We had a special guest on Lipscomb’s campus last weekend – John Musker! John’s one member of Disney’s dynamic directing duo, along with Ron Clements. Together they’ve made some great films, including one of my personal favorites, The Princess and the Frog (Jazz? Animal characters? That one really cool shot at the beginning of “When We’re Human”? Yes Please!) Since I was familiar with his movies, I was excited to hear more about the man himself (I don’t think I had ever seen a Musker drawing before his visit). In his talk on Friday evening, John spent the most time discussing his early years at CalArts and in the Disney Training Program. He had some particularly wild stories about Tim Burton that are worth asking about if you get the chance. He took a pretty humble view of his own films, and only talked about The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, and Moana with a great level of detail. Most of what I’d heard about Ron and John involves their several-year-long quest to make Treasure Planet, but Musker didn’t linger too long on that point. In fact, though Musker did admit that poor marketing and release dates often hurt the success of his films, he didn’t seem especially bitter or regretful. Every time he talked he spoke with an amazing sense of humble confidence – he had all the authority of a Disney legend, but was also warm and encouraging.
His talk was punctuated with caricatures of his fellow Disney crew members, filling me with a distinct sense that I should be drawing more pictures of my own friends (except for Sam Abner, who I somehow end up drawing at an alarming rate – sorry Sam). Fortunately, John led a workshop on caricature the next day. One note of clarification – when John says caricature, he doesn’t mean merely the style being drawn at theme parks or boardwalks, but capturing a likeness through exaggeration and stylization. There’s so many ways to caricature, and much of character design involves the skill. Most of John’s principles of caricature (pose/gesture, expression, contrast, and simplification) are also principles of regular character design.
After the talk, John gave us an in-class assignment wherein we had to draw three caricatures based on three words he gave us. The words were all slightly different levels of a similar idea (such as warm, hot, & scalding or take, grab, & snatch). The challenge was to communicate each word distinctly. We only had 30 minutes to draw all of them, so the focus was much more on the statement of the image than the actual quality of drawing (thank goodness). I was pretty nervous anyways at the thought of Musker seeing my work, which did not help the line quality at all. Feel free to guess what my words were in the comments below – the caricatures are here:
I didn’t pin my drawings on the wall in the proper order (whoops) but after a brief period of confusion, Musker did say that he liked my third drawing and pointed out that my second drawing was actually a decent (unintended) caricature of John Pomeroy. The challenge was pretty fun, and something that I would like to do again in my free time! (Once I get some free time, that is.)
I didn’t really give myself a chance to talk to Musker aside from having him sign my animation board. I just don’t quite know what to say whenever I talk to someone like that. I’m a total fan, but I don’t want to be “just another fan”, so I end up kinda doing nothing. It’s something I need to work on and figure out before the next Disney legend comes to campus, and definitely before CTN. There’s got to be some way to engage genuinely that lasts longer than “Thanks for coming today! Sign this?” Got any ideas for me, Internet? If so, send them my way!
Until next time,
dh
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