2007_08_01_archive

Darkness of "Little Mermaid"

Disney's "Little Mermaid" DVD has a great extra, a pencil test of the

scene where Ariel makes the deal with Ursula (this youtube link is for

the scene full color, still pretty good). Dark stuff. It's an evil

scene, the climax of which is downright violent(when she gets her

legs). This is what animation is capable of portraying, emotion on the

level of any live action movie, perhaps beyond. This may be the

greatest Disney Villain scene of all time. The problem is that nobody

ever explores that dark place, build characters around it and tell a

story from there. Why did they have to make the color and lighting all

bright and fuzzy? (thats why it's better to watch the pencil test

version). Imagine if Disney didn't have the whole kid thing attached

with it. I wish Scorsese directed that film.(btw supervising animator

for Ursula was Ruben Aquino)

Posted by Patrick Smith at 8:30 AM 6 comments

Labels: Influence

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Time Lapse of a Painting by Patrick Smith

Time Lapse of a Painting

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Here's a time lapse I did of a recent canvas. I tried really hard to

do this painting in one sitting, but we had to break it up into four

days. (well, there's actually a pencil drawing under everything that

took an additional two days). This painting, as well as over 20 other

works, and an installation of animation, will be exhibited in my first

solo show this September, here in New York, more to come on that. In

the movie with me is my fab assistant Noelle Vaccese, check her stuff

out here. The painting measures 36" wide and 72" high, I'm using

pencil, acrylic and enamel. If you're interested in a proper photo of

this or any other of my paintings let me know.

Posted by Patrick Smith at 9:32 AM 17 comments

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Pinocchio, Puppet, and Disney

I threw together these drawings for comparison (fairly bold i think,

putting my drawings up there with Disney masters, but anyway). And

next to that, somewhat related, is a great photo of Disney animators

John Ripa, myself, and Randy Haycock during a visit last year.

This famous sequence from Pinocchio really helped me figure out the

"burst" of the hand puppet coming out of the kids chest in "Puppet"

click here for movie. Disney films are just the best reference for

animation, if you're trying to figure out something, they've already

done it, and better than you could ever possibly do (and almost 70

years ago to boot).

These drawings are grabbed from a pencil test sequence re-shot a while

back by Andreas Deja, given to me by a buddy of mine at Disney. I have