Scar Pencil Tests

It feels good to be part of a hit movie again. Even if the movie is an old one.

"The Lion King" is filling theaters again, this time in 3D. When I saw it like this recently, I thought it looked kind of cool. As a kid I have always loved the old viewmaster 3D slides, it was very magical to me.

So to celebrate the success of "The Lion King" reissue, here are a dozen random  pencil tests of my Scar animation.

Sure brings back memories... when we had real lions at the studio for study.

Working with Jeremy Irons was a joy. The man can read anything, and you'd want to animate it, I swear. What an inspiring voice!  It was a privilege to be assigned to this character.

I remember during production I didn't watch "Jungle Book" once, I tried to do a different type of villain than Shere Khan, as far as design and personality.

I wished I could redo a lot of my scenes, but this is all I could do way back.

At least the personality seems to be coming through.

Scar was evil, but also intelligent. And that's  a dangerous combination.

And he sure enjoyed being bad.

Allan-A-Dale

The rooster has such a small part in "Robin Hood", but to me his few scenes are very memorable. His character design and acting are outstanding.

Milt Kahl again created a totally believable and appealing character.

When you think about the assignment here for a moment,  it would be very difficult to pull this one off:  A rooster, who acts as a narrater, he is dressed in medieval clothes and he plays the mandolin with his wing feathers.

But as with the character of Lady Kluck (another sensational design) Milt has a way with feathers that are articulated as hands.

Frank Thomas also animated Allen at the opening of the film where he is walking on top of the text in the book. The interesting thing is that Frank's walk differs slightly from Milt's, in that the toes hit the ground first. Milt uses the back of the foot to make ground contact. Both walks are great, and only geeks like me would notice the difference.

Here Milt takes a skeptical look at some of his character designs. He is showing them to Roger Miller, who voiced  Allen-a-Dale. Miller also wrote three songs for the movie.

Following are a whole bunch of thumbnail sketches Milt did for the opening scenes.

"Exploring all the possibilities" is what Milt called this phase of planning out a scene.

Wonderful, almost exuberant explorations !

I  have always thought that Milt got a head start from Marc Davis' design of the rooster Chanticleer for a film that was never produced.

More on that project in a future post.

These are actual rough animation poses by Mit Kahl. 

As you can see there is a little anatomical license going on here.

Sometimes the leg's middle joint is used as a human like knee, other times it functions as a realistic bird's heel. Very cool cheating!

The final colors on the character are stunning, I love his pink eyes.