Scrooge McDuck & Money

I'm posting this, mainly because I don't remember ever seeing it before. I've known about the short for years but never thought it was worth watching until cartoonbrew.com made mention of it. Although I liked the Scrooge McDuck character in Mickey's Christmas Carol, I loathed the miserly fellow in Ducktails.
This was because I was never a fan of the latter Disney television product. I always saw Disney Television productions as Bastardized Disney. This tainted my view of old Uncle Scrooge...until now.
Scrooge McDuck & Money was a 16 minute short subject released in 1967 and is pleasantly entertaining. Written by Bill Berg and Directed By Hamilton Luske, it has some nice animation by Art Stevens, Charlie Downs, Julius Svendsen and (mostly in part two) features some cool animation by Ward Kimball. This short, pretty much in the same vein as Donald & The Wheel, is one of Disney's neat Edutainment shorts and was shown in schools for years. I'm pleased to present it here.

Dog and His Master....

Here's some drawings of a cartoon series I was developing for myself.
As you can see, I was deliberately going for a Tex Avery, Hanna/Barbera look with funny looking designs and weird facial expressions. I think this would have worked when Funny Cartoons were appreciated, but sadly, if it can't play like an average live action sitcom, most of the execs wouldn't buy it.
Maybe I'll still produce it as an internet cartoon though...

Hurrah! More Disney Treasures on DVD

If some people didn't take action, these Disney Treasures (pictured left) may have been the last to be released. Fortunately, Disney reversed their decision and decided to release three more Disney collections on December 11th.
From the look of the advance reviews, these three sets are pretty terrific.
The first of the three features another grouping of Donald Duck cartoons from the late 40's-Early 50's. In my humble opinion, these Donald cartoons are fast, violent and probably the funniest of the Donald series. They're great cartoons directed by Jack Hannah with great comic timing. These Duck cartoons will likely sell out fast.
The second collection features Walt Disney's Oswald The Lucky Rabbit. If you asked me a few years ago if Disney would ever release a set of Oswald cartoons from the 20's, I would have thought that you were nuts!
The fact that this set exists is an absolute miracle. Included in this set are a few classic Mickey Mouse Cartoons and The Ub Iwerks feature length documentary by Leslie Iwerks.
And if you're a Disneyland fan like me, the third set is Disneyland: Secrets, Stories and Magic and it's chock full of terrific goodies including vintage Disney TV shows about the park, behind the scenes footage of the construction of Disneyland and a feature length documentary about the history of the park. A rarely seen theatrical film, Disneyland U.S.A. in Cinemascope is alone worth the price for the DVD set.
I believe the retail price for each is $32.99, but I found Best Buy here in New York selling them as a two-fer deal for $40.00! I'm kind of curious if I can get them cheaper if I buy three.
I know this seems like a huge plug, but I think that these Treasures are a great value and I urge all three of you who read this blog to go out a buy a bunch. Give em out to friends and family. Keep some spare sets for yourself when you wear out the others! Use them as coasters!
It's important to support this series if we wish to see more of 'em.
I'm buying a couple hundred myself!

Turkey Day.....

No I haven't forgotten about the Blog. I'll be back after the holiday with some new posts. In the meantime, Have a Very Happy Thanksgiving!

The Best Television Show Opening...Period! The Mickey Mouse Club!

I'm posting this because believe it or not, many people today have never seen it.
But I'm sure some of you who have, will not protest too much. This is the extended version of the 1955 Mickey Mouse Club. It was produced in color, but at the time of it's original broadcast, appeared in black and white on a small television screens across the nation on ABC. In my opinion, I think that this is the best opening for a television show ever done, live action or animated. There's a lot of good opening segments for television shows like The Munsters, I Dream Of Jeannie, Get Smart, Green Acres, The Munsters, Bewitched, etc. I'd say the closest to the energy of this piece is one of the openings to The Drew Carey Show, but even then, Carey's title sequence had clips from the show cut into the opening.
MMC's opening was all NEW original footage....and what an opening. I never get tired watching it!
Every weekday in 1955, this title sequence (in glorious Black and white) excited millions of kids, preparing them for the fun to follow.
The Mickey Mouse Club had lots of hooks to keep you watching the show, but this opening sequence shot in eye popping color with an instantly hummable theme by Mousekeleader Jimmie Dodd and fun animation and Direction by Bill Justice, make this 3 minute title opener a supreme winner, hands down.
FYI, most people are familiar with the shorter version of the title, as much of the footage in the middle was cut out, making it a much tighter piece. However, I still prefer the extended opening.
It's a credit to Walt Disney for having the foresight to produce this opening in color and although the color footage isn't currently available on You Tube, it is available on one of the Disney Treasures DVD sets. That version is pure candy for the eyes and is well worth seeing!

Jiminy Cricket's Encyclopedia

Here's another clip from the 1955 Mickey Mouse Club featuring Jiminy Cricket. Some of these Cricket edutainment shorts were really terrific...very well animated and extremely entertaining. This one is in black and white, but even so, the animation is simply irresistible to watch...the design is great, the movement cool and even the song by Jimmie Dodd is extremely catchy. I really love neat animation like this...it's just sad that there isn't more of this stuff being done today. I believe Disney vet Bill Justice Directed this as well as some other Jiminy Cricket shorts for the MMC.
Does anyone know who animated this?

Some Disney Animators playing Dixieland

Here's something pretty rare...a bunch of Disney personal playing Dixieland Jazz! It's the Firehouse Five Plus Two and they were really something...take a look...see if you can spot Animators Ward Kimball and Frank Thomas. From what I hear they were pretty popular in their day recording 20 record albums. The band stayed together for over 20 years and it was just a sideline or hobby for these guys. Some hobby...these guys had TWO careers!
You can still buy a bunch of their albums on CD! Enjoy...this clip is from the old Mickey Mouse Club. Oh...and the kid who's playing the drums is really playing the drums. He's Cubby O' Brien and to this day still plays the drums professionally!

Miceys....

I don't know why, but I've drawn a lot of mice over the years. Here's a few more. I hope you're not too squeamish! Actually, this is a page from my sketchbook and the page size was a little too large for the scanner, but I think I got most of the page in. Just for the record, these sketches were done with a cobalt blue Polychromos pencil.

Disney's Other Genius: Bill Walsh

I'm a big fan of the classic Disney live action product that I grew up on during the 60's and 70's. They were fun movies that I would see with my family and sure enough, Mom, Dad, sis and I would really enjoy these pictures. As I mentioned in an earlier post, these films were not designed to be masterworks of movie making. The goals were quite simple...to entertain the masses. Sometimes they hit it, sometimes they missed. Often enough these movies had enough warmth, drama and comedy to have you leaving the theatre feeling good about what you'd just seen. And sometimes, you left the theatre with the feeling that you had just seen something special.
I'd say most of those films were written and produced by Bill Walsh.
Bill Walsh started at Disney in the 40's in publicity and somehow managed to write the Mickey Mouse Comic strip. He soon became a favorite of Walts' and ended up producing some of the early one shot Christmas TV shows in the 50's.
He eventually became the producer of The Disneyland TV series producing one hour of content each week. With Walt impressed by Walsh's abilities, he quickly moved him into overseeing the Mickey Mouse Club producing over 5 hours of content every week!
In the late 50's, Walt moved Bill into the position of motion picture writer and associate producer with The Shaggy Dog. His rise was fast afterwards and soon became one of Walt Disney's top producers. When Walt Disney died in December of 1966, Bill Walsh was considered for Walt's job. He preferred to work on individual projects and turned it down.
You don't hear much of Bill Walsh anymore, but he was considered one of the most successful producers in Hollywood and just about every studio in town made him offers to leave Disney. Bill turned them all down and stayed at Disney right up until his death in 1975. His films were box office bonanzas, movies like The Shaggy Dog, The Absent Minded Professor, That Darn Cat, The Love Bug and Bedknobs & Broomsticks and of course Mary Poppins. As a matter of fact, Poppins and The Love Bug were the top grossing pictures in their years of release!
Walsh would often work with Disney story sketch man Don DaGradi and create these marvelous movies that were half live action comedy, half cartoon, but somehow in his way of writing these films, Bill Walsh was able to take things that were far out in conception and make them plausible. If you remember Basketball Players bouncing up and down on a court, or a Volkswagon skipping like a stone across water, or people have tea parties on the ceiling, then you're remembering something dreamed up by the imagination of Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi.
Walsh's favorite director was Robert Stevenson because of his detail oriented, no nonsense approach to movie making. Because Walsh used storyboards to pre-direct and nail down every element, Stevenson adhered to them and focused on accuracy and performance. When all the cylinders were working, the results were often magical.
Out of all the executives at Disney, Bill Walsh had the respect of the creatives. He was as close in spirit to Walt Disney as you could get. After Bill Walsh passed away, many animators in the studio considered retirement because Walsh was one of the FEW creatives left in management. Bill was so devoted to Walt Disney and the studio in general, that when he died, Walsh was buried within a few feet of Walts' final resting place in Forest Lawn Glendale.

Here's a couple of moments of a movie produced by Walsh, written by Walsh and DaGradi and Directed by Robert Stevenson called Blackbeards Ghost, which is one of my favorite Disney films. It's a film that's full of fun, fantasy and humor.

Some Pen sketches

I like to switch mediums every now and then. I love to work with a thick black crayon or a sharpie to do some quick drawings, but I'll work with anything as long as the tool gives me a nice flowing line. John Kricfalusi introduced me to Primacolour Pencils on Mighty Mouse, The New Adventures, but my favorites are Blaisdell Layout Pencils, Polychromos and the now extinct Blackwing pencils, which I have a few stubs laying around the house somewhere.

Sometimes, I like to take a cheap Bic pen and do some sketches. They're actually pretty great to sketch with and I like the line quality, which kind of resembles that Disney Zerox look of the 60's and 70's. Making drawings with a permanent pen really forces you to think before you lay a line down. I think it's a pretty good exercise from time to time.

The Wonderful World Of Color

Here's two Disney Anthology Show openings. The first is from the Wonderful World Of Color with host Walt Disney. Color ran on NBC from 1961 through 1967 broadcasting some original programming, but mostly material from the Disney library of Feature films, cartoon shorts and nature films. Walt Disney shot informative lead ins and closing footage giving us a glimpse of next weeks show. Unlike the Hanna Barbera title sequences in my previous post, Disney's opening sequence to his show was just a sampling of the fun to follow.

The second opening is from the The Wonderful World Of Disney, which ran on NBC from 1967 through the late 70's. The name change was obviously a tribute to Walt after he passed in 1966 and the idea of a host was eliminated almost entirely (probably because it was thought that nobody could fill Walt's shoes). Occasionally, there would be certain shows that would be hosted by various Disney celebs like Dean Jones, Annette Funicello or Kurt Russell, but most of these shows would have no host at all. This particular opening was well known in the 1970's and would be edited each year to feature a clip from a new Disney movie or theme park attraction. In this particular clip, Space Mountain and The Rescuers are featured prominently, which would date it to 1977. Both clips here are great openings, with theme music by Buddy Baker (a great Disney music man) these openings have a magic that cannot be put into words.

Another sketch....

I did this sketch the other night and just happened to clean it up a little while ago. As you can see by the rough, I noodled a bit with re-working different areas of the drawing, but the pose pretty much remained the same. If this was a piece of animation with this guy walking, the left arm and leg would be opposing each other in the animation. However, when I drew this up the other night, it didn't bother me. Maybe it should, though I still like the pose. Any comments?
I kinda liked this sketch for a number of reasons. Mainly because it had a neat little attitude and has nice appeal.
Everybody talks about the appeal factor and how to achieve it. I think it has to do with making a good flowing drawing that communicates emotion in a strong way. Fred Moore's drawings always possessed this quality because of the cuteness of his poses. But appeal isn't just limited to cuteness as drawings of Cruella DeVil, Captain Hook and Roger From 101 Dalmations also possess this quality. Any drawing that makes you want to look at it more than a few moments is sure to have appeal.

Hanna-Barbera's Best: The Title Sequences

After Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and The Jetsons, Hanna Barbera Productions got into producing very different types of animated programming. Most of these shows were reactive to what was successful at the time and Hanna Barbera were very good about tapping into that. As with most HB shows, the best part of the shows were the opening and closing title sequences, which were anchored by a great theme song, terrific editing of clips from the series and some original animation.
Here's a few examples below and the first we'll begin with is Speed Buggy, which features a great 'driving' theme song matched to good action pieces featuring the main characters. The show is definitely influenced by Disney's The Love Bug (the top box office grosser of 1969) and must have had many curious viewers, but as with other HB shows, the show was never as much fun as the title sequence.



As a kid, The Wacky Races was a pretty fun show to watch. Influenced by many chase films made before it ( i.e., The Great Race, It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, etc.)
not only were the opening and closing sequences fun, but the actual episodes had some chuckles too!
The theme music was big and brassy, with neat narration by character actor, Dave Willock and some funny vocal performances by Paul Winchell, everything in this HB show seemed to work...especially the opening and closing sequences.



The Catanooga Cats was a typical HB show that featured three or four different cartoon segments. Often The actual Catanooga Cat cartoons were dreadful, but the short music segments that acted as bumpers had neat bubblegum pop tunes and fast editing. HB once again took the lead from The Monkees and Popular Beatles cartoon in the mid 60's, and started making shows that featured characters that played musical instruments. This extended to The Impossibles, The Banana Splits, Josie & The Pussycats and of course The Catanooga Cats. The best thing about this show is the opening title sequence, with a dynamic pop theme produced By Mike Curb.



I know that some of these tunes may not be everyones' cup of tea, but when the shows first came out, the title sequences did provide a good hook to get the kids to watch. Here below is the title sequence for the HB Abbott & Costello cartoon show.
Once again, the title sequence has a Big Band sound and is hands down the only good thing about this particular cartoon. Good thing HB refrained from having Abbott & Costello play guitars and drums!

OOPS! I did it again!

No, this isn't a post about Britney's Troubles.
The drawing you see here I posted a few hours ago. Well, I did the drawing, thought it looked pretty good and put it up on the blog. But looking at it again about a half hour ago I had second thoughts. Although I liked most of the drawing, there were a few things about the drawing that bothered me, mainly the characters stance. Rather than just pulling down the drawing and keeping it off line, I made a change in one leg and a few minor ones to the rest of the drawing and put it back up here.
Originally the right leg was bent in and didn't like the way the shoe was drawn.
It's light on the drawing but if you look hard you can still see the erased lite blue lines.
It's not a perfect drawing, but I like it better.
I'm very critical about my drawings, that's part of the reason why I haven't posted any drawings over the history of this blog...... A good case of stage fright.
I think you need an ego to create any drawing and it's important to have confidence in your abilities... but it's also important not to be happy with everything you do; meaning that you need to look at your drawings with a fresh eye. That's why most teachers tell you to walk away from your drawing and then come back to it and you'll begin to see the flaws.

Some rough sketches....

Some friends said that I should post some of my rough drawings, so here you go.
I'm a pretty fast artist, as a matter of fact, I can nail one of these drawings somewhere between 30 seconds and a minute, so they're pretty rough sketches, but mostly everything is there. My approach is pretty simple; I think of an idea, get the line of action and then build shapes around that action line. Afterwards I continue to build shapes inside the shapes and then fine tune the details, all under a minute. If the drawing isn't right, I can quickly do another one by using what's right about the previous drawing and then adding or subtracting from it. My drawings are really all about feeling, and even though I use shapes to get the drawing there, I'm more concerned about how a drawing feels.

I've been criticized about my speed. Someone I used to work with called me "Stocko The Clown", because I used to revert to formula poses. I listened to the criticism and took it as constructive criticism. But the fact is, there are many other artists who could also be called the same nickname. That's because we all use stock things that we've learned over the years and we use them because it works in the drawing. And if it looks good in your drawing, you're going to use it over and over.
Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball, Chuck Jones, Frank Thomas and Jim Tyer all used stock poses and expressions...so I guess I'm in good company. That doesn't mean you should stop and not progress as an artist. You should always be looking for different expressions and poses, but you should never throw out something that works either.

My early influences have been many, but the strongest have been Preston Blair, Don Bluth, Fred Moore, Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball, Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. For a while back in the 80's, Bluth was a major influence and I started to follow that look, especially when I went to work for him. I can't tell you how many people told me to break free of that style and I have to a certain extent. But looking at these drawings, I can still see that Don's influence has some hold on me.

More Dana Carvey Show.....

Here's another funny sketch with Dana and Steve Carell. Couldn't resist putting this up. Enjoy....

The Dana Carvey Show

This post has nothing to do with animation, but it does concern one of my other passions...Good Sketch comedy...and the more off-beat the better.
Long Before The Colbert Report and The Office made Steven Colbert and Steve Carell household names, they were featured players on a very funny but short lived program on ABC called The Taco Bell Dana Carvey Show. It was cancelled pretty shortly after it premiered, but for the eight and 1/2 minutes that it lasted, it had some pretty funny bits and pieces. Not all the sketches were gems, but they had more hits than misses.
And a few were pure gold.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, I know.......

I know what you're all thinking...Finally, 'Brian Mitchell is posting stuff again. Wonder how long this will last?' I know all three of you are excited about this. I think I posted more stuff on this site over the last couple of days, than I did all of last year. Wow....
I've decided to make an effort to keep up with at least one daily post, whether it'll be a long ramble or a short PFFFT.
And you'll notice that I'll be posting some of my drawings over the next couple of days too...just like I promised last time around...which was months ago...and I never delivered.
Hopefully this time I'll come through.
Just want to try and keep everyone happy....

YAKKO'S WORLD

After finishing work on Tiny Toon Adventures, the staff at Warner Bros. went to work developing Animaniacs. A few months into development when we were locking down the stars of the show, I went ahead to animate some Walk cycles for Yakko, Wakko and Dot, which were received by the producers in a great way. Immediately after development, we went right into production minus our layout crew. We were told to draw our storyboards tighter in order to use them as layouts for the animators overseas.
Eliminating layout might have saved the producers some money in the short run, but it put tremendous pressures on the storyboard crew.
Yakko's World wasn't the first cartoon to be storyboarded (for me that was The Big Candy Store) but it was the most labor intensive.

When I was presented with the script, it was just the lyrics for the song matched to the Mexican Hat Dance. Since I sometimes take things too literal, I thought that it might be a magical kind of idea to have Yakko doing the Mexican Hat Dance, while pulling hats out of thin air representing the countries that he mentions in the song. So to get the full picture, hats would be appearing, disappearing, swallowing up Yakko and finally for the finale', exploding as he reaches the final verse of the cartoon. I thought it was a great idea because it felt like a throw back to some of that great animation from The Three Caballeros, Dumbo and some of those amazing WB Clampett cartoons.
I was really excited at the opportunity to do something absolutely surreal for network TV. So, the first thing that had to be done was the research. I looked in book stores and in libraries for all the different hats worn around the world. I researched customs, clothing, dances..anything that would aid me in boarding the cartoon. Then I set down to work, roughing out my Yakko's World masterpiece. I spent the better part of two weeks roughing out the short cartoon. Unfortunately, most of the research ate into my boarding time. I was late with the storyboard and although the production execs cut me some slack for a few extra days, patience was wearing thin. Finally, I stayed up late one night and finished the thing. I was sure that all would be forgiven once they saw what I came up with.
The next morning, my director and I were asked to present the storyboard to the producer. Armed with my masterpiece we proceeded upstairs to The Producer's office where we sat down and started to pitch Yakko's World. I flipped over the title page, showed my boss how Yakko leaps into frame and starts in with the hats when he stopped me.
"What th' #&%^@# is this?
Just have him point to the countries on a map!"
I looked at my Director and then back to the producer and then quietly exited the office with my masterwork in hand.
The only thing salvaged from the original board was...the title page and.....
page one where Yakko leaps in. The rest found a home as a giant wee wee pad for my dog.

I was given another two weeks to RE-board Yakko's World with him pointing to a map.
Again, I had to get some research (mainly a map) to accurately represent the countries that Yakko points to. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning on the headaches of working on this thing. First off, some of these countries are so small that they don't really register on the screen and second off, the writer of the songs' new lyrics had problems rhyming certain nations together. So in using creative license, he used so called nations like 'San Juan' to rhyme with Guam. San Juan was easy for me to figure out as a city in Puerto Rico but others were not as easy, and I have to say that I probably lost some hair due to the stress that Yakko's World put me through.
The third problem was that the song moves pretty fast and there's not a whole lot of business that you can do between the short breaks. That was important to me because I thought the whole thing of pointing to countries was pretty boring.
To help perk things up a bit, I had the countries light up as Yakko points to them, which you really had to do because many of these countries wouldn't be seen because of their size...plus remember that Yakko is pointing to these places at lightning speed.
Another thing I incorporated was a little dance that Groucho Marx once did for (I believe) the movie Animal Crackers. One of our staff guys (I apologize for not remembering his name) animated this little dance with Yakko that was inspired by Groucho's dance in Crackers. Since it was a development type thing that wasn't being used in production, I thought some of it might fit within the breaks and liven up the thing, so I called for it.
The other thing that I did was to have Yakko roll up in the map at the end, instead of the explosion of hats that I had in the original version. It just seemed like a good way to finish it up.
I expected a good number of changes when it went for approval, but none were requested and it went into animation without a hitch. A few months later, I was called into editorial to see the finished version. Everybody, (myself included) was quite pleased with it.
I recall being surprised that it was very entertaining.
Warner's Executive Brass thought that it was so good that the cartoon was run in The Warner Stores and on The Fox Network as a teaser, months before the show hit the airwaves.
Pretty much the way I boarded it is the way you see it on the screen.
So here it is...Yakko's World.

Ward Kimball's It's Tough To Be A Bird

Here's another treat...the first 10 or so minutes of It's Tough To Be A Bird.
The film won an Academy Award for Best animated short subject of 1969, one of the few awards that Disney studios let Ward keep for his very own. I got to hold the award for maybe 5 seconds and it was a real thrill. This is absolutely one of my favorite Disney films and it deserves a wider showing. Unfortunately, the TV version for the Wonderful World Of Disney was padded out adding another 25 minutes to the film which made it a little too long to view, however it still has some more clever moments.

Ward Kimball's DAD, CAN I BORROW THE CAR PART THREE

Ward Kimball was a genius. It's inconceivable to think that Disney's let him walk out the door just a few years after creating this.
Enjoy!

Ward Kimball's DAD, CAN I BORROW THE CAR PART TWO

Ward Kimball's DAD, CAN I BORROW THE CAR

If you've never seen it, it's time you did. This is one of my favorite Ward Kimball shorts...it's primarily live action, with some animation stuff thrown in. Here's part one..........

Defending The Jungle Book

I've been noticing on several blogs that some people have gotten into roasting Walt Disney's
re-released 1967 film, The Jungle Book.
It seems that this very popular movie, after 40 years of successful re-releases in Movie Theatres and on home video, has found a handful of folks who are very vocal about its' flaws.
Well, I'm a believer that if you see a movie often enough over that length of time, you're going to notice something wrong with it. Heck, I found a continuity problem in the movie just the other day. I never noticed it the other 159 times I watched it.
I'll give you a clue where it's at...it's in the section after the monkey sequence where Baloo and Baggy are talking about Mowgli and both have black eyes.
Let me know if you find it!
Another hint...it has nothing to do with their black eyes slowly disappearing.

Anyway, getting back to what I was talking about, The Jungle Book is indeed no great film.
As a matter of fact the first fifteen minutes of the movie feels like a different film until Baloo and the monkeys appear. The 'Book' does have a very episodic feel to it, with repetitive sequences regarding the elephants, Kaa The Snake and Shere Khan. And then there's the famous voice cast, which many have claimed that the animators used as some sort of crutch, making their work easier. Or the barbershop quartet thing with the Beatlesque vultures that only seems to exist because the story people needed some other characters to help save Mowgli from Shere Khan's attack.

The Jungle Book certainly has it's flaws...but it also has it's magic too.
It is certainly not the greatest achievement in Walt Disney's career, but it's one hell of a likable and fun movie.
While some bloggers are complaining about all the story flaws in the movie, they fail to miss the point of the picture. Walt Disney was more interested in making a picture that entertained an audience. He wanted his story people to keep the story light in order to get to the fun of the movie with the characters. Certainly "The Bare Necessities" and "I Wanna Be Like You" sequences are probably some of the most memorable out of all Disney movies. I've sat through too many movies where the entertainment clearly gets lost, because the story is just too complicated. The Jungle Book never has that problem because it's chock full of entertainment hung on a basic simple storyline.
While The Jungle Book does use Star talent for voices, none of them at the time were A or even B list talent. It's not like Disney hired Dean Martin for Baloo or Julie Andrews for the mother elephant, so I will never understand that criticism..especially when Disney used Ed Wynn and Jerry Colonna for Alice In Wonderland or Peggy Lee for Lady and The Tramp! I don't recall Disney ever caught criticism for using these stars in those pictures.
Besides, when I saw the movie for the first time when I was 5 years old in 1967, I never equated Baloo with Phil Harris or George Sanders with Shere Khan. Back then I didn't know who the heck Phil Harris and George Sanders were! To me, the illusion was complete; I was watching these cool animated personalities interact.

It's a movie that has stayed with me long after leaving the theatre, and the things I cherished were the those lush personalities, the funny sequences and the music! It succeeds in places where many other films fail.. it creates an emotional connection with the audience.
The personality animation actually inspired me to pursue animation as a profession. Funny how many pro animators say the same thing!
I guess my point here, is that the Jungle Book is pure entertainment. It wasn't meant to be much more than that. The picture unapologetically does what it's supposed to do; keep audiences enthralled and entertained for 80 plus minutes. So, what's wrong with that?

More End Of Cheapquels

A friend said to me the other day that I must be happy about the changing scene at Disney Toon studios, with Lasseter and Catmull hammering the final nail in the coffin regarding the Disney Cheapquels.
Believe me, I'm thrilled.
But there is a sad side to this as well...about what could have been.
The exciting thing about the Cheapquels is that they generated a tremendous amount of money for the company...it could have shown the way to produce exciting fresh quality driven product by way of DVD to homes around the world.
They really didn't have to be Cheapquels after all.
If the Disney Company had seen the light, they could have made great animated motion pictures with their Direct To Video Distribution channels. Instead, they chose the wrong people to head up the division and wasted a whole lot of money. One nameless person at Disney Toon Studios told me that the Cheapquels weren't all that cheap to produce! One of these pictures cost about $20 million dollars in story alone because someone of top was very insecure and demanded changes in story and in personnel.
Think about it...$20 million bucks...down the tubes.
I know several people who could have delivered two great movies for that amount and they still wouldn't be considered cheapquels.

No More Cheapquels...Really!

Cheapquel...yes that's the word I came up with a few years ago to describe the incredibly awful DVD movies that were being produced by Disney Toon Studios; Cringe-worthy Classics like Cinderella 2, Atlantis 2 and Hunchback 2. If there was a number 2 in the title, it's highly possible that it was a 'Cheapquel'. The number 2 also gave insight into the quality of the Cheapquel, as in 'I'm going to the bathroom to do number 2'.
According to recent reports, the days of the Disney Cheapquel is over. Well what do you know.
I'm speechless. Maybe not.
Not all the Cheapquels were bad. Some actually looked good. Some didn't even deserve to be called Cheapquels. Oh well...my bad.

My official stance on the whole thing was very simple. I have no problem with sequels to any movie. Pixars' sequel to Toy Story is a great example of a sequel done well. Toy Story 2 took the characters of Buzz and Woody, expanded the storyline naturally and created something that was well worth seeing. Although I like both Toy Story films, I prefer the second one over the first.
Cinderella 2 was a disgrace to the Disney name. It was a sequel that was inferior in both story and animation and only existed to capitalize off the original films popularity. On a scale from 0ne to ten, Cinderella 2 is a minus 20.
Some of you might think that I never watched one of these things...as a matter of fact I have.
I actually purchased one or two for my daughter and rented some of the others. Most of them are drek. I'd rather watch an episode of 'Show Me The Money'. (Now that was real entertainment watching Shatner dance!)
My daughter couldn't watch these things from beginning to end either. Often she'd get up and leave the room. Since she wasn't watching the ones I purchased, I tried to sell them to a used video dealer. The dealer didn't want em. He had a whole bunch of cheapquels on the shelf that were collecting dust.

However, the cheapquels were good for one thing...watching them put me out like a light, like a really good sleeping pill.
Some of the best sleep time I ever had was while watching one of these disasters.

Cheapquels....Good Riddence.

It's been a while.....

I'm Back....
Yes it's been close to a year since I last posted. Some of you were mighty upset that I didn't continue to post interesting tidbits and stuff. Sorry about that..I've been pretty busy with other things. I promise to post something (at least) once a week that's worth reading.
Aside for writing some obits for the Asifa East newsletter, I have been busy working on freelance animation assignments and developing an online cartoon that is set to premiere sometime soon.
In the next couple of weeks, I'll post some development drawings from my animated cartoon as well as other interesting stuff.