Balto Art

concept art and production art of the Balto film series, along with anything else related. blog made for archival purposes.

[charnel-grounds]

Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski (1849–1915)

“Wolf,” oil on cardboard, 1880s, “A Pack of Wolves,” oil on canvas, 19th century, and “Lone wolf,” oil on canvas, 1910

[conceptartdatabase]

Concept art for the main characters from Cartoon Saloon's Wolfwalkers

(Sources: 1, 2)

[conceptartdatabase]

Concept art for Amblimation's Balto

(Sources: 1, 2, 3)

[artofbalto]

Muk & Luk

[artofbalto]

Nikki, Kaltag, Starr

[artofbalto]

Boris reference sheets

[artofbalto]

Jenna and Rosie reference sheets

[artofbalto]

Steele reference sheets

[artofbalto]

deleted/alternate scene

[artofbalto]

deleted scenes - steele's death (part 2)

"In this version, the dogs want to take the collar from Steele to give to Balto. However, Balto tells the others to let him keep it. Still furious with Balto, Steele charges through the other dogs, knocking them out of his way. Star calls out a warning to Balto, who ducks and avoids Steele's attack. Steele flies over him and gets his collar caught on the lever to a coal shaft. In his struggle to free himself, he accidentally opens it and falls out of his collar and into bin and gets buried to death by the falling coal."

an alternate ending to Starr just taking the collar from Steele and giving it to Balto. Much of these deleted segments seem to go along with an earlier version of the story where the gold dredge and other locations where the town dogs hang out played larger roles.

[artofbalto]

deleted scenes - steele's death (part 1)

"In this version, the dogs want to take the collar from Steele to give to Balto. However, Balto tells the others to let him keep it. Still furious with Balto, Steele charges through the other dogs, knocking them out of his way. Star calls out a warning to Balto, who ducks and avoids Steele's attack. Steele flies over him and gets his collar caught on the lever to a coal shaft. In his struggle to free himself, he accidentally opens it and falls out of his collar and into bin and gets buried to death by the falling coal."

an alternate ending to Starr just taking the collar from Steele and giving it to Balto

[artofbalto]

In an earlier rendition of the movie, the "golden collar" that Steele wears is a status symbol for the lead sled dog. in this deleted scene, Starr stands up to Steele and demands that Balto deserves to wear to collar instead, and he bravely takes it from Steele. 

[artofbalto]

deleted scenes

[artofbalto]

alternate/deleted scene, where Doc helps Jenna and Balto get into the doctor to eavesdrop

[artofbalto]

deleted scene

[artofbalto]

dogs of the town

[woodland-cat]

Despite being a Balto fan for most of my life, I’ve only just now learned there is a deleted scene where Steele (presumably) dies! The scene doesn’t seem to have made it past the storyboard stage so some inferences have to be made while looking at the images. It seems to be set after Balto has already returned to Nome with the medicine when he is confronted by Steele. Steele seems to refuse to give up what he calls the golden collar, while the other dogs think Balto is the one that deserves it. The golden collar is mentioned in the beginning of the movie, btw. It appears to be a prize given to the lead sled dog that wins the annual races. Anyway, it seems that during a struggle Steele somehow gets this golden collar hooked onto a lever that opens a hatch, he chokes for a few frames, then seems to slip into the pit below. The end of the scene shows Balto staring, horrified, at the collar hanging from the lever, with Steele gone from sight. 

The best theory I can come up with what happens during this shot is the hatch leads down to a coal storage area. It seems that the lever being pulled also triggers a coal hopper to release it’s contents, explaining the black dots drawn on some of the last frames. Although the coal hopper (or whatever it is) stays out of sight, in some of the frames you can see Steele staring in terror above him which helps support the theory. Judging by Balto’s and the others horrified faces, I assume that they just witnessed Steele’s death, either by being crushed by a load of coal or choked to death by the collar. Pretty dark for a children’s film, so I understand why they wanted to cut the scene. Especially if they were going to make it anything similar to the snare scene from Watership Down (you know exactly what I’m talking about if you’ve ever seen that movie). I am kinda upset they left the scene out since it would have been a more fitting, albeit a bit brutal, ending for Steele. There’s some poetic justice in that the collar he didn’t want to let go of presumably sends him to his demise.

P.S. If you want to see the whole storyboard for this deleted scene, you can find it all on Youtube.