Disney exhibitions at museums

[That Duckfan]

I am interested in Disney. I also like to visit museums. These interests unfortunately don't often go together. But happily, I was in London the other week, where there's currently an exposition titled Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts at the Wallace Collection. There's also an audio tour, with narration from knowledgeable people in the arts, as well as Disney animators Glen Keane, Mark Henn, and Don Hahn. (Okay, I don't actually which one of the last two it was. Was it both?) the introduction to the audio guide is narrated by none other than Angela Lansbury.
And as usual, I've come here to give my opinion.

There are a number of Disney productions featured in the exhibition. These include the Silly Symphonies "The China Plate" and "The China Shop", the feature films Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, and the Mickey Mouse short "Thru the Mirror". In addition, snippets from Tangled and Frozen show the influence of the museum's prize possession, the 18th century painting known as The Swing. There was also a short featurette about Walt Disney's fascination with European arts and culture that contextualized some of this work.

Truth be told, I did not much care for the French decorative art that was displayed in the exhibition. Well, The Swing is iconic, and I did take some time to admire it, but the vases not so much. The bulk of the Disney work was taken up by Beauty and the Beast, including concept art, early storyboards and character designs, a lay-out drawing for the library, as well as several model sheets. As you know, I'm not the greatest fan of Beauty and the Beast, but I am a big fan of original concept art. Probably the most interesting piece was the original stained-glass plate was used to open the movie. Unfortunately, it did not receive any audio treatment.

The piece about Cinderella on the other hand, definitely caught my attention. The exposition had several background paintings on display, and some original pieces of concept art by Mary Blair. These are a real gem, little postcard-sized pieces of modern art that look even better in real life. But my favorite piece was the 24 pencil drawings from Cinderella's transformation into a princess, alongside a slowed-down pencil test of the same. These vintage pencil tests are simply gorgeous, with the intricately-drawn magic sparkles adding it by an effects animator. I'm not a big fan of the effects animation in this period, the ink and paint makes it come off really thick. It's plain to see why Disney wanted to move toward the stylization of Sleeping Beauty and the direct pencils of the Xerox process at this stage. The pencil test was truly magical.

There were also a few original pencil drawings from "Thru the Mirror". These were a little random (they certainly didn't feature any French decorative arts!), but it was cool to see some vintage-era Mickeys.

So if you're in London this summer, this is something you might want to check out. I'll be visiting the Museum of Comic Art in Noordwijk, The Netherlands one of these days to report on the 70th anniversary exposition of Donald Duck weekly. Have you seen any Disney-related exhibitions recently? Let us know in this thread!

[Mesterius]

Jun 8, 2022 20:18:35 GMT That Duckfan said:

The piece about Cinderella on the other hand, definitely caught my attention. The exposition had several background paintings on display, and some original pieces of concept art by Mary Blair. These are a real gem, little postcard-sized pieces of modern art that look even better in real life. But my favorite piece was the 24 pencil drawings from Cinderella's transformation into a princess, alongside a slowed-down pencil test of the same. These vintage pencil tests are simply gorgeous, with the intricately-drawn magic sparkles adding it by an effects animator. I'm not a big fan of the effects animation in this period, the ink and paint makes it come off really thick. It's plain to see why Disney wanted to move toward the stylization of Sleeping Beauty and the direct pencils of the Xerox process at this stage. The pencil test was truly magical.

Uh... but Disney himself didn't really want to move towards the direct pencils reproduced by the Xerox process in his animated features, he HAD TO. After the commercial losses of Sleeping Beauty, it was either find a cheaper way to make them or shut down the animated features altogether. I doubt the Xerox decision had even happened if not for Sleeping Beauty's failure. Walt pushed the stylization in Sleeping Beauty (to a point where it worked against the film, I think), but he didn't care for the look of One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
.

[That Duckfan]

Jun 8, 2022 21:24:23 GMT Mesterius said:

Uh... but Disney himself didn't really want to move towards the direct pencils reproduced by the Xerox process in his animated features, he HAD TO. After the commercial losses of Sleeping Beauty, it was either find a cheaper way to make them or shut down the animated features altogether. I doubt the Xerox decision had even happened if not for Sleeping Beauty's failure. Walt pushed the stylization in Sleeping Beauty (to a point where it worked against the film, I think), but he didn't care for the look of One Hundred and One Dalmatians.

Yeah okay, I muddled that up a bit, using the word Disney in a bit too general a sense. Walt did indeed push for stylization in Sleeping Beauty, much to the chagrin of his animators -- and I agree with you that it ended up working against the film, just as the obsessive perfectionism of The Thief and the Cobbler worked against that film. But I do recall at least some of the animators welcoming the Xerox process, because of the way that it showcased their drawings. I may be misremembering that, or that may have been a post-rationalization for the situation they got handed with. For One Hundred and One Dalmatians, it was a decent stylistic fit -- it's the movies that follow that get increasingly sloppy with the technology. Walt was pretty much absent, yeah.

The internet also suggests (though I couldn't find a reputable source for this) that the first test scenes with Xerox animation were actually in Sleeping Beauty. (Which it does look like, if you look at Maleficent's minions.) It makes sense that the technology was in development for some time, as rising costs had been gutting the animation department throughout the 1950s, prior to the advent of Sleeping Beauty. Plus, there's no way One Hundred and One Dalmatians wasn't already partway into production at the time of Sleeping Beauty's release. Gotta keep those animators busy.

Was the animation studio ever really on the line? I think it was at some point, but I'm not fully aware of that era. I should read up on it. Walt certainly felt detatched creatively, but it doesn't make sense from a business perspective. The animation studio was/is the bedrock of the studio, a fountain of both Disneyland and the anthology series. You nix the animation studio, and what do you have? A zombie theme park and a mediocre live-action studio.

[Mesterius]

Jun 8, 2022 22:24:06 GMT That Duckfan said:

Jun 8, 2022 21:24:23 GMT Mesterius said:

Uh... but Disney himself didn't really want to move towards the direct pencils reproduced by the Xerox process in his animated features, he HAD TO. After the commercial losses of Sleeping Beauty, it was either find a cheaper way to make them or shut down the animated features altogether. I doubt the Xerox decision had even happened if not for Sleeping Beauty's failure. Walt pushed the stylization in Sleeping Beauty (to a point where it worked against the film, I think), but he didn't care for the look of One Hundred and One Dalmatians.

Yeah okay, I muddled that up a bit, using the word Disney in a bit too general a sense. Walt did indeed push for stylization in Sleeping Beauty, much to the chagrin of his animators -- and I agree with you that it ended up working against the film, just as the obsessive perfectionism of The Thief and the Cobbler worked against that film. But I do recall at least some of the animators welcoming the Xerox process, because of the way that it showcased their drawings. I may be misremembering that, or that may have been a post-rationalization for the situation they got handed with. For One Hundred and One Dalmatians, it was a decent stylistic fit -- it's the movies that follow that get increasingly sloppy with the technology. Walt was pretty much absent, yeah.

No, you're right that (at least several of) the animators welcomed the switch to Xerox, because more of their pencil drawings made it to the screen. And I was thinking as I was writing my comment that this might be what you meant. But the sentence, "It's plain to see why Disney wanted to move toward the stylization of Sleeping Beauty and the direct pencils of the Xerox process at this stage" made it sound like you meant that this was something the studio as a whole was consciously working towards. Rather, I think it had much to do with pure necessity in order to keep going. The stylization of the character designs had been happening for a while, but Dalmatians was still a 180-degree turn when compared to the extravagance and grand production values of Sleeping Beauty, and also with far fewer animators working on it (because a lot of people were laid off after Beauty). But the style really does work for the film, as you say. Ken Anderson knocked it out of the park with his color styling, which Walt of course bashed him for after production.

Jun 8, 2022 22:24:06 GMT That Duckfan said:

The internet also suggests (though I couldn't find a reputable source for this) that the first test scenes with Xerox animation were actually in Sleeping Beauty. (Which it does look like, if you look at Maleficent's minions.) It makes sense that the technology was in development for some time, as rising costs had been gutting the animation department throughout the 1950s, prior to the advent of Sleeping Beauty. Plus, there's no way One Hundred and One Dalmatians wasn't already partway into production at the time of Sleeping Beauty's release. Gotta keep those animators busy.

Okay, that is interesting, if true. It's certainly possible, though I still doubt that Dalmatians would have been a full Xerox production if Beauty hadn't lost so much money. Walt himself was against the look, even though he obviously gave permission to their making Dalmatians that way... but if I recall correctly, he was away in England making live-action films for much of its production anyway.

Jun 8, 2022 22:24:06 GMT That Duckfan said:

Was the animation studio ever really on the line? I think it was at some point, but I'm not fully aware of that era. I should read up on it. Walt certainly felt detatched creatively, but it doesn't make sense from a business perspective. The animation studio was/is the bedrock of the studio, a fountain of both Disneyland and the anthology series. You nix the animation studio, and what do you have? A zombie theme park and a mediocre live-action studio.

It was on the line (if briefly) during and after Sleeping Beauty, though I suppose you can argue how serious the threat was. But Walt did think about dropping animation around 1960... both because his latest film cost and lost so much money, and because he was losing interest in animation himself. (This had gradually happened on Sleeping Beauty in particular, despite Walt initially setting out to make it his masterpiece.) He was contemplating to shut down feature animation and, yes, keep television production, live-action films and of course Disneyland going.

There's an interesting photo of Walt and Eric Larson taken towards the end of production of Sleeping Beauty, showcased in a 2012 blog post by Michael Barrier. Here's Michael about it:

I recently bought a print of this photo online—it was published on page 178 of the original 1958 edition of Walt Disney: The Art of Animation by Bob Thomas—and it stirred up memories of what the great animator Eric Larson told Milt Gray and me when we interviewed him in his office at the Disney studio on October 27, 1976. Near the end of the interview, Eric gestured toward the wall where that framed photo was hanging. "That's Walt and me out here in the hall," Eric said. "This was toward the end of Sleeping Beauty. Walt's saying, 'I don't think we can continue, it's too expensive.' This was the general conception."

So this was before the film had even come out, and Walt was already voicing concerns about the costs being too great to continue making cartoon features.

Barrier also makes an interesting observation in the same blog post of how Mary Poppins revived Walt's enthusiasm for animation a few years later. That was likely the reason why he was much more involved with Jungle Book than the previous two features.

[That Duckfan]

Jun 8, 2022 23:19:19 GMT Mesterius said:

No, you're right that (at least several of) the animators welcomed the switch to Xerox, because more of their pencil drawings made it to the screen. And I was thinking as I was writing my comment that this might be what you meant. But the sentence, "It's plain to see why Disney wanted to move toward the stylization of Sleeping Beauty and the direct pencils of the Xerox process at this stage" made it sound like you meant that this was something the studio as a whole was consciously working towards.

Yeah, I was covering all my bases there because it was getting late and I wasn't sure if I'd remembered it correctly. If I refer to Disney as a whole, it's usually to keep things deliberately vague. Thanks for the memory refresher.

I've actually just started Barrier's biography on Walt, and it looks to be very informative. So I should have a better idea of the history soon.

[mousemaestro]

If you study Walt's career patterns, it is not surprising that he had grown weary of animation. He started with short subjects and gradually dropped direct involvement with them for animated features. World War II partly derailed the forward progress that the first five features had installed in Walt. By the time, the animated feature had recovered from World War II and the necessity of the package film era, Walt was throwing himself into building Disneyland. (It didn't help that Walt was personally dissatisfied with how Alice and Peter Pan turned out). As Walt himself noted, unlike a movie, Disneyland was something that was never finished and could always be revised. Throw in Sleeping Beauty's famously long development, rising costs, and distraction in forms of Disneyland and live action films (Walt's cherished ambition was to be a live action director), Walt was dulled by animation. Think about it, the man died planning an experimental city! He simply evolved past painted pictures and even theme parks! His constant pattern in life was keep moving forward into greater and more challenging fields.

For my opinion, the animation of Sleeping Beauty has never been surpassed. But I am a medievalist at heart.