Different Effect

Say what you will about the Disneyfication of classic children's stories, Disney's production concept artists were tops in their abilities to evoke mood and atmosphere, as well as giving credibility to fantasy.

Some years ago I did a minor amount of design and artwork for the Disney people involving Bambi, and received an invitation to a reception, and that invitation had this watercolor image on the front:

Later, I clipped the image below from a daily newspaper. You can see that it's the same image, with less cropping, and yet has not only a different color palette, but a subtler rendering to it. Examples of how the same basic artwork can be used to different effect.

Inspiration

Let's do one more go-round with Disney Pinocchio pre-production art, with all of these being Gustaf Tenggren's fantastic creations. Tenggren had been hired solely to create watercolor art for the purpose of inspiring the animators and background artists.

Geez.

As great as the final film is, imagine if Tenggren's art was strictly adhered to for characterization, composition, color, mood and atmosphere. Perhaps in some parallel universe . . .

And mayhaps we see some primary inspiration for Peter DeSeve (?).

Dark and Moody

Continuing with the superlative production art from Disney's Pinocchio, we look at layouts for a film that was dark and moody—suPERB effects for visual storytelling.

The first one below is a back alley panorama by the great Gustaf Tenggren, created to put the animators in the right mood. Holy cow, I love this piece — evoking the setting of dreams and nightmares that I've had over the years.

Below is a resulting layout of action through the alley.

Below is the foggy street where Geppetto looks for his boy.

Below is one of the attractions on Pleasure Island, a nightmarish place that I think I would enjoy, except that I don' wanna be turned inna no jack-ass donkey!!!

Below, did I say this film was dark? I meant it was DARK! Yay!

Fabulous Coats

Disney's Pinocchio was magnificent in its achievement of art, both in pre-production and final production. Of tremendous benefit to the film was the atmospheric background art of Claude Coats, a long-time Disney studio man. Much of the time he specialized in interiors and still-lifes. Here is some of his fabulous work for Pinocchio:

Yumpin' Yiminy

Speaking of books — yumpin' Yiminy Crickets, I'd love to own an edition of Pinocchio that looked like this:

Meanwhile, the Disney version of the story had some of the best production and pre-production art ever created for a film.