Recently I was sent an email with simply the word “WHAT” in the subject line. Upon opening the missive it elaborated, “... is the BEST SCENE you ever animated, and WHY?”

Now, these kinds of questions are always difficult to answer as they are so open ended and so subjective that I have difficulty coming up with definitive responses. However, this kind of question often starts my thought processes going and sometimes the result surprises the interviewer and even me. Below is my answer to the question asked:

Well, I have given this a good deal of thought and, quite frankly, I'm stumped. For one thing, I don't think I even remember all the scenes I animated and I also need to say that I find it uncomfortable to watch the films our generation of animators has produced. It’s not that I don't think there is much good work in them. I just find it difficult to enjoy them as much as the ones from Walt's days. I CAN tell you, this; I can remember specific feelings about work I have done over the years.

I rather like the way I was able to imbue personality into characters that may have otherwise been given short shrift. The secondary or supporting characters were always the meat and potatoes of the classic Disney features as far as I am concerned and ones that were lauded and prized by the animators of that time, not scorned or criticized or considered embarrassing, as they came to be thought of in the later days by Schumacher and Schneider. I actually really liked characters like the Sultan who were funny and quirky but were also capable of great feeling and depth when needed, as in when The Sultan is telling the Princess, at the bird cage, that he loves her, or when he comforts her when she is sobbing. I like the crisp, prim personality of Mrs. Potts who is both officious and warm at the same time, and the mischievous and precocious Chip whose movements were much more staccato than his mother’s. I like that in so many films I had dual roles that had great contrast so that I could play one character off another. In fact, there were times when I would never know who I would be each day as I entered the studio and started my work.

I enjoyed working with great acting in the voices. People like Bob Newhart were special because, through his stammering and halting delivery, I was given time to get the subtext across through little gestures and expressions. It gave me time to let the character think. I liked the grim, laconic delivery of Ms. Packard who saw all and commented upon it with a puff of smoke and a simple, “We’re all gonna die”. I particularly enjoyed working on Victor and Hugo from "Hunchback", as they were, to me, the most like classic Warner Brother’s characters in a Disney film. I got a kick out of  the over the top Jason Alexander readings and the stuffy, over wrought performances from Charles Kimbrough and I had great fun adding business to the scenes that the story artists did not put in, (which was all of them). Card tricks. Continuity gags. Subtext. Innuendo. It was great fun and it has always been a sadness that the film was not better overall as I firmly believe that some of my very best character work is in that film which I spent only a scant 8 months on. It is the first film that I saw characters and not drawings. And Hugo, in particular, was so very different from my normal casting, which added versatility to my repertoire.

I found that working on Flit, a character without a voice, gave me the challenge of presenting thoughts, ideas and emotions without the help of dialog. I quickly discovered that pantomime is one of the very hardest things to do in animation, particularly today when characters are ALL so defined by their vocal performances and who ramble on and on for no reason other than the fact that the producers can’t stand a silent screen or any semblance of real emotion. It always bothered me, too, that I did all that acting in the Flit scenes with no dialog and then they brought in Frank Welker to loop little squeaks and squawks and he got this huge billing as the voice of Flit over me as the supervising animator. I can see this as appropriate when a character is voice driven, as in the case of the Genie or Ariel or The Beast. Not to take away anything from their brilliant performances, but when the voice is post dubbed and not part of the performance, as with Flit and Meeko (or, for that matter, Evinrude, the lacky from Cinderella or Gideon from Pinocchio). I just didn’t think it right that, basically, sound effects took top billing on the characters. But, beyond performance, getting things to read was particularly difficult with Flit as he was required to move very quickly, like a real humming bird, but attitudes still had to be clear. I got pretty good at crisp timing by the end of that picture and that knowledge served me well in future work, right up to this day. Then there was the added challenge of doing those wings by hand, on ones, and getting them firmly anchored on the body. It had to be believable and it was tough working that out, but I think he came out very nicely in the end.

Hell, I even enjoyed working on Alvin and the Chipmunks and Chipettes. There is some very nice work in the “My Mother” sequence that I directed. I remember one scene where two of the girl chipmunks were in the balloon, one holding the other as they stared out into space singing, wistfully, about their memories of their own mother. It was one of the few sweet moments in the film and a rare time to get some acting and emotion across. I remember thinking about Judy Garland, Cyd Charisse and Virginia O’Brien doing the “Cold, Cold, Cold” number from “The Harvey Girls” as I animated that scene and I thought it came out well. That is, of course, until it went through the farmed out clean-up “process”. HA!

Now, I know many of the characters I mentioned above were featured in what were not, ultimately, great films, but that never stopped me from believing in the characters. It never stopped me from wanting the very best from myself and working very hard to make the characters shine even when the material was, shall we kindly say, less than stellar.

In the end, I miss the feeling of wanting to go to work each day. The feeling of excitement and thrill as I worked and re-worked my scenes, learning and growing to the point where, when I looked at a scene I had done, I stopped seeing drawings and started seeing characters. That was the biggest thrill of my career and it took me many years to achieve that, only to have it snatched away from me just when I felt I had arrived. That is the biggest heartache I have had to endure in my life and a pain that has plagued me since I left the studio.

Sadly, I have been away from Disney for a long time now, and I have found that there is really precious little outside of Disney, in the way of true character animation, that allows a classically trained animator, like myself, to apply the principles I worked so hard to learn and master while at Disney Feature Animation; principles that, to me, are sorely lacking in so much of the animation being done today. When I left the studio, I felt I was at the top of my field and I still feel like I am in my prime.

So, there you go. That's probably more than you bargained for and, if so, I’m sorry. But these are very strong feelings for me. I loved animation and I still love animation and it is difficult not to be required or even encouraged to do animation to the levels at which one has been trained. I hope you will understand and will forgive this rather lengthy and in depth answer to your question and I hope that it answered same or, at the very least, that it gave you a little insight on what it’s like to be me.

Thanks for asking.

Kindest regards,

Dave