Ollie johnston

There is something very magical, subtle, and intuitive about Disney animation. It’s hard to imagine how much the audience can feel for the characters in the films and the immense impact they can h…

Penny & Rufus - Ollie Johnston - The Rescuers - © disney

Weldon Owen Publishing has a sneak peek to some of the art behind Disney's classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

I believe that this cel represents one of the earliest scenes animated featuring Penny from The Rescuers. Ollie Johnston started animation on Penny as she interacts with Rufus, the cat, in the orphanage. In the rough drawings below she is offering the cat a cookie. These were actually done by Milt Kahl, who gave Ollie a helping hand as far as character design and solid drawing goes. Wonderful sketches, even though it's obvious that Penny is related to Mowgli. This rough drawing is from one…

Ollie Johnston animated most of the orphan girl Penny in The Rescuers, but other animators did key acting scenes as well, including Milt Kahl and John Pomeroy. John had joined Disney in 1973 with the intent to do background paintings, but he soon developed a fascination for character animation. He showed extraordinary talent, so Ollie put him under his wing to be part of the Penny unit. These are John's drawings for a scene in which the girl has just met the mice Bernard and Bianca.They had…

Pinocchio´s design by Ollie Johnston.

The Peter Pan scene pictured above was animated by Eric Cleworth. But since Milt Kahl was the supervising animator on the character, he gave Cleworth this one key drawing, which shows Pan being goofy as he interacts with Captain Hook during the Skull Rock sequence. This kind of drawing help was a big part of Milt’s job at Disney. Since he was the authority on quality drawing, other animators frequently asked him for drawings that would help make their scenes look better. Milt resented this…

Another great example of how animators translate a story sketch into the staging for their scene. This beautiful story sketch is of course by Bill Peet, who's drawings always stimulated the animators' imagination. There are whole sequences in 101 Dalmatians and The Sword in the Stone that maintained Peet's story continuity and staging. Virtually no changes from story sketch to final film frame. In this scene Merlin is pouring some tea for Wart who just "dropped in". Ollie loosened up Wart's…