant, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Marc Davis, and Milt Kahl, as well as those from con- temporary animators Andreas Deja, Eric Goldberg, and Glen Keane. Also included are Studio drawings by many other Disney artists, and some by unknown artists. The concept for this publishing project was to build an artifact-a sketchbook that may have been passed around The Walt Disney Studios lot, one in which artists have studied each other's work over very different periods of time, and then added their own sketches and ideas to inform succeeding generations of visual storytellers. We haven't found such a sketchbook yet, so we made one of our own until we do. Here it is, assembled with loving care by Disney Editions Associate Editor Jessie Ward and Senior Designer Al Giuliani from our Disney Publishing offices. Also on hand to provide expert production guidance for this project were Donna Kerley, Nisha Panchal, and Jennifer Eastwood. Without the support of Andreas Deja, who generously shared his collection, Eric Goldberg, and Lella Smith (and her expert, hardworking team at the Walt Disney Animation Research Library), this would have been a much lesser project indeed. This is a book intended to be more of a visual "romp" than a "read." It celebrates the art of drawing, and we hope it inspires artists and fans everywhere.

Ken Shue Vice President, Disney Publishing Global Art Development Glendale, California

INTRODUCTION

Every drawing in this collection represents a step in a process of discovery Like other fine artists, the Disney animators, designers, and sKOry artista whose work appears in this anthology didn't know exactly what their drawings would lvok like until they were finished, but they knew what those drawings had to do and say. The rough, often tentative, lines show the artists exploring and discovering the best way to present a character at a specific moment in a story The storyboard panel by Bill Peet from The Jungle Book is one of many perhaps dozens, the great story artist drew trying to find the poses for Mowgli and the monkeys that communicated the key information in the scene most clearly In carlier versions, Mowgli's expressicon would have been different. The in nd branches would have been in different positions. Peet drew and rede until he had gotten all the entertainment potential out of the moment thit be could. Other artists and Walt Disney would have examined Peet's storybounds and made suggestions that led to new drawings, which were clearer or mere dramatic or funnier. Looking back over the sketches he made when he was designing Beast, Glen Keane commented, "When you design a character for a Disney fairy tale, its going to become the definitive design for that character, so you don't want to hack something out. I needed to put in the kind of care I felt it warranted if its going to live on in history as the Beast." As there was no model for what Beast should look like, Keane initially experi- mented with funny horns and ears. But they made the character look like an alien who didn't fit into Belle's world. He started over, studying animals in a Z00, and combining elements of a gorilla, bison, wolE, lion, bear, and wild boar into the Beast that Belle learns to love. Animators find inspiration everywhere. Ollie Johnston realized how Fauna in Sleeping Beauty would act when he watched a little old lady on vacation i a hotel agree with everything her friends said-even when they contradicted each other. For One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Marc Davis wanted to make Cruella De Vil move "like someone you wouldnt like.

But translating an inspiration into drawings that come to life on the screen in- volves work, exploration, experimentation, frustration, and more work. As a young artist, Brad Bird observed how Milt Kahl approached the animation of Madame Medusa in The Rescuers. "He would draw a page of slight variations on a single pose. If you just glanced at the page, there might be twelve or fifteen poses that looked identical," Bird recalls. "But if you examined them closely, you'd see all these little shifts: the shoulder would be a little higher, the twist of the body would be a little more pronounced, then a little less; fingers on the lips, knuckles on the lips, wrist on the lips; head propped up, head propped down. He would explore, pick one pose, then move on to the next one, which might occur a second later, and do the same thing, He was constantly searching for the best possible graphic statement." Walt Disney advanced the art of animation by giving his animators the time they needed to explore and experiment. Grim Natwick, who animated Snow White, said, "They allowed me two months of experimental animation before they ever asked me to animate one scene in the picture. Disney had only one rule: whatever we did had to be better than anybody else could do it, even if you had to animate it nine times, as I once did." More than eighty years after Mickey Mouse whistled and danced his way into audience's hearts in Steamboat Willie, the artists at the Disney Studio continue to explore and experiment, working to find the best way to present the story they're telling. They may now use pencils or digital tablets, but the process remains the same. Work and rework each image until it's as perfect as it can be, then make it better. The drawings in this collection offer readers who love the Disney films insights into the process of the creation of their favorite characters.

Charles Solomon Animation critic and historian

The Archive Series: Layout and Backgroung

SETTING THE STAGE BY JOHN LASSETER 

"ONE OF THE THINGS Walt Disney did so well was take an audience into the world of a story. Watch any Disney movie, and you'll immediately be carried away to another time and place, whether it's a forest clearing, the cluttered attic of a London townhouse, or King Louie's jungle throne lands of room. (You can also see the same expertise at work in the Disneyland.) From the start, the artists working on the Disney animated films did an incredible job creating beautiful, detailed, and appealing many worlds; worlds you want to be in. In an animated film, the backgrounds and layouts are what create these worlds. Character design and animation understandably get most of the attention when discussing the art that goes into a film. But it's the carefully designed -and often amazingly beautiful-backgrounds that show us where all the action takes place and help us understand the unspoken rules affecting the characters' behavior by establishing the look and feel and scale of the worlds they navigate. Layouts are the planning images that help the filmmakers work out the precise details of how an environment will look as a character and the cam- era moves through it, while backgrounds are the environments that appear in the film itself. In classic, hand-drawn animation, backgrounds are indi vidual pieces ofart that incorporate all the constant elements of a scene everything except the characters and the props those characters in with. Computer-animated films use paintings as well-matte paintins are used to fill in faraway vistas-but since the regular "background" in these films are really sets composed of many individual elements, we've chosen characteristic stills to represent the backgrounds from these projecu No matter how they've been created, though, the attention to detail and thoughtful planning that go into each environment are the same. 

In the best movies, every element works together to support the story. Color, along with music, is on of the most effective ways to communicaIe the underlying emotion of a scene, and color and lighting can tell you a tremendous amount about the mood of a particular moment. When the color and lighting harmonize with the action and dialogue, they power reinforce what's taking place with the characters. When they're different from the explicit action, they signal change and tension. In every case, tan background can tell you the emotion of a scene at a glance. Backgrounds can also tell you more about a place-and more conviningly-than dialogue ever could. Neverland's caricatured, fantastical set tings contrast beautifully with the film's elegant but more serious London, and perfectly create the feeling of a giant playground where Peter Pan and the Lost Boys would want to stay forever and never grow up. The clever and intri- cate toys that fill Geppetto's workshop show the incredible care and skill he's into his craft over the years, while the humble surroundings show us that put he's done it not for riches or glory, but for the sake of the work itself. 

The genius of these backgrounds is that they do all this work without ever calling attention to themselves or interrupting the flow of the work seamlessly with all the other parts of the film to let you focus on just being with the characters, being in the story. It's not often that you get the chance to look at a background or layout by itself, and that's a big part of what makes this book such a treat. Being able to your time with these pieces lets you fully appreciate the level of artistry that story. They take into them, and understand what an important role they play in the goes films we love. Looking through this book I see page after page of places that were as real to me as a kid -and now as a filmmaker-as any I'd ever read or heard about or seen in real life. It's wonderful to finally be able to give them the spotlight they deserve." 

- John Lasseter

The Archive Series: Animation

MOVING PICTURES BY JOHN LASSETER

“I WAS PARTICULARLY EXCITED.  When work began on this book, the second in the Disney Animation Archive Series, because I know the material in it so well. My first job in college was pulling animation sequences "the morgue" -Disney's archive of animation artwork- for use in the Character Animation program at CalArts, where I was part of the inaugural class. I spent hours there looking through the stacks of animation drawings, and remember individual sequences so vividly they jump to mind almost as often as the images from the films: Frank Thomas's Lady and the Tramp eating spaghetti; Ollie Johnston's drawings of Bambi learning to walk; Milt Kahl's Madame Medusa peeling off her fake eyelashes; Marc Davis's flamboyant Cruella De Vil... the list goes on and on. To be an animator, you must master two skills. First, you must have an eye for movement and understand the specifics of how movement conveys meaning. How does a form change shape as it goes through a particular action? How do you show the personality of a character in the way he or she moves? How do you adjust the timing of a gesture or glance to convey just the right emotion? Every animator is really an actor performing in slow motion, living the character a drawing at a time.

Second, you must be able to translate your understanding of movement to paper: your draftsmanship must be able to capture and convey your intent. Anyone who has watched a Disney film has seen its animators acting talent on display. But it is only when you see the individual drawings that you can fully appreciate the rock-solid artistry that provides the foundation for the moving image. Whenever I would check out a scene from the morgue, Id always start by flipping the stack of drawings to see the full motion. Then I would study the drawings: the choice of extremes, the beautiful line quality. Each animator poses, has his or her own personality that shines through in their drawings -no matter what character they are working on- and it was a thrill for me to begin to be able to recognize particular animators from their drawings. My appreciation of these artists and their skill only grew as I continued my education and became a working animator myself. When you animate by hand, you are constantly flipping or rolling the most recent few drawings between your fingers as you go, checking to make sure the motion is right. Its been years now since I worked in hand drawn animation, but that movement is still second nature to me. The individual drawings disappear and all you see is the character, moving in your mind's eye.

As much as I love computer animation, there is nothing quite like the ritual of finishing a scene in hand-drawn animation. You take the stack of newly finished drawings off the pegs and stack the edges on your desk, making sure of the pile with they are all lined up again. Then you hold the top of the pile with your right hand, flipping the drawings with your left. You will have been looking at it in bits all the way through, of course, but seeing a character you have drawn come to life in your hands is truly magical. That is part of what is so amazing about being able to look at original animation drawings. To flip a sequence that a hero of yours animated, knowing that he or she did the exact same thing years ago-it is an indescribable feeling. Though we cannot reproduce that experience in a book, we did our best to capture some small part of the experience of seeing the drawings in person. We wanted you to be able to see not only the drawings themselves in sequence, but the little details that show you the history in each drawing: the linework, the notes and timing charts on the sides of the drawings, even the creases on the sides of the paper, wrinkled from being flipped hundreds of times. This book has a special place in my heart. It reminds me not only of my early days in animation-those summer days spent in the morgue-but of the lessons I have learned from the great animators it's been my privilege to work with over the years. I see something new every time I look at it. I hope you will too”. 

-John Lasseter