Mike Ollerton Blog

 Here’s a beautiful pencil animated scene that was cut from Lilo and Stitch. It’s rather crazy to me that a scene as powerful and important as this, that has been taken this far through production then got cut. The themes are very moving and it’s quite a statement in itself to decide to not include it. Someone had to watch this scene, understand the message and then say “nah let’s not go there”   I’m not sure who the animators were on this, Andreas Deja was main animator for Lilo so that’s not a bad guess, that he might of been involved. I suspect it was multiple animators, as it’s really multiple shots / characters that could be handled by different people. Anyway the animation is superb…

 Milt Kahl is probably one of the most studied and beloved artists in animation. He has often been pointed to as the greatest draftsman of his generation. I am in no exception of also being in complete awe of his drawing, I first became aware of him for the skill he showed in drawing hands, however this skill really extended to every facet of his work.  The Disney style really refined and evolved from Milt’s pencil in the years he was active at the studio. Many artist would turn to him to help refine there character designs and have him help out with particularly difficult drawings. In a studio full of masters of their craft he stood out way above the rest. But what made his work so good and so much better than the rest.  When I first started looking more seriously into the Disney artist and particularly Milt’s work while I could clearly see his skill in areas such as the hands and just generally all his work looked flawless however I didn’t necessarily see why he was so ...

 John Pomeroy just shared this incredible little animation that he did where he was only 15 years old. He talks about not having any hole punches so had to line up the corners of the paper. The skill even at this age is just undeniable. I wonder if he closely referenced footage from Sorcerer's apprentice (which would of been difficult if not impossible to do at this time which I think would of been 1966, not much by way of home media)  or did he just create this from memory.  John Pomeroy is an incredibly skilled animator who started at Disney in 1973 then famously left with Don Bluth and Gary Goldman in 1979 to start making their own films that competed with Disney. He would then later return to Disney in around 1995 to continue his legendary career. The list of characters he has brought to life is almost too big to go through but some personal favs of mine is his work on Princess Daphne, The Great Owl and Milo. John now runs an Online Learning resource which I have...

Again these can all be found on Andrea’s deja blog with much more interesting and informative comments.  https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/10/milt-kahl-crowd-scenes.html Adding this post here so I can come back to reference it again later along with the drawings all in one place. I appreciate this blog is very derivative of  Andreas Deja’s with posts like this but this will probs be a common theme with this blog, most of the stuff I’m adding can be found elsewhere on the internet but I just want to compile the stuff I like somewhere for myself to be able to reference. Such a masterclass of animation, I will be studying these extensively!

Here’s a wonderful short film from Disney that went completely under my radar until learning and reading more about storyboard man Bill Peet. It is a beautiful looking piece which was used to test the xerox process that would then be adopted for there full feature films, an era of Disney I particularly love! You might recognise several elements from this film reused in the jungle book however those sequences came from this picture first, not the other way around. Also the elements with the crocodile are of course reused from Peter Pan. I have always had no issue with Disney animation reusing work like this, which I might talk about more in depth in a later post, but I’ve always felt was done minimally and tastefully. Bill wrote the story as an illustrated childrens book, a career he was trying to transition into and eventually became incredibly prolific in with over 35 titles under his belt. As a side note Bill Peet wrote a fantastic autobiography in an illustrated format that is a won...

Andreas Deja (a legendary and renowned artist and animator in his own right) has an amazing blog where he share Disney animation treasures and history with the world. He offers wonderful insights and thoughts into these amazing artists, mostly the nine old men as well as his own works and a few other artists he is fond of. http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/ Since discovering it back in 2017, it has been one of my favourite places on the internet, a small oasis or island paradise  in this often overwhelming sea of information that is the internet. It has also been the inspiration for me starting this blog. Continuing in his own blogging style let’s have a look at some of his beautiful drawings from Lilo and Stitch. These were shared on his blog here which I will linked where he talks about them himself… https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/08/more-lilo-stuff.html You can really see how he picks up Chris sanders style but is still recognisably his work. Early exploration sketches of l...

 Thinking of picking this blog up again. I know it’s still kinda an old format and no one really uses it but I still love looking at Andreas Deja’s blog and felt inspired to maybe give this a go again. When I first started this blog I had just started working in the games industry and was really wanting to improve as an artist in the areas I was rediscovering my love for, particularly the Disney animated style. A lot of time has passed since then and I’ve improve a fair bit and made a lot of art. Here’s a few of my 3d work from the past few years that I still like… Study of the Chris Sanders character “Nani” from “Lilo and Stich” Study of Lara Croft based on a illustration from Dylan Ekren. Sculpt of Chel from “Road to Eldorado” Model of Chun Li of my own design. Same as with my older posts I still continue to work on and try to improve my 2d drawing skills and I’m working on a few personal projects that I’ll share more of as I progress with them. For now here’s a few 2d pieces to ...

Spent a weekend doing these 2D animations.

So I've decided to start this blog because recently started feeling more confident in the direction i want to take to progress as an artist, so i thought i would be a good idea to try a document it as much as possible. Starting with a few Life drawing pages.