Evil Queen with Panther Concept Art

The evil queen of Snow White had a pet panther. This is a piece of concept art from the planning of Snow White. Click on the picture for a large image of it.



The panther never made it in to the picture.

Not sure who the artist is.

The picture was taken through glass at the recently closed Snow White Fairest One of All art exhibit at the Animation building of California Adventure. It was taken through the glass cover and the green-blue light reflection is something that shows up.

Unique Walt Disney Photo

I saw this photo of Walt Disney at a blog called From Mars to Marceline™


It's hard to tell where it was taken or exactly when. It could be in Florida at the beginnings of "The Florida Project" or maybe Anaheim at the time of clearing the orange grove.

Anyone know? It's the sort of thing Michael Barrier or Didier Ghez might know. Seldom does one see a photo of Disney in such a state.

The Mars to Marcelline blog is by Eleonora Duvivier and it contains excerpts from a book she has written called from Mars to Marcelline. She is clearly a huge Disney person and writes poignantly about it. She is from Brazil originally and her first entry on Disney Nationality is intersting.

______

Update: Didier Ghez tells me this picture was taken in Greece during the filming of the 1964 release the Moon-Spinners (review at Ultimate Disney).

Annoying Fly, early gag sketch for Snow White

The Fairest One of All art exhibit at Disney California Adventure's Animation Building will soon be over. I was there last weekend and spoke with one of the "cast members". She said that the exhibit would last only one to two more weeks, then it'd be taken down. She was not sure what would go in after or if this Snow White exhibit would move anywhere else.

So GO SEE IT while you can.

Here is a gag sketch called the Annoying Fly that was an early proposed gag for the dwarfs.

It's done comic strip style, though there are no frames. The dwarf is up on a ladder and tries to slap an annoying fly buzzing around his head, he falls and bounces on to a bellows.

The gag apparently continues on another large piece of paper, but that second part of the gag -- what the bellows blows on and causes to happen, I assume -- is not in the exhibit.

Click on the pic to get a larger image. The quality of these photos are not high, but you can see fairly well all the different sequences (they go right to left, top row, then bottom row).



Anyone know who drew this gag?

Ken O’Conner signed story sketch

Here's a fantastic story sketch for the bathing scene of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that is at the Disney California Adventure art exhibit, The Fairest One of All. This sketch is sgned by Ken O'Conner. The drawing itself is beautiful enough and shows how the Disney artists were working to provide the creative input to Snow White. And interesting as well are the technical notes or directions written on the sheet. It's nice to have it signed so we know who drew it. (Click on it for a larger picture).


Ken O'Conner has a page at The International Animated Film Society (ASIFA) Cartoon Hall of Fame. Here's the link: A. Kendall O'Conner.

He was born in Perth Australia and worked on Snow White and 12 other Disney animated features. He was awarded the Annie Winsor McCay Award in 1987. Take a look at the Cartoon Hall of Fame page linked above. The comments are heartfelt and informative from his loved ones.

Pixar Toy Story Zoetrope at California Adventure

Amazing to See

It really is amazing and it's wonderfulness can't be captured on video. The Zoetrope consists of a number of Toy Story figures in time-sequence poses situated around a circle that acts as a carousel. It begins revolving and gets up to a high speed where the figures all blur together as they whiz past. Then - boom -- at the same time the Toy Story music and a strobe light begin and the figures are moving, jumping, parachuting, hopping and bouncing through the ground and Jesse the Cowgirl swings her lariat. (Click on the images for much larger pictures).




There are many YouTube clips of this but none of them do it justice, or even come close. Some are incomprehensible even. The strobe light makes it very hard for a camera to pick up the action and motion.

The best two are at these links:

A longer one

A two second clip which is the most clear.

Those will give you the idea of what the experience is like.

This is at the Animation Building at California Adventure, where the Snow White exhibit, The Fairest One of All, is. If you've got a chance, go see it.

There is another strobe-light Zoetrope like this in Japan at the the Studio Ghibli Museum. It's said that that Zoetrope of Totoro characters was so impressive to John Lassater that he had the Toy Story Zoetrope made.

The Ghibli zoetrope is at the Ghibli Museum in Japan and this link will take you to a page about the museum, with a photo of their zoetrope.

To see this sort of strobe light zoetrope is quite an experience. If you get a chance, I recommend taking a look at the Pixar Zoetrope at California Adventure.

Jet Pack at Tomorrowland, Disneyland

Once upon a time Tomorrowland did a Jet Pack demonstration. I remember seeing this when I was a little kid. I was very happy to find a short video of the Jet Pack at Disney Frontier who found it at Daily Motion.

One thing I remember is that it was LOUD!!! Look at the video, when the Jet Pack Man takes off, first thing you'll see is a kid plugging his ears. Every crowd shot has people plugging their ears. Seeing the man fly was amazing, spectacular, but it was loud, a loud screeching howling loud.

Here's the embed from Daily Motion, posted by an obvious philanthropist named donaldtheduckie

Rocketman
Uploaded by donaldtheduckie

Tomorrowland's loss

I always wondered why the Jet Pack demonstration didn't last long. Even today it would be a spectacular show. I think it must have been the noise. It was just too loud to keep as an attraction.

Yet, this is the sort of thing that Tomorrowland is for. Today there's not much comparable. The closest I can think of now is the Asimo robot show in Innoventions where the Honda humanoild robot, Asimo, is shown off.

Building a Bed - Evolution of a Gag

Building a Bed Gag Sketches

Below are two sets of gag sketch drawings, three each in sequence, included in the "Fairest One of All" art exhibit at Disney's California Adventure, which illustrate a similar gag that was ultimately not included in the final Snow White released film.

The first set is described at the exhibit as follows:

Painting Ivy on a Post

Story Sketch Gag

Graphite and Colored Pencil on paper

Although artists suggested scores of ideas for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt only selected those gags that revealed a character's personality and moved the story forward. This gag concept was not included in the film.

If you click on the images you'll see a much bigger image where you can see there were captions at the bottom of each drawing explaining the gag. Here's what they say:

1. Swings vine at bed post. It wraps around post.
2. He slacks up and vine springs away from post
3. Leaving a leaf design - repeat.


Next, A More Mature Variation on the Gag

A similar gag sequence has the final Dwarf characterization, Sneezy in this case. The sequence is described as follows:

Carving a Post

Story Sketch Gag

Graphite and Colored Pencil on paper

In this scenario, Sneezy's affliction actually helps him carve a bedpost.

Click to see the larger images and you'll notice the drawings are labeled "Unit G" and are hand numbered sequentially, 28, 29 and 30. They also have sequential stamped numbers, 0072 - 0074 on the right side bottom.

The large amount of organization, planning, detail and coordination over years that went in to making Snow White can be appreciated a bit more with these drawings presented in the exhibit. Gag writing and tweaking clearly went on for years as these two sets of sequences show how the gag was tweaked and evolved with the characters.

Yet, as with the Dwarfs Eating Soup scene, it still did not make it in to the film.