Sunday, February 20, 2011

HAKUNA MATATA!


Here's one of the largest backgrounds I've ever digitally re-assembled. Over 100 inches long! It is an extraordinary piece.

A couple of notes:

The scene starts with a pan left to right, then top to bottom. This image is the recreation of the top to bottom pan. We'll leave the other (small) section for another time.

The action here is Timon is doing a "cannonball" into the water. The drop is animated at such a furious clip, each section of art is seen for only about one frame. Digitally, I couldn't eliminate all the Timons because the character dropped so fast, the piece of background behind him was already out of frame, one frame to the next!

I still think it's worth having a good look. Look how beautifully each section transitions one into the next. I've broken the entire B/G into several pieces so you can really have a good look. (Be sure and click on the images to see the large version.)

One of Disney's artists really earned their paycheck with this one. It's sort of the Mount Rushmore of background art!