Eat Your Oatmeal!!

Words Care of Dorse A. Lanpher:

Sitting here eating my oatmeal for breakfast and having recently discovered how oatmeal can control ones cholesterol I’m reminded of my last meeting with the revered Joe Grant. Everyone admired Joe for his talent and creative energies but how many of us were close enough to him to have been exposed to his wisdom. I was attending the last showing of some of the many years of his work on the second floor concourse in the Walt Disney Feature Animation building when I had my only chance. (more…)

“I’ve Never Eaten Dog Food”

Words and Images by Dan Jeup
This post care of Steve Moore at Flip Magazine

My first animation assignment at CalArts back in 1981 was to learn how to “in-between”. A large table stacked with xeroxed scenes from the Disney classic features was there for the class to pick from. I chose a scene from Peter and the Wolf featuring the star character sitting down in a huff, kicking the snow. I loved the appeal of his design, the rhythm in his poses, the elasticity of his action and the way his face squashed and stretched.

As I carefully in-betweened the scene, a waft of tobacco smoke blew over my shoulder,……Read More

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…..)

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.” (more…)