Ward KimballJanuary 12, 2007 5:54 am
With that last post about TOOT WHISTLE PLUNK AND BOOM, it seems appropriate to mention that the film’s director, Ward Kimball, recently arrived onto MySpace, or at least a tribute page to him did:
Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom (1953)
Not only does the finished version of Ward Kimball’s TOOT WHISTLE PLUNK AND BOOM contain tons of gorgeous design, but the development artwork for that film is also a tour de force of exemplary design work. Below are some of the film’s incredibly drawn storyboards by Tom Oreb along with a batch of concept paintings by an unidentified artist. It’s frustating that nobody’s ever been able to figure out who did these concept paintings. The film’s assistant art director Vic Haboush says they aren’t his; they’re definitely not by TOOT’s bg painter Eyvind Earle; and they don’t look much like Tom Oreb’s painting style either (though there’s a chance a few of them might be by him). Perhaps it was Kimball himself? Or the film’s art director Ken O’Connor, though that’s unlikely since he dealt mostly with staging and layout and not styling. In any case, I should note that TOOT WHISTLE is available on the Disney Rarities dvd collection along with dozens of other rare Disney shorts.
Storyboards by Tom Oreb
Concepts paintings by unidentified artist
ADVENTURES IN MUSIC: MELODY (1953) was Ward Kimball’s directorial debut at Disney. I think it’s a fairly uneven film, both visually and conceptually although there’s still a lot to appreciate in it and I always enjoy watching it. Below are some frames that I scanned in from a 35mm print of the film. They were originally intended for the book, but alas, a lack of space meant they had to be cut out. It actually worked out fine because now everybody can enjoy the stills in hi-res here on the blog. Click on each image to get a supersized version of each image.
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.
Canadian animator Nick Sung has written a nice appreciation of Ward Kimball’s TOOT WHISTLE PLUNK AND BOOM (1953). He’s using TOOT as inspiration for a personal short film that he’s currently working on, and includes on his blog a few pages of compositional studies that he did from the film. I’ll be writing more about TOOT in the future, but in the meantime, be sure to check out the great set of frame grabs from the film at Ward Jenkins’s Ward-O-Matic.
