Frank Thomas' Merryweather Line Test

Andreas Deja posts tons of great artwork from the Nine Old Men, namely rough key animation drawings, on his blog, Deja View. The best part is that he scans the images in with the peg holes intact so it's easy to register them and see how they work. He has a passion for the Nine Old Men, and his career at Disney has afforded him great access to a staggering library to learn from.

I came across this recent post with a series of rough pose tests for Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty, and I decided to work with them to try to learn whatever I could from them. I brought in Thomas' original six pose drawings into Harmony, and worked over them to try and study the shapes and forms. Then, I wanted to actually inbetween it as if I was an assistant to Thomas. I don't believe this particular action ever made it into the film so I had no reference in terms of timing, and I made that part of it my own. There are certainly some inconsistencies in the rough animation, even among the original six poses themselves, but I think a tie-down pass would smooth that all out.

So again, this isn't really "my" rough animation per se. I'm just trying to learn what I can.