Homer Jonas was a layout artist who started at Disney in the late-1950s. He did layout on PAUL BUNYAN, SLEEPING BEAUTY and 101 DALMATIANS among other films. The photo above, by fellow Disney layout artist Ray Aragon, is from 1958 and will be included in the upcoming ANIMATION BLAST #9.
Yesterday at Cartoon Brew, we received an email from animator Brad Constantine, who works with Homer’s son Jeff. Below he shares this great piece of Fifties design by Homer Jonas along with the story about it.
(click on image for larger version)
From Brad Constantine:
I am an avid animation art fan, especially the great experimenters of animation design of the 50s and early 60s (Blair, Kimball, Oreb, UPA, etc.)… I happen to work with the son of one of the great 50s layout men, Homer Jonas. I saw him pop up on Cartoon Brew, and so I got an itch to share some of his talent with you. He was a great artist who rarely gets a mention these days but went on after Disney to work with some of the greats including Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett, and later with Alex Toth at Hanna Barbera to name a few.
His son, Jeff Jonas, is quite an accomplished artist himself and does well down here in San Diego working for Sony. Well every once in a while Jeff will come in with some fantastic art treasure from the boxes in the garage and I try to scan them to study before they go back into hiding. Attached is one of my favorites. It’s a layout series for the 1959 Disney short, [Ward Kimball’s] EYES IN OUTER SPACE, which is included on the ”Tomorrowland Treasures” dvd set now out.
You can see Homer working through the different styles within a style trying to find the perfect approach for the look and feel. I find it a tour de force of late 50s design and a great lesson to all designers out there to try things as many different ways as possible to find the best solution.
That is some impressive work. I’d have stopped if I managed to pull off one of those panels but Homer was old-school. The funky style is so bold and ballsy, I love the way it couldn’t be done with a cowardly hand.
I also got to work with both Jeff Jonas and Brad Constantine…Hooray and hello!
Comment by Doug TenNapel — July 13, 2006 @ 10:32 pm
I feel as if I’m staring in the face of nostalgia.
Comment by SubjectRuin — July 16, 2006 @ 1:26 am
No kidding! I’m Glad John K. never saw that or I would have had to do it for every background.
Comment by William Wray — July 23, 2006 @ 1:43 am
I absolutely LOVE the style of the second frame.
Comment by animoller — August 11, 2006 @ 11:40 pm
Animoller - Thanks for commenting. In the second one, Jonas is playing around with the idea of divorcing the colors from the lines. This was a pretty common technique among animation designers in the 1950s. One of the most obvious examples of this technique is in 101 DALMATIANS. They were starting to design DALMATIANS around the time Jonas did these color keys, and Jonas was also a layout artist on DALMATIANS, so perhaps he had that in mind when he did that second frame.
Comment by Amid — August 13, 2006 @ 1:55 am
Thanks for posting this stuff. It is of course nice to see the old artists get some recognition, especially now when that old stuff is so trendy again.
My dad would get a hoot out of seeing the design style of those days retro-ing forward. Thanks also to Brad, Doug, and everyone for their nice comments.
Comment by Jeff Jonas — August 14, 2006 @ 10:46 pm
Nice post, Brad! Thanks for sharing. Jeff’s dad was a pretty talented guy, just like his son!
Comment by Rick — September 19, 2006 @ 5:07 pm