Published between 1982 and 1995
McCay was fascinated by the theatre and by the circus in particular; his early professional work was to paint posters for a dime museum. This can best be described as an amusement arcade, variety hall, circus and fun fair all under one roof. There was, alas, no equivalent on this side of the Atlantic. It … Read more
Brian Sibley reviews Channel 4’s documentary about veteran Disney animator, Art Babbitt. For years his name languished in obscurity: official Disney historians ignored his existence, while those who wrote about Disney in critical, iconoclastic terms only ever referred to him darkly as the animator who led the Disney studio strike of 1941. Having reached the … Read more
Jeremy Clark has been to see An American Tail. He examines the plot structure and finds resonances from Shakespeare and Hitchcock to King Kong and Disney. When Don Bluth left the Disney organization, to produce his own feature films, his intention was to undertake work worthy of the standards set by Disney in the heyday … Read more
Whilst it fits in with the idea of Fievel’s growing up while separated from his parents, there is insufficient dramatic material here to furnish a workable sub-plot. Mice plotting against cats does have such potential, but the cats’ visual design lets it down. Low-life, street criminal type New York Cats seem trivial after the truly … Read more
If Bluth is good when he is borrowing from other film-makers, it must be said that he is easily their equal when exercising originality. His credits on the film include designing and storyboarding in addition to producing and directing, and it is an impressive achievement. The Cossack Cats must be mentioned again in this regard; … Read more
Godfrey Jones tells us about his favourite animated films plus a few pet hates. I enjoyed the article by Paul Thomas about his top ten shorts in (in Animator issue 19). May I give you my ten favourites? Two are on Paul’s list. However, I’ll start at the beginning. 1. Little Nemo – Windsor McCay. … Read more
It took 750 artists three years to produce Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Richard Holliss looks at the innovation that went on behind the scenes. Almost as legendary as the premiere itself of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was the reception it received from the celebrity audience. Hardened movie-moguls and their … Read more
“One of the problems we got into when we started Snow White”, remembered Walt, “was how to animate the girl. It was the first time we had gone in for realistic human beings and it was a tough nut to crack. It was easy to animate animals. The audience wasn’t familiar in the finer points … Read more
An important aid in perfecting the technique was the storyboard. When devised in the early Thirties it was simply a series of drawings arranged in sequence on a board, illustrating film scenes as the camera might see them. If changes needed to be made, whole sections were unpinned and new ones inserted. Widely used in … Read more
Brian Sibley tells the story behind the making of Walt Disney’s first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, fifty years ago this year (1987). The trouble with Walt Disney was he was never satisfied: no sooner had he achieved one thing than he was striving to achieve something else. “By nature,” he once … Read more