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Learn to Draw Mickey Mouse & Friends Through the Decades: Celebrating Mickey Mouse's 90th Anniversary: A retrospective collection of vintage artwork featuring Mickey Mouse, Minnie, Donald, Goofy & other classic characters
128Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781633226838 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Foster, Walter Publishing, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 09/18/2018 |
| Series: | Licensed Learn to Draw Series |
| Edition description: | Anniversar |
| Pages: | 128 |
| Sales rank: | 257,915 |
| Product dimensions: | 8.50(w) x 11.60(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE 1920S
THE BEGINNING
"I only hope we never lose sight of one thing," Walt Disney liked to say over the years. "It all started with a mouse."
But did it? As much as we celebrate Mickey — adventurer, mischief-maker, hero, and dynamo — the classic Disney styles of art and storytelling didn't quite begin with him. Instead, they were a natural outgrowth of earlier cartoon history. As early as 1910, for instance, George Herriman's comic character Krazy Kat set a trend for black-furred, white-faced animal heroes. In 1913, John R. Bray's Colonel Heeza Liar starred in the first adventure cartoons. Otto Messmer's Felix the Cat was animation's first great emotive figure. And Disney's own Oswald the Lucky Rabbit pioneered cartoon speed, rhythm, and squash-and-stretch motion.
So what made Mickey stand out in 1928? His edge lay in how perfectly he combined his precursors' innovations: funny, animal-adventure cartoons with rhythm and music, moving at wild speed; no film product had ever shared all of these elements. And Mickey's black-and-white face went a step beyond Krazy's coloration and Felix's emotion; the Mouse's uniquely round features made him a special kind of eye magnet.
In short, when "it all started" with Mickey, it wasn't the start of Disney or the start of exceptionally funny animals. But it was the start of an exceptional spirit of innovation: a deliberate effort by Walt and his animator partner, Ub Iwerks, to do better at absolutely everything.
Was it also the spirit of the Jazz Age? The brassy 1920s were a time when anything seemed possible in pop culture. As a sign of this confidence, perhaps, Mickey was born with a girlfriend — Minnie — from the start. While Felix and Oswald had loved and lost varying leading ladies, high-stepping Mickey had a feisty fellow high-stepper from the outset.
The earliest Mickey of 1928 was called a "demon hero" by a reviewer in Film Daily. Character designer Ub Iwerks compared this Mouse to Douglas Fairbanks: "the superhero of his day, always winning, gallant and swashbuckling." And Iwerks's design bears this out. In direct contrast to the thick-limbed Oswald before him, Mickey is lean and scrawny, an active figure reduced to its most vital form.
The very first Mickey Mouse was gloveless, shoeless, and goggle-eyed. The design shown on pages 16 and 17 — based on a model sheet for the "retro" short Get a Horse! (2013) — evolved several months into the series. Squarish shoes bring weight as a counterpoint to long arms ready for action. The goggle eyes are gone, but an eyebrow line remains, adding a slightly saucy edge to many of his expressions.
And where an expressive Mickey goes, so does rotten-hearted Pete, and Minnie, who was around this time described as "Mickey's fickle, frivolous flapper." Rather than the demure, gentle girl she would later become, Jazz Age Minnie needs no excuse to show off, show Mickey up, or sing at the top of her lungs! The Minnie pose — cleaned up for us via another Get a Horse! model sheet — originates in The Plowboy (1929), where she enjoys a tune break while skipping breathlessly through the farmyard. Meanwhile, Pete — having none of this foolishness — comes straight from Steamboat Willie (1928), the whole gang's first sound cartoon. (The big lummox probably complained about all the noise ...)
PEGLEG PETE: THE CAT'S ME-OUSE!
Mickey and Pete are notorious enemies — and fans spunky, heroic mouse as a brutish, overbearing, criminal cat.
Or is he a cat?
The answer is ... not always! Pete actually debuted years before Mickey, in Disney's silent film Alice Solves the Puzzle bear. It must have seemed natural: Pete's early good-guy foes were a human kid named Alice, a cartoon cat named Julius, and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. A bear was naturally bigger than all three. But a cat? Well, Julius was already a cat.
Bear Pete went though various redesigns — fat, slim, peg-legged — before Mickey took his first bow. And then, in 1928, came the species change; for as we said, no foe is quite as suitable for a mouse as a cat. However, even post-Mickey, Pete's weight, prostheses, and scruffy chin size varied a little from film to film.
THE 1930S
ICONIC FRIENDS
The high life of America's Jazz Age ended in October 1929, when a legendary stock market crash sent the nation sliding into the Great Depression. Over the years of pain and unemployment that followed, cartoons and comics brought warmth to those with little other joy. One might call it Mickey's greatest good deed.
But animation wasn't fully an escape from the Depression; art always reflects its era, and hard times made for different cartoons. This meant unavoidable changes to Disney's leading lights. Minnie Mouse evolved rapidly from flapper to farm girl; Mickey, while always heroic, developed a knee-jerk humility and nervousness that made him funnier in stressful situations.
Soon animators were piling on the stress, trying to make this new Mickey crack. In 1932, artist Charles Philippi created Dippy Dawg, an endearing bumpkin costar who reliably caused chaos. Originally clad in nothing but a hat and vest, Mickey's goofy new pal later adopted a goofier wardrobe, a goofier philosophy of life, and a goofier name — Goofy!
Other new costars caused additional chaos. Mickey's bloodhound, Pluto, whelped in 1930, was the first somewhat realistically designed animal in the cast. Animator Norm Ferguson developed myriad ways in which Pluto's behavior exaggerated real doggy doings, such as sniffing into trouble and fighting a carnival of neighborhood critters.
But the craziest critter of all emerged from Disney's one-shot series, Silly Symphonies. As hatched in The Wise Little Hen (1934), Donald Duck started out as the fairy-tale loafer who refused to help Mrs. Hen plant corn. But Donald swiftly acquired further bad habits — an eager ego and a titanic temper — and became an ideal opposite number for the stressed-out Mickey. "Donald Duck is just as vital and animate in my imagination as ... Tom Sawyer," said writer Dana Burnet in Pictorial Review.
In the late 1930s, Mickey's propensity for stress resulted in an arguably misguided rethinking of his persona. While increasingly cast as the grown-up leader of his gang, Mickey now behaved less as an adult, and more as a shy "young boy," overwhelmed by all and sundry. While such a Mouse could still be funny, his passivity allowed dynamic Donald, Goofy, and Pluto to steal the show. The trend lasted in cartoons for years — even as in the comics, Mickey stayed an adventure star. This is why Mickey's print fans tend to know him as a fighter — while animation aficionados see him as a shrinking violet!
The changes to Mickey's personality also affected his look. The 1930s drawing models on pages 30-35 reflect the influence of animator Fred Moore, whose pear-shaped, more realistically structured Mickey reflected his more domesticated persona. Minnie, too, stopped showing off and started baking cakes!
But maybe domesticity was just par for the course, given the restrictive nature of Depression home life. Before the 1930s were out, even Donald became less an active pest to Mickey and more a homebody himself, bedeviled by other pests. His nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, created by comic strip team Ted Osborne and Al Taliaferro, made the jump to animation ... and jumped all over "Unca Donald," too.
The drawing models on pages 48-51 of these three dirty little ducks come from Donald's Nephews (1938), their film debut. They're almost more wildly behaved than they would ever be again — can you hold them down long enough to draw them?
THE WHOLE DUCK FAMILY
"DONALD DUCK ... IS NOT RELATED TO ANYONE IN PARTICULAR," a 1934 Disney press release stated — and it was one of several puff pieces to make this claim. The earliest, rowdiest Donald was quite often portrayed as having been disowned by his family. All the better to show that his temper was definitely trouble!
Over time, however, a new meme emerged. were to really tick off Donald's temper, and vice versa, wouldn't it be fun to see that?
Nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, created by artist Al Taliaferro, came first. They were inspired by Mickey's "orphans," pesky mouselings with whom Donald had battled previously onscreen. Taliaferro deduced that a fight with unruly brats would be funnier if Donald bore familial responsibility for the kids.
And soon even more ducks were introduced to bear responsibility for Donald! Stern farmer Grandma Duck, another Taliaferro creation, emerged in 1940; in 1947, writer/artist Carl Barks created rich, adventurous Uncle Scrooge McDuck.
Other relatives flocked in for later films and comics. Who doesn't recognize gluttonous Gus Goose, annoyingly lucky Gladstone Gander, egotistical expert Ludwig Von Drake, or faddist Fethry Duck? With the exception of tubby Gus, all of the ducks evolved from Donald's own visual design; so if you can draw Donald, you can learn to draw the rest.
Donald is proud of his family — even if the whole cranky clan still ticks off his temper.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Learn to Draw Mickey Mouse & Friends Through the Decades"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Disney Enterprises, Inc..
Excerpted by permission of The Quarto Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
About This Book, 6,
Introducing Disney's Classic Characters, 8,
THE 1920S: THE BEGINNING, 10,
Mickey Mouse, 16,
Minnie Mouse, 18,
Pete, 20,
Inside Story: Pegleg Pete, 22,
THE 1930S: ICONIC FRIENDS, 24,
Mickey Mouse, 30,
Minnie Mouse, 36,
Donald Duck, 42,
Huey, Dewey & Louie, 48,
Inside Story: The Whole Duck Family, 52,
Pluto, 54,
Goofy, 60,
THE 1940S & BEYOND: THEN & NOW!, 66,
Mickey Mouse, 72,
Inside Story: A Mouse of Many Hats, 84,
Minnie Mouse, 94,
Inside Story: Totally Minnie, 100,
Donald Duck, 108,
Pluto, 112,
Goofy, 116,
Daisy Duck, 120,
Mickey & Minnie Today, 128,
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