Drawing with Personality
Hosted by Disney animator Andreas Deja
Andreas started at Disney in 1980 right around the time when all the long time Disney animators had retired. However, he made it his mission to get in contact with as many of them as he could and still learn anything while they were still around.
He showed us some drawing from classic, but lesser known animators. This is from Frolicking Fish circa 1930 by Les Clark who was well known for animating Mickey.
This was a drawing of Mickey by Freddie Moore, who was known as the chief animator for Mickey Mouse.
I believe that this might have been another of Freddie Moores animations
Andreas Deja did the animation of Mickey Mouse in the Roger Rabbit Movie. He noted that in this sketch of Mickey for Fantasia, as the sorcerer he looks like a kid who is going to do something wrong. So much is said by his pose.
Early on they developed standards or guidelines on how the characters were to be drawn. Here is the style sheet for the Brave Little Tailor.
This is Andreas drawing for us on the stage.
He showed us the different nuances of drawing Mickey from a sideways vies vs a head on view. Evidently the placement of the ears is different for each way. This was something Walt discovered and had all animators draw mickey that way forward.
Then he showed some sketches from Snow White where she just kissed Doc.
Here is the style sheet for some of the dwarves.
Another sketch
Bill Titler who animated Dumbo based the character on his newborn baby.
Willie Reitman did the Dinosaurs in Fantasia
Ollie Johnson believed in his characters and that they really existed, he had a very light touch to his drawings.