June 25 - Milt Kahl

Image courtesy d23.com

On this day, in 1934, Milton Erwin Kahl began working at the Walt Disney Studio. Born on March 22, 1909 in San Francisco, California, Milt loved drawing so much he dropped out of high school to follow his dreams of becoming a cartoonist. He started by working in newspapers layout artist for first the Oakland Post-Enquirer and then the San Francisco Bulletin. After getting his feet wet, he went out on his own, starting a commercial art business, just in time for the Great Depression to begin its strangle hold on the nation's economy. Milt struggled to keep his shop open until one day, in 1933, when he went to the movies for a mental health break and saw a Silly Symphony, The Three Little Pigs. He thought it was the most fantastic thing he'd ever seen and was immediately hooked on animation. By June 1934, his own enterprise was at an end and he applied at the Walt Disney Studio for a job. His talents were so impressive, he skipped the inbetweener position and began as an assistant animator.

Image copyright Disney

Milt began his Disney career in the Shorts Department, making contributions to classics like The Lonesome Ghosts, Mickey's Circus and the Academy Award winning Silly Symphony The Ugly Duckling. It didn't take long for him to move up to animator. I mean pretty much everyone got promotions once production started on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but Milt really deserved his. For the studio's first feature, he was in charge of animating the Woodland Animals and the Prince. By the second feature, Pinocchio, all of Milt's peers were awe of his talents. Ollie Johnston remembers Fred Moore coming into his office one day just raving about Milt's drawings. Ollie went to look for himself and was blown away. Walt was so impressed he made Milt Pinocchio's supervising animator.

Not only did Milt become one of Walt's Nine Old Men (as did Ollie), he's generally considered the leader of the group. He was comfortable and talented enough to do technically hard things like realistic looking fawns or stag antlers, he could also do artistically hard things like humans. Throughout the decades, Milt was responsible for finalizing the look of hundreds of characters in dozens of films. The list of characters he personally animated is almost mind blowing:

Image copyright Disney

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - Forest Animals and Prince

Pinocchio - Pinocchio and some of Jiminy Cricket

Bambi - Bambi, Thumper, several deer

Saludos Amigos - riding a llama sequence

Make Mine Music - The Martins and the Coys

Song of the South - Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, Br'er Bear (especially the Tar Baby sequence)

Fun and Fancy Free - Lulubelle, Lumpjaw and various bears

Image copyright Disney

Melody Time - Johnny Appleseed, Guardian Angel, Slue Foot Sue, Pecos Bill

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad - Angus MacBadger, Rat, Mole, an angry mob, Brom Bones

Cinderella - Fairy Godmother, Prince Charming, The King, The Grand Duke

Alice in Wonderland - Alice, the White Rabbit, the Dodo, flamingos and hedgehogs

Peter Pan - Peter Pan, Wendy Darling, John Darling, Michael Darling, Mr and Mrs. Darling, Nana

Image copyright Disney

Lady and the Tramp - Lady, Tramp, Beaver, Trusty

Sleeping Beauty - Prince Phillip, King Hubert, King Stefan, animals, Samson

One Hundred and One Dalmatians - Roger, Anita, Pongo, Perdita

The Sword in the Stone - Wart, Merlin, Sir Ector, Kay, Archemedes, Madame Mim, dogs

Mary Poppins - Master of Hounds, hounds, fox

Image copyright Disney

The Jungle Book - Mowgli, Baloo, Bagheera, Shere Khan, King Louie, Kaa, the Vultures

The Aristocats - Thomas O'Malley, Duchess, Madame Bonfamille, Edgar, George

Bedknobs and Broomsticks - King Leonidas, Secretary Bird

Robin Hood - Robin Hood, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Little John, Allan-a-Dale, Maid Marian, Friar
 Tuck, King Richard

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh - Tigger, some Winnie the Pooh, a little Piglet

The Rescuers - Madame Medusa, Mr. Snoops, Penny, Brutus and Nero

Image courtesy waltdisney.org

Once you've wrapped your mind around that list, realize this: not only did he animate all those characters, but for the titles in bold, he was also that film's directing animator. Meaning he animated his characters and made sure that all the other characters were being handle correctly as well. I don't think it's an understatement to say that if Milt's commercial art business hadn't failed, the Walt Disney Studio wouldn't have been as successful as it was.

Milt retired in 1976, as production was wrapping up on The Rescuers and after 42 years creating magic for millions of moviegoers. He moved back to the Bay Area and spent the remainder of his days making wire sculptures of ballerinas and other human forms. On April 19, 1987, Milt succumbed to pneumonia at his home in Mill Valley, California. Just two years later, in the second class of inductees, Milt and his fellow Old Men would be declared official Disney Legends. If he'd been there to accept the award, he would probably have declared, with his usual humility, "Aww... You're full of it!" And indeed, every time we watch a Disney classic, because of Milt, we are full of It.

January 8 - Iwao Takamoto

Image courtesy of illustrationhistory.org

On this day, in 2007, Iwao Takamoto passed away from a heart attack in Los Angeles, California. Born in the same city on April 29, 1925, Iwao graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School when he was just 15. Shortly thereafter, Pearl Harbor was bombed, World War II began and Iwao's family was imprisoned in the Manzanar internment camp with tens of thousands of other Japanese Americans. Luckily for him (and for us), he learned the basics of drawing, illustration and animation from two of his fellow prisoners.

When the war ended, Iwao decided to apply for work at the only animation studio he knew the name of, Disney. He was told to submit his portfolio. Having been imprisoned for the four years prior, he of course didn't have one. He bought two notebooks and spent a weekend filling them with sketches of literally everything he saw. Those sketches did the trick and he was hired as an assistant animator in 1945. Iwao contributed to several features during his sixteen years with the company, both as animator and as character designer. He would spend a good deal of his Disney career working directly under Milt Kahl, one of Walt's Nine Old Men, on projects like Cinderella, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians.

Image copyright Disney

In 1961, Iwao left Disney to join Hanna-Barbera Productions. As cartoon television series seemed to bloom on every network throughout the rest of the decade, Iwao left his indelible mark on the genre. He would hold several positions at Hanna-Barbera but his work as a character designer remains the most visible and therefore most impressive. His highlights reel started with Astro, the Jetson's dog in 1962. A few years later, his next big hit was Penelope Pitstop, who starred in Wacky Races and its spinoff show, The Perils of Penelope. But his most enduring character by far is another canine, Scooby-Doo.

Image copyright Hanna-Barbera

When asked how he came up with Scooby's look, Iwao once said that a woman at the studio owned great danes and enthusiastically showed him pictures of them, pointing out all their features. He then drew every aspect of the dogs the opposite of what they were in reality. Instead of a straight back and legs and a small chin, Scooby got a hump back, bowed legs and a large mug. Iwao even purposely made him the wrong color. And yet it somehow all works. Michael Mallory, a Hanna-Barbera historian, makes the claim that if Scooby had looked any different, more like an actual Airedale say, the show probably wouldn't have lasted more than one season. Instead, because of Iwao's genius, Scooby had been on a screen, big or small, almost continuously since his creation.

Image copyright Hanna-Barbera

Iwao would eventually move into the director's chair. One of his biggest projects was the 1973 feature film, Charlotte's Web, which he co-directed with Charles Nichols. He once said one of the hardest things he ever did was creating a spider with a look that inspired people to care about it. The film, which featured songs by the Sherman Brothers, received mixed reviews, with most critics calling out the obviously quick television type animation. But, really, what else would you expect from Hanna-Barbera?

After producing series like The Smurfs, The Addams Family and Hong Kong Phooey, Iwao would settle into the role of Vice President of Creative Design. He was in charge of all of Hanna-Barbera's merchandise and oversaw all the design work going on in the Animation Art Department.  When Time-Warner merged with Hanna-Barbera's parent company, Turner Broadcasting in 1996, Iwao became Vice President of Special Projects for Warner Brothers Animation. He held this position for the remainder of his career.

Iwao received two major honors from his peers during the latter part of his life. The first came in 1996 when he was given the Windsor McCay Award, a lifetime achievement statue given out each year at the Annie Awards. The second came in 2005 when the Animation Guild bestowed upon him their Golden Award for his more than five decades in the field. The ultimate honor, though, may have happened when he passed away in 2007. For the next week, Adult Swim, on the Cartoon Network, displayed "Iwao Takamoto (1925-2007)" as one of their bumpers. I think Iwao would have approved.