Friday, May 31, 2013

Hockey Homicide



There have been quite a few great Disney animators who brought the character of Goofy to life.
Art Babbitt developed him during the mid 1930ies as a type who thought long and hard about something, and then did it wrong (Art's own words).
Other animators followed, John Sibley did outstanding work on shorts like Olympic Champ, and Woolie Reitherman's performances in Saludos Amigos are incredible.
In 1945 Milt Kahl worked on a couple of Goofy shorts, the hilarious Tiger Trouble and the wacky Hockey Homicide. The latter one presented a world in which hockey players as well as audiences were drawn as Goofy type designs. Milt had particularly fun animating the referee, who occasionally lost his balance on the ice. Those scenes are as fluid and elegant in their own way as ballet dancing.
Here are a few of Milt's rough drawings of that character. Beautiful expressive hands, and extreme (but appealing) squash and stretch.







You can watch the short here:

14 comments:

  1. Muito legal!
    Os rascunhos se mexem sozinhos!

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  2. Didn't you animate some of the recent short "How to Hook up your Home Theater"? Did you enjoy working with Goofy?

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    1. I loved working on Goofy in "Home Theater".
      I'll do a post on the short some time.

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  3. They re-used a Monstro shot in it? Funny.

    I wonder why Goofy, or rather - the Goofs, in this one don't have floppy ears. Was it to save on having to animate all the overlap during wild action scenes or a stylistic choice?

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    1. I really don't know. They do look closer to humans this way, maybe that was the intention.

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  4. Andreas, I'm from Brazil and a big fan of yours. Is there any chance I could get some draw from you? Greetings from here.

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  5. Wonderful!!! One question, what does the BD on the drawings mean? Break-downs.

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    1. I believe that's what it means, even though #8 sure looks like a key drawing..

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    2. Does blue and red pencil sketch mean anything, BD´s on blue and Keys on red?

      They´re just so beautiful line on those. Once saw Tiger Trouble and was thinking this is so smooth animated. And then noticed that, there was Milt Kahl and Eric Larson who was animating it. Of course Jack Boyd and John Sibley did great animation too. :)

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  6. I am always amazed at how Disney artists are always able to suggest form so easily, no matter how simple the characters' designs may seem at first glance, there's always such depth to them that you rarely find in in other animated works. Mr. Deja, may I ask how did you come about feeling form and the exercises it took for you to really be able to imagine and draw a character with such convincing volume and dimensionality to them? I am an aspiring artist myself, and while I try to construct images with spheres, cubic shapes and so on, I still sense that there is a much deeper aspect to it that I've yet to understand. Is it an unique thought-process or something much more harder to describe?

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    1. I'd say the answer is life drawing...a lot!!
      Studying the forms of the human figure will give you the tools to apply real volume to cartoon characters.
      Sounds simplistic, but I can't think of any other advice.
      And by the way...life drawing is fun!

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    2. Thank you for the advice. I definitely do need to draw from life more. Although, if I'm not mistaken, to get good at drawing from imagination, I need to think more about construction and anaylse what I'm seeing rather than just copying it, right?

      Most of the time when I draw what I see, I'm so used to utilizing the other approach, where the artist focuses more on just copying shadow shapes, not really thinking in 3D.

      It'll be tough to think more structurally, but I'll try to get the hang of it!!

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  7. Hey Andreas, very nice to see this Goofy MK roughs. Looking forward to see
    "How to Hook up your Home Theater" post, do you know when they will release it?
    Keep up the work on the blog, very refreshing and inspiring for us 2D lovers.

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    1. Yes, I can do a post on that Goofy short. We had a blast animating it. I don't know when the film will be released on disc.

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