Howard Ashaman’s sister, Sarah Ashman Gillespie s recently started a blog devoted to her brother the amazing lyricist, composer, producer, writer and creative genius who past away far to early now almost 21 years ago to the day. With this blog she recalls her childhood and talks with the many people Howard worked with and became friends like some of the big names at the Disney animation studio in California. One of them John Musker co-director/co-writer/co-producer  of The Little Mermaid and Aladdin anwsers 10 questions about working with Howard Ashman. So far he is on the 3th question. The second one, counting down from 10 it’s actually the 8th, he’s been asked.

“This is a tricky one. How different would Aladdin have turned out had Howard lived? Did Howard ever write a screenplay or did Linda Woolverton write the original draft?” 

I just watched something I’ve been wanting to see forever, The Making of Aladdin: A Whole New World hosted by  John Rhys-Davies. True parts of it did make it to the 2004 SE DVD and yes the animators do tell the same as they’ve done in the Making of book and again in interviews. But this making of documtentry took me back 16 years ago when Aladdin was the latested and greatest the Disney animation studios pulled out of their pencils. 

Download The Making of Aladdin: A Whole New World at Vinnie Rattolle’s blog

Over at the Aladdin community Agrabah at LJ links to early storyboard sequences of A Whole New World, other storyboards, early character designs where posted by PrinceAli. Storyboard artist Francis Glebas boarded AWNW below.

Over at the LiveJournal community Agrabah arielstreasures shared unique sketches of Princess Jasmine she scanned from a French making of Disney heroines back she got from her libary. Fans of Meg and Belle should keep an eye out, arielstreasures hopes to scan their sketches too.

The drawings show Jasmine using her body and looks to get what she wants. First the scene on her balcony she makes a move to the unexpecting Aladdin preteding to be impressed by his babble. And later she comes on to Jafar to disctact him.
Making a move to Aladdin
Then she pulled his cape up and over his head
Making her move to Jafar
Amazing!

I finally finished scanning The Art of Aladdin book, a Sotheby’s catalog listing orginal artwork used for the movie, that I bought a while ago. If you take a look at the two wallpapers I made below you probably will admire the talent of Disney’s background painters. The first wallpaper is the standard 1024 by 768 pixel format while the second one is slightly higher.

In his later years Joe Grant contributed to some of the hit 90′s Disney films like Aladdin. This after leaving Disney Studios in 1949

Animators at Work gives us a glimpse back in time as we see many big names in the animation industry doing what they do best: draw. Besides Joe Animators at Work has photos of some major Aladdin players to name a few Mark Henn, Nik Ranieri, Andreas Deja, Eric Goldberg, Will Finn and Kathy Zielenski.

alafastanzio wrote detailed article diving how Princess Jasmine came to life.

For the long time fans of Princess Jasmine and the film she originates in there’s nothing in the article you couldn’t have learned from other sources. For those who are new to the fandom I suggest you pick up a copy of Aladdin: Making of an animated film making of book that was published in 1993. The Pretty In Ink Entertainment Weekly article in the December 1992 issue is gives you a good idea how Jasmine was formed. The second disc of the 2004 special edition DVD reveals some more behind the scenes information on Jasmine.

Jim Hill’s regular animation veteran Floyd Norman gives us an interesting insight in the time it takes to develop an idea into a workable script or decent storyboards. I know that it took many people to contribute story ideas before Aladdin became the story that we saw in the finished film. First pitched by Howard Ashman then later re-wrote by Beauty and the Beast writer Linda Wolverton before the final screenplay took shape by the hands of Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio and the producers/directors Ron & John.

Hans Bacher worked for Disney Feature Animation from the the late 80′s throughout the late 90′s giving him credits on quite a few golden 1990′s films that came out the studio during that time. As production designer he helped shape the movie’s atmosphere with color and shape.
For Aladdin he did some background and key scenes impressions.
The rest of his blog One1more2time3 at WordPress.com is pretty much dedicated to Bambi. Hans has the most breathtaking backgrounds. You’ll find some Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Hercules and Mulan artwork roaming on his blog as well.

Source: AC MB

While I had to settle with my first and probably snow globe, it was 50% off, Prince_Ali_Fan got the real goodies. A cast yearbook of Aladdin, the animation crew, specially the supervisions, seemed to have much fun drawing, re-drawing, re-drawing and re-drawing again over and over again. Specially the studio boss, the famous Jeffery “Shrek” Katzenberg, had the artists make constant changes in their drawings. Even the directors weren’t left alone as your’ll on see the images below. More scans at Aladdin Fan Livejoural Community.

princeali_m_fan got hold of a few DVD’s filled with making of material ranging from workprints to pencil tests even storyboards. Aladdin is meaner in early drafts while Jasmine appears to be more obivous on the things going on around her like Jafar’s plot to seize her father’s throne and she makes it obivous she can’t stand Jafar.

Script changes including

“Aladdin just referred to himself and Abu as the greatest thieves in Agrabah.”
“Jasmine made Aladdin spit out watermelon seeds when he saw her for the first time in the marketplace ”
“Jasmine: That man wouldn’t have really have cut off my hand…would he? D:
Aladdin: Haha, naw. Probably just a couple of fingers
Jasmine: …..DDDDDD:”
Shiera has more highlights on the Agrabah LiveJournal community. Now let’s she hope she can get pictures.

I pulled the post Making of Marketplace off because I couldn’t get the layout the way I wanted. It’s sitting in my drafts until I’m with it. In the mean time I’ve got 12 stills from the clean-up version A Whole New World.

Buried deep within disc 2 of the Special Edition DVD are a few seconds of this famous Aladdin and Jasmine duet in an in-progress state. It’s the only animation segment on the disc. There’s the first time recording season with Brad and Lea but that’s everywhere on the web. I would love to see a progress reel on this scene when Aladdin is being released on Blu-ray.

Clean-up animation means that the drawings are redraw in clean smooth lines from the often rough drawings by the lead animator and his assistants. It’s the one of the last steps in the progress an animated film goes through starting at storyboard, rough animation, clean-up animation, coloring & effects.

The crew behind A Whole New World

We all know that Alan Menken wrote the music and Tim Rice penned the lyrics and that Brad Kane and Lea Salonga sing it you might also know that Kathy Altieri and her background team did all the backgrounds in the movie so A Whole New World was no exception.
In the directors commentary track it’s revealed that Scott Santoro, of the visual effects department, animated the ice clouds. It where Burny Mattson & Francis Glebas who storyboarded this sequence and so where the first to create the amazing visuals that are in the final film. Both story artists have a long history at Disney for example Burny worked in most feature films between The Rescuers (1977) and Mulan (1998) while Mr. Glebas
was attached to many films from Aladdin (1992) to Treasure Planet (2002).
Layout credits go to Rasoul Azadani’s layout team who makes as Eric Goldberg says “make you feel airborne”

Generally just one supervisor over sees the animation when the two leads are interacting allot. At least that’s from what was said on Beauty and the Beast special edition when talking about the ballroom sequence. In A Whole New World it was Jasmine’s supervisor animator Mark Henn who animated both Aladdin and Jasmine.

Now on to the stills