The Walt Disney studio recently paid tribute to the late animation artist Ollie Johnston in a spectacular memorial celebration at Disney’s El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood last month. Host Leonard Maltin introduced and interviewed a parade of Disney executives, artists and intellectuals, chronicling and showcasing Ollie Johnston’s illustrious career in dozens of images and clips from his work for
Bambi,
Pinocchio,
Sleeping Beauty,
The Sword in the Stone,
The Jungle Book, and
Peter Pan.
I walked away with a sense that Ollie Johnston understood the unique challenge of creating animation for motion pictures. “The key to these characters is making them think,” he said, instructing another rising animator to draw what’s on the character’s mind. When shown work on Disney’s forthcoming fairy tale adaptation, Rapunzel, Ollie simply asked: “What is she thinking?”
The event was exhaustive, with Incredibles director Brad Bird and Cars co-writer and co-director (and Disney executive) John Lasseter at times talking more about themselves than about Ollie, though both men also evoked the Walt Disney ethos with key insights on Lady and the Tramp and the legacy of classic Disney movies, respectively. John Musker, co-director of The Little Mermaid, noted that Ollie’s drawing flowed effortlessly. As Musker put it, “the pencil kissed the paper.”
Of course, proper recognition for the fountainhead of Ollie Johnston’s incomparable animation, which has left us with decades of memorable characters and moments, Walt Disney, came from Ollie Johnston himself. Before he died, Ollie recalled that Walt wanted “people to create at the top of [his or her] ability.” In Ollie Johnston, Walt Disney—by all accounts during this remembrance—certainly achieved the goal. As for Ollie, he once described himself as lucky. Thinking it over, he added: “Because I’ve been honest.”
Another visual artist recently brought his work to my attention. I do not know the artist, Bosch Fawstin, but I read his first comic book, Table for One, and I think his black and white drawings show talent. Fawstin’s story, about a writer who waits tables in a corrupt uptown restaurant, tends to meander but the plot picks up and I think it’s a strong debut. His next work is titled The Infidel.
Posted in Movies, Visual Arts, Walt Disney Studios
