A London Disney outing...
It's Mr Cee's birthday today, so he took the day off and we headed up to London to the Excel Centre where they have the Disney100 exhibition, celebrating 100 years of the Disney company. The company now includes Pixar (acquired in 2006), Marvel (2009), Lucasfilms (2012) and most of 21st Century Foxes assets as well, so there was a lot to see.
Under the cut for a few things that caught my eye.
The exhibition started with the beginnings of the Walt Disney Company and Walt Disney's early career. So we began with some of the earliest experiments with a live-action small child mixed with hand-drawn cartoon animation in the Alice Comedies (he made 56 of these 'shorts) in 1923.
An Early Praxinoscope - a simple way to make drawings look like they are alive before film. Something that inspired Walt Disney.
One of the first animated characters created by Disney in 1926 was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Unfortunately, he did not hold the copyright and control over the character was taken away from him, which he was not happy about.
Instead, he invents a new character in 1928 - Mickey Mouse!
One of his first adventures as Steam Boat Willy - storyboard and script:
From here it was only a short hop and skip to creating a feature-length film starting with Snow White in 1937.
There were also some of the props used in the feature films such as this book (remember the book opening at the beginning of the animated film?).
Snow White concept art (1937)
I love these
Pinocchio concept art (1940)
More Pinocchio concepts
Inspiration would come from all kinds of sources - I adored this clock (on the hour the mother would spank the naughty child by rocking back and forward LOL!)
Alice in Wonderland concept art (1951)
A very 'different' and very 1950s look to this concept art for Alice
Mary Poppins concept art (1964)
Walt with P L Travers who wrote the original book Mary Poppins and who he eventually persuaded to sell him the rights to produce a live-action/animated film (after 19 years of trying)
From the film (ridden by Dick Van Dyke)
Pooh! These are cells from the animated film - hand coloured (1966)
Props from Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Then we moved on to the model makers section which I loved! Disney first thought of setting up a model-making department for Pinocchio, and since then these maquettes have been produced as references for the animators (and also for the live-action films). The detail on these is so much fun!
Pocahontas (1995)
The Incredibles - Elastigirl (2004)
Judge Doon (wonderful detail - clicky for bigger!) from Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Remy the Rat from Ratatouille (2007)
Hercules (1997) - I love his triangular knees..
Russell from Up (2009)
Mr Tinmus from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
Mulan (1998)
Anna and Elsa from Frozen 2 (2019)
Woody!!
There were also costumes - this one from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (worn by Keira Knightley in 2007))
Star Wars! A Porg puppet from Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
BB-8 from the same franchise
Stormtrooper!
Then we moved on to Marvel - here is Black Widow in the film of the same name (worn by Scarlett Johannsen in 2021)
Helmets: Captain Marvel
Star Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy
Cpt America
Cpt America's shield
Disney was also fascinated with space exploration and produced some animated work for TV. Man In Space (1955) and Man and the Moon (1955)
Mars and Beyond (1957)
In the section about music and the films we have Baloo!!
One of my favourite films - Fantasia. Concept storyboard of Mickey as The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1940)
Backgrounds for Fantasia.
Then we saw some examples of animatronics - these look so weird without the 'skin'... I think it's the teeth that freak me out...
Hand!
One of the figures from It's A Small World at the Disney theme parks. I remember humming that tune for hours after we saw that for the first time.
It was a good exhibition - Mr Cee enjoyed it, and we headed back towards Charing Cross for a very nice Greek lunch before heading home. A fun day out.
Under the cut for a few things that caught my eye.
The exhibition started with the beginnings of the Walt Disney Company and Walt Disney's early career. So we began with some of the earliest experiments with a live-action small child mixed with hand-drawn cartoon animation in the Alice Comedies (he made 56 of these 'shorts) in 1923.
An Early Praxinoscope - a simple way to make drawings look like they are alive before film. Something that inspired Walt Disney.
One of the first animated characters created by Disney in 1926 was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Unfortunately, he did not hold the copyright and control over the character was taken away from him, which he was not happy about.
Instead, he invents a new character in 1928 - Mickey Mouse!
One of his first adventures as Steam Boat Willy - storyboard and script:
From here it was only a short hop and skip to creating a feature-length film starting with Snow White in 1937.
There were also some of the props used in the feature films such as this book (remember the book opening at the beginning of the animated film?).
Snow White concept art (1937)
I love these
Pinocchio concept art (1940)
More Pinocchio concepts
Inspiration would come from all kinds of sources - I adored this clock (on the hour the mother would spank the naughty child by rocking back and forward LOL!)
Alice in Wonderland concept art (1951)
A very 'different' and very 1950s look to this concept art for Alice
Mary Poppins concept art (1964)
Walt with P L Travers who wrote the original book Mary Poppins and who he eventually persuaded to sell him the rights to produce a live-action/animated film (after 19 years of trying)
From the film (ridden by Dick Van Dyke)
Pooh! These are cells from the animated film - hand coloured (1966)
Props from Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Then we moved on to the model makers section which I loved! Disney first thought of setting up a model-making department for Pinocchio, and since then these maquettes have been produced as references for the animators (and also for the live-action films). The detail on these is so much fun!
Pocahontas (1995)
The Incredibles - Elastigirl (2004)
Judge Doon (wonderful detail - clicky for bigger!) from Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Remy the Rat from Ratatouille (2007)
Hercules (1997) - I love his triangular knees..
Russell from Up (2009)
Mr Tinmus from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
Mulan (1998)
Anna and Elsa from Frozen 2 (2019)
Woody!!
There were also costumes - this one from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (worn by Keira Knightley in 2007))
Star Wars! A Porg puppet from Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
BB-8 from the same franchise
Stormtrooper!
Then we moved on to Marvel - here is Black Widow in the film of the same name (worn by Scarlett Johannsen in 2021)
Helmets: Captain Marvel
Star Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy
Cpt America
Cpt America's shield
Disney was also fascinated with space exploration and produced some animated work for TV. Man In Space (1955) and Man and the Moon (1955)
Mars and Beyond (1957)
In the section about music and the films we have Baloo!!
One of my favourite films - Fantasia. Concept storyboard of Mickey as The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1940)
Backgrounds for Fantasia.
Then we saw some examples of animatronics - these look so weird without the 'skin'... I think it's the teeth that freak me out...
Hand!
One of the figures from It's A Small World at the Disney theme parks. I remember humming that tune for hours after we saw that for the first time.
It was a good exhibition - Mr Cee enjoyed it, and we headed back towards Charing Cross for a very nice Greek lunch before heading home. A fun day out.