Ollie Johnston’s life and career have been well documented. FLIP presents some anecdotes from the next generation of animators whom he so greatly inspired.

Article Care of Steve Moore at Flip Magazine

Randy Cartwright
I was in-betweening for Ollie on The Rescuers.   One day he showed me a pencil test loop of Penny. She was holding up her lantern, causing sparkles to appear on the wet wall. It was a slow, not particularly impressive scene.

Ollie pointed and said, “See that? What do you think?”

I replied, hesitantly, “Well, that’s….that’s nice.” (more…..)

The Black Cauldron

Ink and Paint, Scene Planning, Animation and Final Check, Camera and Administration

Click here to see the other departments crew photo.

The Black Cauldron used the traditional ink and paint process where the drawings were xeroxed onto cell and hand painted one by one. I remember that they experimented with a “new” xerox technique (I can’t remember the name) that prooved a failure as the line faded off the cell over time so they returned to the traditional xerox process. But production fell behind and everyone painted cells in the end.

Maddie O’Neil Cell Painter
(Photo care of Penny Coulter)

I was a cel painter when this photo was taken and as you can see, I was really happy to be working at the Disney studios. It was an exciting time to be part of the studio before everything was dismantled. The back lot was still in tact, and we would eat our lunches on the big old front porches of the movie sets. They were still using the Disney paints which were wonderful to use and they were hand made right in the paint lab. One of my favorite things to do was walk through the underground tunnel and thru the animation building on my way to the commisary.
Words by Maddie O’Neil

On the Black Cauldron I xeroxed and painted. As soon as xerox finished, ANYONE who could hold a brush was whisked off to painting to help make the deadline.
Words by Robyn Roberts

(note care of Penny Coulter)

From Tina Price:
I was a Breakdown Clean Up artist at the time and I remember when I had finished my last clean up scene I was relocated along with many other clean up artists and re-trained by lead painter Karen Comella to paint cells. The technique of puddling, which side of the cell to paint on, the skill of pushing the paint around and how to just nudge it right up to the line without any paint strokes showing through was new and challenging to us pencil pushers. Karen taught us all. She gave us a sequence of cells that had grey clouds and everything seemed to go wrong. Were not in clean up anymore crossed my mind.

Karen Comella Cell Painter
(Photo care of Penny Coulter)

But I just remember her amazing patience with our clumsy, error ridden skills and how many times she would quietly remove the paint off of our badly painted cells and show us the errors of our ways and ask us to re-do it. It was an impossible task but she trained us well and got the job done against “all” odds.

(memorabilia care of Penny Coulter)

One incident I remember was when Clean Up Artist Alex Topete cleverly painted his entire sequence of cells on the wrong side of the cell and made the local headlines….

As stated in the article above:
“Topete Blunder Delays Cauldron” Alex Topete, above, less than one week after an effusively praiseful review in the Disney Newsreel was forced to remove all his Grey 8 paint from seven cloud cels and repaint them all. Spokesperson Karen Camella refused to comment on the situation except to remark. “Alex’s new paint process is a complete and utter failure.”

“Alex Caught With Pants Down in “Heaven’s Gate” - Like Fiasco!

Karen Comella was recently contacted for a comment on the work of Alex Topete but has “No Comment” at this time. (smile/wink)
Words by Tina Price

Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston
Together Again

After the announcement of Ollie’s passing on April 14th, 2008.
Words By Nancy Beiman:

It’s been a sad week for animators. First we lose animator/producer Andy Knight on April 11 (he died of a stroke at the age of 46). Now news has come that Ollie Johnston (the last of the famous “Nine Old Men”) died on April 14 after a long illness. Ollie was 95 years old.

I first met him when I was in my freshman year at Cal Arts. I’d gotten the idea of animating an albatross–a gooney bird. I was pretty sure that this amusing creature, which crashes on landing, had never been animated before.

“I hate to disillusion you,” Brad Bird said one day as I was happily working away on a walk on the ‘other’ bird, “but they’re animating an albatross in THE RESCUERS, the new Disney feature. Ollie Johnston is animating it, and he is one of the artists coming to our show this spring to see our pencil tests.” Read more

Caricature by Animation Director John Musker

Well, hello again! I scratched my gray old noggin and dug way in to my past at Disney Feature Animation for a few more reminscences, which might trigger memories for you if you were on production around the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. As mentioned in my previous piece, I began my last decade of professional life hired by Peter Schneider in ‘86 to set up training and recruitment services for all of you. I got tremendous inputs from so many of you “vets” then about what the folks in the trenches were thinking might pick up spirits (that got lowered after Animation got moved off lot into a series of warehouse buildings in a Glendale Industrial Park, aka “Flower Street”! Anyway, for what it’s worth let’s look back. Read more