CASE STUDIES AND INSPIRATIONS.
Disney’s notorious and classic movie, Sleeping Beauty, was released in theaters on January 29th, 1959. The movie centers around a young princess, Aurora, who was cursed at a young age to prick her finger on a sewing wheel and to fall into a deep sleep on the day of her sixteenth birthday. At the end of the story, the Prince comes to her aid, by getting rid of this curse with a kiss. While it has been re-released four times, it is also the second highest grossing movie of 1969.
The writing for Sleeping Beauty began in 1951, after Cinderella was released and the success it followed. Some of the elements that are found in Sleeping Beauty were taken from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, although that doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Alongside Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty was the third fairy tale movie released by Disney, and the last to be released for some time, before returning to them with The Little Mermaid in 1989.
During the production of the movie, there was a series of replacements of directors. While the movie was originally led by director Wilfred Jackson, he had a heart attack in 1953, leaving the work to the directing animator, Larson. Disney would eventually replace Larson with Clyde Geronimi.
With this movie, Disney wanted the “film’s design aesthetic to be completely unique to anything the studio had previously crafted.” The idea for this movie was to go with a “moving tapestry,” in a sense, as if it was a moving illustration. This was a result of art director John Hench’s seeing the 16th century unicorn tapestries artwork at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Disney also wanted the work to be as detailed as possible with, both, the character designs and the backgrounds, this work falling on background painter, Eyvind Earle, who worked in the studio for only three years.
And this, specifically, is exactly why I wanted to include Sleeping Beauty as one of my case studies for my animation. While the overall aesthetic, color palettes and style behind Disney’s Sleeping Beauty resembles the one I envisioned for Mavis and her world, Eyvind Earle’s masterpieces are one of the things that stood out to me the most. While he had previously worked on projects such as Peter Pan (1953), For Whom the Bulls Toil (1953) and Lady and the Tramp (1955), he “truly left his mark” with Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. He was greatly notorious for his “lush landscapes” and strong verticals. After Disney saw his work, he decided that, instead of having the background artists follow on to the animators’ footsteps, he’d have the opposite, where Earle would lead with his paintings, and the animators would follow in with his style. As a matter of fact, “the animators found it difficult, even impossible, to translate Earle’s detail-laden style into viable character designs.”
Sadly, the movie was a “financial flop.” Not necessarily because of its art direction, but because, as author Bob Thomas noted, “the emphasis was on visual beauty and spectacular effects.” Furthermore, the movie was “released in Super Technirama 70mm, which means there was a higher level of detail and stylisation,” being a huge step forward in the animation field at the time. It also featured a significant transformation in terms of animating, where the traditional “round imagery” turned to a flatter and more graphic sophistication.
Similarly, in terms of style, I also wanted to include Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) and Pinocchio (1940).
Cain, A. (2017) This Artist Made Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” Enchanting - and Nearly Impossible to Animate. Available at: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-artist-made-disneys-sleeping-beauty-enchanting-impossible-animate.
Jamieson, D. (2020) The House of Mouse Project - “Sleeping Beauty”. Available at https://thejamreport.com/2020/04/22/the-house-of-mouse-sleeping-beauty/
Deja, A. (2013) Deja View: The Art of Sleeping Beauty. Available at http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-art-of-sleeping-beauty.html.
Rowney, J. (2019) Sleeping Beauty Facts on 60th Anniversary - Movie that nearly Bankrupted Disney. Available at https://www.mirror.co.uk/film/sleeping-beauty-facts-60th-anniversary-13838175
Oliver, M. (2000) Eyvind Earle; Artist and Disney Painter. Available at https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jul-25-me-58783-story.html
The movie Thumbelina was originally released on March 30th, 1994, by Warner Bros. It was directed and produced by director Don Bluth. While the movie was produced in the 1990s, the story itself originates from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, Thumbelina.
The story features a tiny girl born out of a tulip, after a woman struggled to have a child of her own. Thumbelina herself, like the name suggests, is the size of a thumb. Throughout the story, Thumbelina learns to love herself by undergoing several adventures. The production featured renowned voice actors, including Carol Channing, John Hurt, and even Jodi Benson, who’d notably voiced Disney’s Ariel in The Little Mermaid, in 1989. Some of the animators that worked on this movie were Paul J. Kelly, Jacques Muller and Mark Pudleiner.
When producing the movie, Merlin and Media Assetshave offered to spend 6 million dollars in the production of Thumbelina, as well as A Troll in Central Park. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as successful as it was planned to be, gaining almost half of what was put into the production of the movie. While I personally remember liked the movie as a child because of its colorful aesthetics and in the way that the animals’ features were overly exaggerated, it was also very colorful, while having a, somewhat, darker theme, when it came to the presentation of a fairy-tale world. In a sense, it stayed true to the darker hints that Hans Christian Andersen left behind his stories. Also, while the colors are plenty and to be seen everywhere throughout the movie, they’re also quite muted, and not as bright as they’d usually be for an animation that is aimed at children or at a younger audience.
Nonetheless, aside from the style and the use of colors, I also included this movie as one of my case studies because of the way that the creatures are shaped and presented. In a way, they serve as some sense of inspiration when I work with Mavis’ own universe, in terms of anthropomorphic and normal animals.
The Big Cartoon Database. Thumbelina. Available at https://www.bcdb.com/bcdb/cartoon.cgi?film=23391
AllMovie. Thumbelina (1994). Available at https://www.allmovie.com/movie/v133496
Hersholt, J. Thumbelina. Available at https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/Thumbelina_e.html
Dawtrey, A. Merlin’s Magic May Animate DBE. Available at https://variety.com/1992/biz/news/merlin-s-magic-may-animate-dbe-100532/
The movie was released in 2001, by the notorious Studio Ghibli. It was produced by the Studio Ghibli co-CEO Hayao Miyazaki. After releasing the greatly acclaimed Princess Mononoke, he immediately began working on this new project, after he found inspiration during an outing with some of his friends and their daughters. At that time, he noticed how girls were reading manga, and how the latter were often times focused on romance, and subjects of the sort. This made him think, ultimately asking himself:
“Is there possibly more that we can offer the young girls of this country?”
And so, the idea for Spirited Away, originally called The Spiriting Away of Sen and Chihiro, was born. The story follows the adventures of a young ten-year old girl through a “strange world of spirits,” where she needs to “find the will to live and save her parents,” who, in the meantime, had been turned into pigs. The movie began with a budget of 15 million dollars, while Disney agreed to finance 10% of its production costs. After its release, Spirited Away had a massive success, way more than the Studio could have ever imagined. In fact, “by the spring of 2002, the film would go on to shatter the previous record helf by ‘Titanic’ at the Japanese box-office.” Furthermore, “Spirited Away's $235 million not only sunk Titanic, but also set the film as the first non-American film to make $200 million outside of the US,” surpassing Princess Mononoke’s $155 million’s box office, back in 1997.
This movie is, to this day, the highest grossing movie in Japanese history. Additionally, frequent director of notorious Pixar movies, John Lasseter, was assigned with the task of Disney’s creative consultant in the US release of Spirited Away. This was also a key factor in the commercial success of the movie outside of Japan, as John Lasseter, aside from being a highly renowned animator, was also a huge fan of Miyazaki.
* Miyazaki is also very known for his use of watercolors. Furthermore, he often times includes anti-war, pro-environmentalism and feminist themes into his works.
In terms of the animation itself, Miyazaki wanted to explore the use of computer technology. However, while he and his team wanted to work with this media in particular, he also didn’t want it to use too much. Instead, he wanted to “keep the technology at a level to enhance the story, [and] not steal the whole show.”
“Studio Ghibli has forever shifted Japanese popular culture through their unique and constant quality storytelling coupled with beautiful visuals.”
Similarly, in terms of style and color use that I like to associate with the world and animation that I have in mind for Mavis and her own universe, I thought of Studio Ghibli’s Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989).
The Making of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away - Part 1. Available at http://jimhillmedia.com/alumni1/b/michael_howe/archive/2003/04/15/1391.aspx
Herskovitz, J. “Mononoke” Creator Miyazaki Toons up Pic. Available at https://variety.com/1999/film/news/mononoke-creator-miyazaki-toons-up-pic-1117759995/
Gurney, J. (2017) Watercolor Tips from Hayao Miyazaki. Available at http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2017/03/watercolor-tips-from-hayao-miyazaki.html
Ewens, H. (2016) Why ‘Spirited Away’ is the Best Animated Film of All Time. Available at https://www.vice.com/en/article/8geg4b/spirited-away-ghibli-miyazaki-15th-15-year-anniversary-best-animation-hannah-ewens
Mcdonald, T. (2020) Studio Ghibli and its Affect on Japanese Culture. Available at https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=b2e39738b7d140babc407db5a40415e8
BBC. (2016) Hayao Miyazaki: Japan's Godfather of Animation? Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-38074088
Honorable Mentions: Disney’s Robin Hood (1973), Tangled (2010).
