"Give me a BIG Bear growl... scare me !"

Today I had the pleasure of hearing from Rune Bennicke, who's great model sheet of Little Feather (from the never completed "My People's" ) I posted a few weeks ago.   Rune included a couple of copies of clean up model sheets I did for one of the characters he animated in "Brother Bear" ,  Koda's Mom ,  and suggested I post them here.   These sheets are my clean up drawings , attempting to retain the powerful, primal quality in Rune's beautiful rough animation of Koda's Mom.  The idea was to not treat it as simply a "clean up" line in the customary modern sense of  putting down a pretty, closed-off, no gaps line ; rather we tried to take an organic , rougher line approach to keep the big mother bear looking like a true force of nature as in the rough animation.   It was a great assignment and I'm thankful to Rune for trusting me with this character , and also his more comical , anthropomorphic bear character, Tug .

[click the images to  see them a bit larger]

Copyright © Walt Disney Co.

It was a challenge drawing all that fur detail , the overlap, etc., and in most cases each drawing was different , no straight inbetweens ... of course, when it came time to be color-modeled they painted the character really dark for most scenes, so most of that fur detail got lost , but I like to think that the audience "feels" it being there , whether it's immediately obivous or not (  or am I fooling myself and I did a lot of extra work for nothing ... ?  I don't care , it was fun to draw it that way. )

Comments

[Tim]

Hey Dave,
These are great. Obviously, I am floored by the sheer power and energy of the drawings. But I also have a sort of technical question. The prespective on her snout/muzzle area gets really pronounced when she gets close into the camera, like you were using a 30mm lens. It's really accurate drawing. Was that planned during layout? Was it just Rune's uncanny talent?
I often find that I tend to draw with a 50mm lens in my head and forget the power of wide angle.

[David N]

Tim ,

You're very observant ... Rune did that on a number of scenes, so he was either consciously thinking of how the "camera" would introduce that sort of subtle distortion or he intuitively drew it that way ... I never actually sat down and talked to him about it , so I'm not completely sure. My approach was to stick as closely as possible to his rough animation, pushing it ("plussing it") wherever I could in small ways, but this sort of animation subtly is the result of , as you say, his uncanny talent because it wasn't in the layout drawings. Rune may have discussed it with Bob and/or Aaron (i.e. approaching the scenes as being shot with a certain type of lens, to get that effect).

[Christian Slade]

Hi David! Great post and blog. Just found it. This reminds me of some truly excellent days working on Brother Bear with you. Hope you are well.
-Christian Slade

[Tony]

Hi David,

This post was excellent and I'm always excited at seeing the intricacy of clean-up drawings. When I saw Koda's mom, it was something i realised as to her sheer volume and mass. I was wondering whether you could post other clean-up drawings you may have done as I tend to be fascinated looking at their detail and linework. Great post.

Thankyou

[Lippy]

Hey Dave,
This is Lippy (Filmation Lippy).. Your linework is as tight and gorgeous as ever! Thanks for the post.

[paul briggs]

Rune is a freak of nature!
Beautiful clean ups -

[patrick mate]

Great assistant job,super clean up drawing.I have to see this scene again to enjoy the full impact.And it always help to work with a animator who can draw.Take care David

[kevin barber]

Glad you posted these Dave. These drawings , both clean up and roughs were a marvel to see in person. Truly masterfull work by both disciplines. Boy i miss those days when we were privy to works of genius on a daily basis. I got to work on a few Kodas mom and Griz scenes with you and treasure the experience.

[Drachetto]

Thank you very much both to created and animated Tug, my favourite bear ever!