Throne Room, Part 2

I had help again for this post as I'm not that familiar with this sequence. From what I remember the studio concentrated during 1990 on scenes with action, long shots, crowd scenes, scenes with a lot of effects. I remember Dick talked often about our learning curve and that he was saving the acting scenes for later. My guess is that a lot of this sequence was animated during 1991. In some versions of the "workreel" there are some scenes that had not gone through T&P, they might even have been done early in 1992. I think the studio got closed down in May 1992.

Left and Middle: Dick
Right: Zigzag by Dick. Andreas animated the courtiers. The Palanquin and the Eunuchs were done by Bob Wilk (see recent photo). Paul Chorley usually assisted on Bob's scenes.This is the same scene I talked about in my Conrad Veidt post.


Left: Dick
Middle: Zigzag by Dick, Palanquin and Eunuchs as usual by Bob, Yumyum - not sure, Dick or Alyson.
The Courtiers (by Andreas) come in for a few frames at the end
Right: most likely Alyson.

Left and Middle (same scene): Dick
Right: Alyson

Left and Middle (same scene): Dick
Right: Dick
I think these pencil roughs were done during the time when Dick was pressured to fill in the gaps of the film with storyboards. The storyboards he did in color on small cards without registration holes to force himself "not to animate". In this case he apparently preferred to pose out the scene as animation roughs, maybe with the idea to give it to somebody else to tie down.


Left: Alyson
Middle: Zigzag and King probably by Dick, Yumyum by Dick or Alyson
Right: Andreas

Left: (see Throne Room Part 1) Courtiers by Andreas, Guards by Neil, Cobbler by Art/Dick
Middle: Alyson
Right: Alyson
If you have a chance to watch this, look at all the stuff falling off the Cobbler. Cool secondary animation. I also love the use of reflections in the Throne Room sequences. The BG design is still completely flat, but all reflections are dimensional, not just flipped versions of the drawing. It's a lot of work because you have to draw things as if seen from underneath. The first film that did this as far as I know was "Three Orphan Kittens" in 1935. Dick and Roy paid homage to this film in the Maroon Cartoon at the beginning of "Roger Rabbit" not only in regards to the use of reflections but also with the nice perspective camera move that Roy animated.


Left: Neil
Middle: Alyson
Right: Neil
I remember Dick at the video penciltester, figuring out the rhythm and timing for these head tilting scenes. I think it must have been during the "storyboard phase" because I remember the little color cards. Initially I had some doubts about his choices. When Yumyum leads with tilting her head to screen left, Cobbler follows with also tilting screen left. Then they do the same thing to screen right. Imagining the situation, them looking at each other, I felt that the Cobbler would actually mirror her action, which would result in him countering her screen left with a screen right. (If I'm not being clear here just ignore this, it's not important). I came to realize anyway that Dick's choices were the right ones, as proven by the final sequence which works beautifully. Intuition wins over logic.


Left: Alyson
Middle: Neil
Right: Alyson
Nice again the secondary animation on the ear rings, they just have the right weight.


Left: Zigzag by Dick, Cobbler by Neil, King and Yumyum (not sure)
Middle: (see Throne Room Part 1) Cobbler by Art/Dick, the rest by Neil
Right: Tim Watts

I have one more installment coming up to wrap up this first Throne Room sequence.