So, Disney

While I wait for my dinner to cook(yes Kristen, I have chicken going on my tiny George Foreman grill*which every college student should have btw---had it a week and LOVE it!*) I'll do a quick overview of my day down at Disney studios.

Overall, I'm glad I went. It was a good eye-opening experience. It wasn't just CalArts' students. Easily 100 people were there--all ranging from various art colleges around the area(Otis, Gnomon, and USC were the few I remember off hand.) They had a lot of guest lectures lined up all focused on the theme, "What inspires you?" So for exactly 30 minutes a Disney member would discuss what they do, occasionally the project they're working on, and what inspires them. The guests included people that ranged the entire pipeline of film making at Disney(both 3D and 2D). From a director to a production manager, animator, FX guys, etc. Anyways, Eric Goldberg's lecture was my favorite. He ran a lot of Disney clips that inspired him("Baby Mine" sequence from Dumbo, Cruella DeVille's entrance in 101 Dalmatians, Sher Khan interrogating Kaa in the Jungle Book, etc.) and then drew Mickey Mouse several times(with BIG. BLACK. permanent marker*and I thought I was bold with my little 08 micron...ha!*....it was really cool though.) to illustrate the point of, "You can't draw a character until you define WHO the character is." How line of action can dictate a character's mood. Another quote of his came back to what inspires him, "The blank piece of paper. How you start with nothing, but then create a character(or a set of characters) who never existed before. Characters that make you laugh or cry. Who are believable. The only limit is your imagination." Despite his lecture being a very brief and rushed 30 minutes---it was great. Definitely got the animation side of me all jazzed and eager to animate(really miss being in the heat of animating my film!). Anyways, it was cool. We weren't allowed in the main animation building(the one with the big hat in front of it pictured in my previous post), but we did get to pass through the old animation building and walk the same halls/underground tunnels that Walt Disney used in the olden days. After finishing up at the now retired animation building, they sent us on our way. So that's pretty much it...it was pretty informative, and it was just cool being on the lot and seeing some of the live-action sets they use for filming, etc. Well, I'll end with a short that Eric Goldberg shared with us. He only showed the section where Mickey is with the king, describing his Giant attack and it ended after Minnie finished kissing him. Anyways, Frank Thomas animated Mickey on that bit--so fun to watch. Limited character design(in terms of his eyes, and flat ears), yet he's so dimensional and expressive!



And as a bonus, Sher Khan and Kaa. Love Sher Khan's acting when Kaa describing his sinus prpblem: