A Very Merry Disney Christmas!

This set of Disney character Christmas cards goes back nearly 20 years ago, I believe. They were commissioned by a Disney licensee by the name of G.G. Genal, as I had made the acquaintance of the founder of the company, the charming Gloria Aleff, at a Disneyana convention several years prior, and she was hoping we could work together on a project one day.

If I'm not mistaken, I illustrated these cards about 1995 or 1996, within a couple years after I'd left my job at Walt Disney World in Florida to return to Canada and continue illustrating for Disney in a freelance capacity. They were being created exclusively for sale through the Disney Stores at that time.

My stylistic approach to illustrating Mickey and the other standard Disney characters was primarily based on how they looked in the early 1940s, specifically in the handful of cartoons produced in 1941 and 1942 that were directed by Riley Thomson. The animators in his unit who worked on these included Ward Kimball, Fred Moore, and Walt Kelly, who would soon thereafter leave Disney to go create his famous comic strip character, Pogo Possum. These guys also had a reputation for getting sloshed on their lunch breaks, leading to highly spirited and very funny animation (with incredibly dynamic poses and expressions), with the resulting shorts being nicknamed the "Drunk Mickey" cartoons! It was also in two of these cartoons, Mickey's Birthday Party and Symphony Hour, that Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar enjoyed a brief revival, but would pretty much disappear again from the shorts after this.

The other goal in illustrating these Christmas cards was to capture the warm, cozy feel of the Disney publicity art that had been created by the brilliant Hank Porter, such as his artwork for  the Disney pages in Good Housekeeping Magazine in the early 1940s. I always felt that Porter's art had every bit as much visual appeal as that of the legendary animator, Fred Moore, yet he is largely unknown to the general public. 

All of these were painted using gouache on illustration board, by the way, as this is still my preferred medium even in this age of digitally created art. Frankly, I wouldn't even know how to achieve the same results using Photoshop and, unless one uses a Cintiq, I wouldn't even have the type of control necessary to do it digitally. Besides, I just happen to prefer the look of real paint on board, aesthetically!

Finally, here is the logo featuring Mickey and Minnie that appeared on the back of each of the three illustrated cards. I've enlarged it considerably from its printed dimensions of approximately 1 1/2" in diameter, so it's a bit blurry as a result.

This will likely be my last post before the 25th, so a Merry Christmas to all of my blog readers!

Have An Ollie Jolly Christmas!

I wrote about legendary Disney animator Ollie Johnston back in April of this year at the time of his passing. Though Ollie lived to a ripe old age, as well as outliving all of his fellow members of "The Nine Old Men", it was still a very sad occasion for me. Even though I had only met with both Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas on less than a dozen occasions, these two wonderful artists had kept in touch with me through the exchange of Christmas cards each year. I actually ended up on Ollie's list several years earlier than Frank's, so my cards from he and his wife Marie date back to the year 1985, just a year after I had started my own Disney career up here in the Canadian office before later relocating down to Florida's Walt Disney World.

These earlier ones in my collection are my favourites. (Click on them to see them MUCH bigger!) Ollie was in his 70's and there's still a real vitality in his drawings, similar to his rough animation in his years at Disney. There's also a running gag in these about poor Marie having to wear the mouse ears. I've only included some of the cards which feature Ollie's sketches by the way, as there are several later on where he instead printed humourous photos of he and Marie, where Marie still had to pose in the mouse ears! There are two (of three) cards here that show Ollie transforming into a deer while he and Frank were putting a great deal of labour into writing their book on "Bambi".

The 1993 card shows Ollie as he and Frank were working on their next book about "The Disney Villains", which is an overview of all of the villains that were developed for the films, not all of which Frank or Ollie had necessarily worked on so it's not as in-depth as their previous books. This also was their final publication, as they had now both hit 80 and were starting to feel their age. Ollie in particular was suffering from arthritic hands and therefore finding drawing a more painful task too, and you can see that his line is a little less sure than it had been, yet there still remains that vitality and feeling of inner life in these little sketches. 1995 marked the debut of Gypsy and Frisky, the two beloved dogs that Ollie and Marie had welcomed into their home. These two characters remained a fixture throughout most of Ollie's later Christmas cards.

The photo of Ollie at the top of this post is from his 2005 card - the year that he received the National Medal of Arts for his long artistic career, presented to him by President Bush at a ceremony at the White House in November. As you can imagine, this collection of Christmas cards from Ollie and Marie I cherish very much, especially now that this wonderful man has left us to be reunited with his beloved Marie. Ollie Johnston was one of my biggest artistic heroes and was extremely generous to me back when I was just a kid with a dream of working for Disney one day. I am grateful for the tremendous legacy he has left us, and my personal memories of having been fortunate enough to have known him as a friend.

Merry Christmas to you all, and thanks for continuing to drop by The Cave!

Happy Birthday Meg!

Yes, today is Meg Ryan's birthday. I've been a big fan of cute little Meg ever since seeing her in "When Harry Met Sally" way back in 1989. That's still my favourite of her films, though I also liked her in "Sleepless in Seattle" and "French Kiss". Lately, Meg has certainly been trying to take on some different types of roles, but I must admit that I prefer her in the light romantic comedies that she's best known for. (Except for "I.Q.", which was a bit of a clunker!)

Anyway, I thought I should celebrate Meg Ryan today by also posting a couple caricatures I've done over the years, including the one below that was featured on my Christmas card way back in 1999. Alas, the Christmas stockings remained unfilled...(sigh)

Merry Christmas and All That Jazz!

Speaking of Sinatra, ol' Frank had a big hit with the song, "My Kind of Town (Chicago Is)", from the movie, "Robin and the 7 Hoods" back in the early 60's, that portrayed rival mobsters competing for gambling territory. Well, that era of Chicago gangsters was also celebrated in the more recent vintage musical, "Chicago", except that this show exposed the female of the species to be equally as murderous, albeit with a very dark humour to the whole proceedings. Anyway, when they made the film version of "Chicago" just a few years ago, I loved it so much that I think I ended up seeing it about 5 times during its theatrical run. And I've watched it several times since, once it was released on DVD.

Because I enjoyed the film so much, I ended up using it as the inspiration for my Christmas card that year, a practice that I'd been keeping up for over 15 years, though I must shamefully confess I have been remiss in doing one both this year and last, sad to say. (Sorry to everybody on the list - hopefully next year I'll get back to it!) Anyway, here is the Christmas card artwork I did that year of "Chicago", featuring caricatures of its stars, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Velma Kelly, and Renée Zellweger as Roxie Hart. Hey, just gazing at Catherine in her black negligee, stockings and garters certainly says "Joy of the Season" to me!