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

For a couple of years Animated News was the source for Disney news and a good source for Aladdin related new items often crew related. Last year the updates became infrequent and I stopped coming there. It since then got an overhaul and focused on editorial content in the form of reviews and interviews. Their lasted talk is with Disney veteran Mark Henn, the “girl guy” who animated many Disney ladies in the last 20 years including Jasmine and Tiana for those who don’t know him. In part 2 he talks about animating Belle, Jas, Young Simba down in the satellite studio in Florida while most of the animators reside in California and how commutation went between the two studios.
He doesn’t reveal anything new on how Jasmine’s design came together, he got his inspiration from his sister and Linda Larkin but I really enjoyed learning what scenes he did on Beauty and the Beast.

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!

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.

It’s been a while since I wrote about The Princess and the Frog because there wasn’t much relevant to say that changed yesterday when new clips appeared on YouTube. Taken from an interview with the big chief John Lasseter.

The intro showed a little snippet of A Whole New World being also directed by John Musker and Ron Clements. From Princess and the Frog it showed little Tiana, the villain Facilier (notice how his shadows pushes the chair), the alligator and firefly sidekicks and Tiana with Prince Naveen in frog form. The footage shown reminds me of the slapstick and cartoony animation of Aladdin and Hercules.

In the Ultimate Disney forum, where the footage was posted, there’s a discussion that “the animation of Tiana is too squash and stretch-y” And not a Disney Princess worthy since neither of the older girls showed such comic. Others compare her with Jasmine’s cartoony animation even providing a collage of both girls.
Personally I always found Jasmine’s expressions not cartoony at all. Perhaps not realistic like Belle to name another Mark Henn girl but in the line that Aladdin had Genie, Jafar and Iago for the cartoony animation I felt it was good to keep the hero and heroine realistic.
Well just read what sotiris2006 wrote that’s what I’m trying to say here. -:)
The Princess and Frog is in a theater near you December 2009 and near me February 2010.

On May 21st in Burbank ASIFA-Hollywood organizes a reunion of The Little Mermaid crew. Similar to what the organization did for the Aladdin. On November 15th Mermaid marks its 20th anniversary.

Character animator Tom Sito will moderate a panel consisting of Mark Henn (Ariel), Andreas Deja (King Triton), Ruben Aquino (Ursula), Tina Price (CAPS system and early CGI) and Gary Trousedale (storyboards) – with many more guests and panelists to be announced.

Via Cartoon Brew and UD forum

Mark Henn and some of the other Disney animators of the Golden 90′s worked on this hilarious toon starring Roger Rabbit and Baby Herman from the 1998 live-action/animation film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? To die for! I swear.

Jason Anders talks with people in the animation industy to publish them on Full Circle Productions. This week he published his conversation with Rajah lead animator Aaron Blaise on his career.
On bringing the royal feline to live Aaron said:

During the design process, I did hundreds of tiger designs, trying to achieve the fluid Hershfeld look that the film’s art direction was trying to achieve. I was struggling until one day I saw the hood ornament on a Jaguar car. The little sculpture had a lot of the qualities I was trying to achieve in my designs. I drew a lot of inspiration from that little piece of metal on the hood of a car! My designs were soon approved!

Tip by Heather

Spread over 4 pages the Disney themepark site Laughingplace.com introduces or should I say re-introduces it’s readers to the lead animators of the upcoming 2D The Princess and the Frog. People who actually don’t need introduction because their fame, sometimes gathered over three decades drawing legendary Disney characters, exceeds them. Who doesn’t remembers names like Eric Goldberg, Ruben Aquino, or Nik Ranieri? Laughingplace as their career highlights.

The Disney Channel version of The Making of Aladdin: A Whole New World just appeared on YouTube. The picture quality is to be desired but still watchable. Hosted by John Rhys-Davies who would provide the voice of Cassim in the third and final film he narrates the documentary. We hear and see the directors/writers/producers, the supervising animators, lyricist Tim Rice and composer Alan Menken talk about the creation of the film.
Overall it doesn’t reveal anything that didn’t make it to the DVD but watching it is amazing. Watch even younger Ron, John, Glen and rest in the Making of The Little Mermaid hosted by Alyssa Milano.

Browsing the LiveJournal community d_villains lead me to a Wiggins community, Governor Ratcliffe’s attended in Pocahontas, there I found hilarious fan art that I’ll save for another day.
But that video clip did make me ask myself who animated Wiggins and Ratcliffe. At first I thought it was Andreas who drew Ratcliffe, obvious because he did almost all the 90′s villains but IMDB told me it was Duncan Marjoribanks, supervisor animator of Abu, who did the Governor. Wiggins is done by Chris Buck who was not involved in Aladdin but is Disney veteran.

His last project was Home on the Range according to IMDB but another source mentioned him involving Meet the Robinsons. It seems, at least for now, this was Duncan last project at Disney. He has not credited for The Princess and the Frog but that might chance considering the Animation Department section has only 14 names and that is not much for a feature film. Duncan Marjoribanks could very well in involved in Rapunzel, just 5 names on Animation.
A Google blog search brought the BlogSpot hosted Blue Sky Disney containing sketches by Disney’s finest, Glen Keane, Andreas Deja, Mark Henn, Eric Goldberg, David Pruiksma and Duncan Marjoribanks.

I realize that some look like standard artwork you’ve seen as clipart of coloring pages but I recall seeing Jasmine lying down and the Sultan sketch on the DVD art gallery or one of the making of features. Notice that close up sketch of Jasmine is the same Mark Henn’s sister has in her living room.

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

The online copy Walt Disney Company’s annual investors report has the first image of John Musker and Ron Clements 2009 Disney Feature The Princess and the Frog.
Over that the Ultimate Disney forum people noticed the image resembles scenes varying from Peter Pan, the roof and door to Aladdin, Tiana’s pose. Indeed we’ve seen Jasmine in a similar pose looking at the sky thinking or remembering back in 1992.