Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Here are a few books which have been recently announced on Amazon and which are likely to be of interest to some of you:

- Walt Kelly: The Life and Art of the Creator of Pogo by Thomas Andrea and Carsten Laqua should contain large section about Kelly's career at Disney.

- The Art of Brave by Jenny Lerew

- Animation Flipbook Box Set by Pete Docter (Thanks to David Peake for having spotted that one)

- Animation Under the Swastika: A History of Trickfilm in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 by Rolf Giesen and J.P. Storm: While this book will not contain any elements about Disney, it could be fascinating and one of its author also penned a seminal book about Disney in Germany (in German, unfortunately).




Do not miss today:

- WALT DISNEY~Dancing The Night Away by Paul F. Anderson
- Remembering Walt Disney in December by Jim Korkis
- 2719 Hyperion Avenue - then and now on Vintage Disney Collectibles

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

I have extremely mixed feelings about the news related to the newly found Oswald cartoon Hungry Hobos. While I rejoice at the fact that a "lost" Oswald cartoon was indeed found (I would love to have access to all of the Alices and Oswalds) the estimated value which the auction house tagged it with is insane and will probably make it way more difficult to get access to and preserve all the other surviving Oswalds which may be found in the future. This is mostly a sad day for Disney history.
Help needed! Once again, I need your help. Do you live in Chicago? Would you be willing to visit the library of the University of Illinois to check out two files related to Disney's participation to the 1933 Century of Progress event (probably linked to the Ingersoll Mickey Mouse watch)? If so, could you email me at didier.ghez@gmail.com

Thanks in advance.


This just in through Mark Sonntag:

[Hollywood Party is now available through the Warner Bros. Archive collection.] And it will soon also be available on Amazon.
Do not miss today:

- Circa 1920 Disney drawing among Reno auction items
- Sorry, Oswald: You're an Unlucky, Exploited Rabbit by Tom Stathes

Monday, November 28, 2011

Help Needed

Would one of the readers of this blog have subscription to Time magazine? If so, could you send me the following article? Thanks!

[“Merchandising: The Mighty Mouse”
Time, October 25, 1948, pp. 96-98 (481 words).]
This just in from Gunnar Andreassen:

[When I saw you posting of Kimball's finger prints today, I remembered seeing some time ago another genius' finger prints.]

Do not miss today:

- 100 Years - Ray Patterson! (Belated) by Steven Hartley
- WALT DISNEY TAKES A RIDE by Paul F. Anderson
- HAPPY THANKSGIVING~Walt Disney Photo by Paul F. Anderson
- Disney might-have-beens will be up for bid in Profiles in History's "Icons of Animation" auction by Jim Hill

Friday, November 25, 2011

This just in from Jim Korkis:

[Here are two illustrations by Ward Kimball.

The first one that is a thumbnail illustration of the life of Ward Kimball was done by Ward as a gift for me in the Eighties.

The second one is an illustration that Ward did when he attended the Disney Institute at Walt Disney World in April 1996. As an animation instructor, I helped prepare a large sketchbook (about three foot by three foot) and invited visiting lecturers to draw a sketch or sign their name. The book was filled with artwork by Marc and Alice Davis, John Culhane, John Canemaker, a NEW YORKER cartoonist, actors, and many, many others. When Disney laid off half of the animation staff and then shortly after that, other people had access to the animation studios, some things went "missing". Shortly before the physical location closed, someone had taken a razor blade and cut out pages from the book that used to be under lock and key. Fortunately, I took photos of some of the artwork and this is my photo of the page that Kimball did that is now missing. So beware if you ever see it or Marc's self portrait or Alice's sketch of an Eskimo girl from SMALL WORLD for sale among others. I sat there and saw Ward draw it in the backstage green room at the Cinema about a half hour before he was to go on stage and be interviewed. Yes, the light was absolutely terrible (hence, Ward's remark about drawing in "candlelight"), the space was cramped without a table so he balanced it on the sofa, and yes, he hated the result....which I think is pretty wonderful.]



Thursday, November 24, 2011

Help needed!

Do you live in New York and would you be willing to visit the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library? There are some apparently fascinating Disney history related documents linked to the 1939 (no typo here) World's Fair which really need to be checked.

Please email me at didier.ghez@gmail.com




I have to admit that the videogame Epic Mickey fascinates me, since it features Mickey from the 1930s, since it resurects of some of my favorite characters like Oswald, Horace, and the Gremlins.

I was therefore absolutely delighted to discover the beautiful new Art of Epic Mickey book. While the text is quite short, the illustrations are a real delight since most of them are beautiful never-seen-before renderings. Clearly, the artists who worked on this project knew what they were doing, and when I discovered that one of the consultants was the famous Disney art director Carson Van Osten, I understood a lot about the beautiful end result.

When you add to this the fact that Warren Spector is a known Disney history enthusiast who seems to read this blog from time to time, you will not be surprised by my enthusiasm.

For quite a few of us, this book is a must-have. But if you are not quite sure about whether you will like it or not, I would advise you to check out a short video that one customer posted in his Amazon review, and which will allow you to make up your mind.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011




I have no idea what the weird book Disney Stories: Getting to Digital by Lee Newton and Madej Krystina, which has just been announced on Amazon, will be worth, but I know for a fact that - although it is not directly related to Disney - the seminal book about the history of UPA by Adam Abraham, When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA, will be a must-have.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Emmanuel Bourmalo was kind enough to let me know that the catalog of the exceptional Icons of Animation auction by Profiles in History is now online. It contains some amazing treasures.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Did you know that actor David Tomlinson, famous for his roles in Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, had written his autobiography? I did not and I thought some of you might find this interesting.

Help needed!


I am trying to get access to the article The Life Story of Mickey Mouse which was released in the January 1934 issue of the Windsor magazine. Can anyone help?


Do not miss today:

- Walt’s Hidden Hideaway by Billy Stanek
- Kamen, Blair, and a boy named Tim on Vintage Disneyana Collectibles
- A Conversation with Disneyland Resort Cast Member Nate Lord – Grandson of Disney Legend Ward Kimball by Kevin Rafferty (Thanks to Jim Korkis for the link)
- Mickey’s Moveable Birthday by Jim Korkis

Friday, November 18, 2011

I just stumbled upon this small article in an issue of Life Magazine dated November 22, 1937 and thought you might enjoy it. The additional Stadler and Rose photos below were released in one of Howard Lowery's auction catalogues, many years ago.

I would love to know and see more about this show.


This just in from David Gerstein:

[To help fund some upcoming research trips, I need to sell an item that I've long been fond of, but have never had the room to properly display: Dick Kinney's scribbles to the first Fethry Duck story, S 64008 "The Health Nut." ["Paperino e il fanatico igienista"] These are the pages that I've republished in Egmont's Dick Kinney/Al Hubbard Hall of Fame volume in Norway and Germany, as well as in Sweden's Kalle Anka - Den Kompletta Årgången 1965-02. Some have also been on my blog here.

And now here's the eBay auction, which I've just launched.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

I have been conducting some research about the life of Kay Kamen recently, for reasons which will become obvious in a few weeks.

One of the elements, which is now finally confirmed is Kay's exact birth date and name at birth, two elements which varied widely on official records, and which we were only able to confirm thanks to the help of Joe Campana, and to the efforts of Charles Kenny who went all the way to the Baltimore Archives to dig up Kay's birth certificate.

While working on this project, I stumbled upona few visual documents which are worth sharing here. I wish to thank Michael Barrier for his help when it came to acquiring copies of them.

We alll knew that Kamen had released a promotional magazine named The Boys Outfitter, when he was still involved with the Kamen-Blair venture, which he started with Streeter Blair in 1926 (and would leave in 1933).

What we did not know is that he also launched several other promotional magazines which would later inspire the promotional Mickey Mouse Magazine.

You can see two of these promotional magazines below.

And we now finally know the name of the plush doll character on the cover of the first Mickey Mouse Magazine!










Do not miss today:

- Walt in the Park at Disney by Mark (Thanks to Alain Littaye for the link)
- Disney Exhibitors Book by Mark Sonntag
- Walt - 1933 by Mark Sonntag
- Ducks and Disney: The Enduring Humanity of Carl Barks by James Romberger (Thanks to Jim Korkis for the link)

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

This just in from Kevin Yee:

[Title: Walt Disney World 'Earbook 2011: One Fan's Review in Pictures

Release date: December 2011

Description: Walt Disney World is such a vast place that change is not only inevitable, it is practically constant. If you've ever wondered what has been added or altered since your visit last year, this is the book for you! It's also the right book for those who wish to commemorate attractions that have disappeared within the past year. Inside you'll find information about all openings and closings of rides, shows, restaurants, and shops at Walt Disney World, with each item covered by multiple pictures. Just like a high school yearbook, this volume stuffed full of pictures will help you remember the good times you had here. A timeline adds precision to the litany of changes, and an index makes finding information a snap.]


Do not miss today:

- Mickey's Xmas Carol, PART 3 by Mike Peraza
- An Apple a Day For Walt by Jim Korkis
- A Day in the Life: MGM, March 4, 1953 by Michael Barrier (not Disney, but great read)

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Michael Barrier just alerted me to the fact that the posters of Alice the Golf Bug and Alice the Lumber Jack will be sold this week by Heritage Auctions.

In the meantime, I also stumbled on a thumbnail of the poster for Alice the Whaler, which was sold back in 2002, and which I had never seen before.

Monday, November 14, 2011

I am a great fan of Amid Amidi. I like the way he conducts research, I love the way he writes and I adore CartoonBrew, Animation Blast and all of his books (yes I do have some reservations about the polemical comments he sometimes posts, but that is another story).

Which is why I was delighted to receive his new art book about Pixar, The Art of Pixar: 25th Anniv.: The Complete Color Scripts and Select Art from 25 Years of Animation. To be honnest I am much more excited by his upcoming book about Ward Kimball, which will be among the very best books written about an animation artist, but this volume about the art of Pixar is a very good one, whose principal value, more than Amid's short but delighful text, resides in the release of all the Pixar color scripts. In other words, you have to be a true Pixar aficionado to want to buy this book, but if you are it is truly priceless.

Friday, November 11, 2011

I have now received a review copy of Frasier MacLean's Setting the Scene: The Art & Evolution of Animation Layout. This book is a pure delight: it is huge, it is filled with great layouts and backgrounds from all the major studios (including many never-seen-before documents) and the text is well written and extremely detailed. If you are an animation student or if you simply have a very strong interest in how layouts are created this book is clearly for you. I am extremely glad to own it and would have bought it with immense pleasure. The many interviews which Fraser conducted to write it also provide a wealth of primary information of the utmost interest.

My only reservation about this "must-have" book, however, is that it comes short regarding the historical perspective. Not that it does cover history of layouts in many ways, but due to its focus on the technique itself, the book fails to explore the contribution of key artists like Charles Philippi, or Don Griffith, which is a shame since at least one great interview with Griffith (by Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz) exists detailing the art of layout at Disney.

Again, this is nit-picking. Overall the job done by Fraser is top-notch and many of us need this book on our shelves.





Is anyone of you planning to pick up this new book by Bearmanor Media? If you do, could you let us know if it contains any information about Disney shows or shows which featured Walt?

Thursday, November 10, 2011

I picked up last week a copy of the Spanish magazine Popular-Film, dated August 17, 1933, and was delighted to discover this great photo of Walt, which I had never seen before.

The story itself is famous: the English consul in Los Angeles, Wentworth Martyn Gurney, O.B.E. gave to Walt a cat named Manxie from the Isle of Man as a special gift from his majesty. Apparently the hidden agenda was to try and get Disney to include a Manx cat in one of his cartoons.
Do not miss today:

- Gunther Schuller on Fantasia by Michael Barrier
- The Theming of the Sorcerer's Apprentice by Jim Korkis

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

I have just received my review copy of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: "Trapped on Treasure Island" and as amazing as it sounds David Gerstein and Fantagraphics have managed to do it again: they have produced at the same time the best Disney comic book of 2011 and one of the best Disney history books of the year. This series through the quality of its articles and the never-seen-before documents it contains is a treasure trove for all of us Disney comic book and Disneyana fans. My favorite "extra" features include the detailed bios of Webb Smith, Ted Osborne, and Merrill de Maris by Alberto Becattini and David Gerstein.

Did I mention that I can not wait for volume 3, Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: "High Noon at Inferno Gulch"?

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

A great auction is live at Hake's. It includes this beautiful little drawing by Horvath for the never-produced Mickey's Sea Serpent.


Do not miss today:


- Construction of Disneyland (Thanks to Jim Korkis for the link)
- Mickey's Xmas Carol, PART 2 by Mike Peraza
- Between Books - Walt and the Promise of Progress City

Monday, November 07, 2011

The new issue of the Twenty-Three magazine, which will be released on November 15, has been announced. I am especially looking forward to the articles by Tim Susanin and about Disney's participation in the Rose Parade.
This just in from Maxime Bogaert:

[As from October 22, 2011, my “Designing Disney Blog” has been re-imagined and transformed into the “Designing Disney Research Center”.

Please note that the web address has been changed too! The all new “Designing Disney” website can now be found at www.designingdisney.com

Learn more about the new “Designing Disney Research Center” concept here.]

Do not miss today:

- Was Sid Cahuenga a Real Person? by Werner Weiss and Jim Korkis
- The final installment of Marty Sklar's excerpts from his forthcoming book (thanks to Jim Korkis for the link)

Friday, November 04, 2011

Jorge Finkielman just discovered this astounding Alice poster which I had never seen. I can't thank him enough for sharing it.

Thursday, November 03, 2011





I will review this book in a few days. In the meantime, here is an interview with its author, Fraser McLean.

Didier Ghez: When did you decide to write this book and why?

Fraser McLean: The answer to the first part of the question is relatively short and sweet: the original idea for the book was hatched some time back in 2007.
The "why" part stretches back maybe 30 years or more - and perhaps needs a little more explaining......
A major part of the motivation for the project came from the fact that, in recent years, there has been a tremendous surge in the number of colleges and universities around the world that are offering courses in all aspects of animation - be it animation for movies, TV, games or web design - and, by the time I got back to the UK in late 1999, having spent 4 years working for Warner Bros. and Disney out in Los Angeles and more than 10 years before that, working down in London, that surge had finally hit Scotland too.
Because Scotland is a relatively small place (maybe 5 million people live here, whereas I believe there are something like 12 million in greater LA alone....) and because very few Scottish art school graduates of my generation had wound up working in the commercial animation industry, word quickly got around that this guy who had been working for Disney and Warner Bros. was back home in Edinburgh....
So I began getting calls and e-mails, inviting me in to teach on all these different animation courses.
However when I began meeting and talking with the students about their projects, I quickly realised that many of these courses seemed to be structured very differently to the industry itself; certainly the curriculum at some of these colleges didn't seem to reflect the commercial production pipeline as I had come to know it, working for all these years in the animation industry on both sides of the Atlantic.
But the more lectures, presentations and workshops I was asked to deliver, the more I was reminded of the fact that my own "training", such as it was, had happened "live", on the shop floor, many years after I had left college. So I could see, if you like, how "far away" the industry itself (along with all its weird, obscure processes) might still seem to students who had no ready access - in their own home towns - to working animation studios.
I had graduated myself from the Glasgow School of Art back in 1983 with a Degree in Graphic Design and, because Animation hadn't been a degree level study option at the GSA back then, my own route into the industry had been through the Scottish Film Training Trust (the precursor to Skillset here in the UK) which, at that time offered one-year working Traineeships in only 3 disciplines: camera, sound and editing.
My own student attempts at movie-making had been confined to three or four pretty wobbly DIY live action music videos and some lacklustre plasticene animation that was shot on 1 inch reel-to-reel video, shot through an ancient camera that had originally been used as part of the security set-up in a Glasgow bank. So for several years between graduating and landing my first animation job, I had all my observational drawings and all my artwork stashed in a folio under my bed, on the assumption that nobody in the film industry would ever ask to see evidence of my artistic ability.
For a couple of years after I completed my Traineeship, I was fortunate enough to ride the Channel 4 "wave" which saw an enormous amount of investment in small, independent productions (for broadcast and for cinema release) and, even though it also helped de-centralise the UK industry, encouraging a lot of small production companies to set up outside of London, the eventual knock-on effect for me was that I landed a job in 1985, working for Sands Films on Christine Edzard's ambitious and ground-breaking 6-hour movie adaptation of Charles Dickens's "Little Dorrit".
But fortunately for me (as it turned out...) the UK film industry pretty much ground to a temporary halt in the second half of the 1980s so, even though I was now living in London, my budding career as a Film Editor had been stopped in its tracks. That forced me to scour all the "wanted" ads in the job columns at the back of "Screen International" where, in mid-1987, Disney and Amblin placed their "artists wanted" ad for "Roger Rabbit".
I sent in my CV, asking if there was any work to be had in their cutting room but initially they didn't respond, so I called them up and got put through to Don Hahn who told me that they really didn't need anyone else for the Editing side of things, but (looking again at my application letter) ".....it says here that you went to Art School...."; there was a pause and then he asked, "Can you draw....?" So - three days later, there I was, wildly out of my depth, sitting at a desk in The Forum in Camden Town, trying my best to work out how to inbetween the tone mattes on one of the cows standing in the "cattle call" line-up that Bob Hoskins walks past as he strolls across the back-lot of the Maroon Cartoon studios.
As happens to a lot of people, I suppose, the work itself was so intensive and so uninterrupted, I developed a kind of tunnel vision about the wider animation process, gleaning very little information about the work that was being done by all the artists and technicians in all the other departments.
Then, because the "Roger Rabbit" style was very much in demand for animated TV commercials for some years after the movie came out, producers Alan Dewhurst and Andrew Ruhemann recruited Chris Knott, the "Roger Rabbit" Head of Effects, and a core group of Effects Animators and Assistants, myself included, to work at Passion Pictures in London where, over the next few years, they/we pretty much cornered the market in doing movie quality TV adverts in which animated characters co-existed with live performers, whether it was characters coming to life from a box of "Cinnamon Toast Crunch" cereal or from a bottle of "Mr Muscle" kitchen cleaner.
But the knock-on effect of all this highly specialised "combination" Effects work was that, for obvious reasons, it was rare for any of us to see (let alone work to) any "typical" examples of traditional Layout or Background artwork because everything we did was animated over peg-registered photographic blow-ups (or "stats") of live action footage.
After I left Passion Pictures in 1992 I made a brief but pivotal de-tour into animation software, helping train and support users of Cambridge Animation Systems' pinoeering "Animo" system. That job, in turn, led to me working for about 8 months with all the Animo departments on "Space Jam" at Warner Bros. in Sherman Oaks and then, immediately after that, I was hired by Disney to be Artistic Coordinator on "Tarzan".
I describe in the book what it was like to walk into my first Layout Approvals session at the Disney feature building in Burbank back in 1997: suddenly, after all these years, I felt like I had stumbled across the team that actually "made" the movie!
So you could say I was motivated to suggest the project to Chronicle Books back in 2007, as much to fill in the gaps in my own education as to provide some kind of historical context for those contemporary animation students who, having begun their studies in the digital age, are very often unaware of the demands, challenges and limitations of working with "real" (as opposed to "virtual") animation cameras.
I had also noticed a tendency for a lot of these same courses to place almost all the training emphasis on character animation skills when, over the years, it had become glaringly obvious to me that, in all working animation studios, there were only ever a small number of character animators - whereas there were a LOT of people doing all KINDS of other work....
So that was an imbalance that I thought it would be helpful to try and correct.
After all - there's very little mileage in flooding the market every year with a disproportionate number of would-be character animators, whether your market is for hand-drawn, CG or stop-frame. Ideally the colleges should be making some kind of effort to ensure that their graduates head out into the world with the required variety of skills - otherwise it's like trying to put together an orchestra when all you have are violin players.
Also - even though, when I began teaching back in 2000, there were already some terrific books out there which looked at the "how to" side of Layout (Mark T Byrne's book and now also Ed Ghertner's book - to name two great examples), there didn't yet seem to be a book that charted the development of all the different techniques and processes that had been involved in the evolution of "Layout", no matter how it might be defined by the artists at any one studio (or on any one production).
And, with rostrum work increasingly being replaced by digital camera moves, designed and executed over digitised artwork inside a computer, it seemed there was a degree of urgency about getting some of this very individual (but vitally important) history down in writing. After all - if I had been working in the industry myself for over a decade before I got to grips with this vital information, wasn't it all-too-likely that there were a lot of other people out there - students included - who might be finding it all equally mysterious...?
So I began by e-mailing all the Layout artists that I knew (many of whom, interestingly enough, had recently begun making the transition from hand-drawn Layout work into CG production) to see if maybe such a book DID already exist but I had somehow failed to find it.... But the same two replies kept coming back: 1) no, there wasn't a book yet that covered that history - and - 2) it would be great if somebody would write one....
Ominously - in parenthesis after that second reply, quite a lot of people also commented that "....of course, writing the book could be like trying to nail Jell-O to a plank..." - which, I suppose, ought to have made me think twice about taking it on. So many different definitions of "Layout" seem to have (co-)existed at every stage in the development of commercial animation in America and Europe. But then again, I was so amazingly lucky to get a positive response to the idea from Chronicle Books - I mean, who better to back the project...?! Not only have they published all the Pixar "Art of..." books, they were also responsible for publishing "The Invisible Art" (2002), the amazing in-depth history of matte painting that Mark Cotta Vaz and Craig Barron wrote and researched.
It was a terrific boost (as well as a huge surprise) when Chronicle gave their approval to the original proposal in early 2008. So really - once the project got rolling, there was no going back.....

DG: What are the main chapters of the book?

FM: I was very keen to try and build the manuscript around a combination of archive research and original interviews. But I also wanted to do as much as I could to assemble all the material in chronological order, starting with Winsor McCay and the early Bray/Hurd patents, working through both short- and long-format cinema animation, turning the corner into the era of television and then up to the present day where the techniques and toolkits of animation, live action and games design have all begun to mingle. It was also vitally important to speak to as many camera operators and scene planners as I could, since the history of Layout is, in so many respects, the history of the relationship between animation artwork (of all kinds) and the cameras, both real and digital, that have been used over the years to capture it.

DG: Are there many elements in it linked to Disney history?

FM: I don't think it would be possible (or honest) to attempt to write a comprehensive history of Animation Layout without paying close attention to the work of all the various artists, designers, engineers, technicians and camera (or computer) operators who developed and fine-tuned so many crucial (and sometimes unique) devices and processes at the Disney studios over the years.
But I have also tried very hard to make sure that the work of the Disney studios is seen in the context of all the other work that preceded and surrounded it. Nothing of any substance or importance ever happens in isolation and in so many cases the creative or the technical "ball" would bounce back and forth between the teams at the Disney studios and the Fleischer studios, or between the crews at MGM and Warner Bros.. I think it's a process that has continued right up until the present day - relatively speaking it's still quite a small, self-contained community (even though it's now truly international), and everyone tends to keep an eye on what everyone else is doing. It's that mutual respect, curiosity and competition that keeps everyone "sharp", I guess.....

DG: Did you interview any artists or conduct special research to be able to write it?

FM: Yes, I had to. I wouldn't have felt comfortable about the idea of relying on existing histories or quoting from other sources. Besides, I was so well aware of all these amazing artists and technicians whose names perhaps have tended, over the years, to appear further down the "crawl" or in smaller type on some of the "card" credits than they deserved to, but I felt that these were people who had nevertheless played an absolutely fundamental role in making these animated shorts, features and TV series so influential and unforgettable. What was so great for me was that almost every person I tracked down and spoke to, then presented me with the names and numbers of two or three OTHER artists (or camera operators or archivists or historians....) to whom I HAD to speak if I was going to get this or that fact or story right... So, by the end of the process, I had spoken with more than 100 different people and, even though some of those people are not quoted directly in the manuscript, all of them played an important part in shaping and informing the book.

DG: What are the most special treats that await Disney history enthusiasts?

FM: I suppose all the same treats for which I myself felt so privileged to have been granted access.
On my very first morning at the Disney Animation Research Library, Fox Carney - who was assigned to the project as curator - took me on a tour of the archive. The only time I had ever been in the ARL prior to that was when, as a new employee on the lot back in 1997, I had been shown around very briefly as part of the "induction" process. But this was entirely different. This was a private guided tour of some of the most jaw-dropping items in the studio's collection. Eventually we came to one of the largest plan chests and, perhaps because I had already sent ahead a list of the productions I was most keen to discuss in the book, Fox opened the top drawer and there, inside was one of the original watercolour background paintings for the interior of Geppetto's workshop. For whatever reason - I just burst quietly into tears...!
It was completely overwhelming, seeing for the first time, there in front of me in that drawer, the original artwork that had been projected onto cinema screens all over the world, onto cinema screens in Scotland way back in the early 1940s, the same artwork that my parents and grandparents had wondered at and been moved by.
But I would also hope that there are plenty of anecdotal treats in store too, thanks to the many different artists and technical people who were kind enough to give me their time and to share their experience, passion and expertise. Hopefully having drawn as heavily as I have on the transcripts of these original interviews, the reader will have a sense of "being there", of listening to each person describing which parts of the process were important or inspiring or magical for them. That's my hope anyway....!!

Wednesday, November 02, 2011




This just in:


[On Tuesday, November 15, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers will offer one of the most impressive collections of animation art to be sold at auction in years. Spanning two decades, highlights of the Ralph Esmerian Collection include original production celluloids and production backgrounds from Snow White and Pinocchio, in addition to works from Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi and Lady and the Tramp.

The 20 lots comprise lots 388 to 407 in the November 15 Fine Books and Manuscripts auction and are expected to greatly exceed presale estimates, ranging from $600 to $6,000 per lot.
Interested parties may view the items in the fully illustrated online catalogue at www.lesliehindman.com.]



Do not miss today:

- A Lost SNOW WHITE Lyric – found! by Jerry Beck
- The History of the Partners Statue: Part Two by Jim Korkis
- O-ZELL stock certificate by Mark Sonntag
- By Walter Disney by Mark Sonntag
- Mickey's Xmas Carol, PART 1 by Michael Peraza