Glen Keane was the first CalArts graduate to start in Disney Animation, but Darrell Van Citters was the first student to graduate from the CalArts Character Animation program. He was hired by Disney in 1976. Brad Bird, John Musker, and Jerry Rees were made offers they couldn’t refuse and left …
In the Gary K. Wolf novel, ‘Who Censored Roger Rabbit?‘, toons communicated by means of ‘word balloons’ and toon actors were photographed as still images that were incorporated into comic strips. The film version was always seen to be a vehicle for live-action/animation combination, regardless of the premise of comic …
Captain ‘Clever’ Cleaver was a humanoid toon who was a key character in the Gary K. Wolf novel, ‘Who Censored Roger Rabbit?‘ He was still in the early Disney scripts, but investigations by the police were a minor part of the final scripts and Cleaver disappeared. He was in the …
Baby Herman is a licentious adult toon who looks like a baby and plays the role of a baby in the Maroon cartoons. He was tilted even more that way in Gary K. Wolf’s novel, ‘Who Censored Roger Rabbit?‘ Test animation done during the Disney development period gave Baby Herman …
Jessica Rabbit in the novel, ‘Who Censored Roger Rabbit?,’ and in the early script treatments was a very different role and character than in the final film. You can see from the range of character designs that she was still a character in flux. Jessica wasn’t always a redhead. …
A project development team was set up at Disney under the direction of Darrell Van Citters. It operated from 1981 through to 1983. Michael Giaimo was the designer. Chris Buck joined the team as a designer and animator. Joe Ranft was on story. Randy Cartwright did some of the proof-of-concept …
On Tuesday, October 13, Robert Watts went to his office at The Forum with the anticipation of leaving later in the day to go to Spain to scout locations for the upcoming ‘Indiana Jones‘ film. Instead, he found that he and Don Hahn were booked on the 7pm flight to New …
Disney Marketing developed a ‘Roger Rabbit’ package for its merchandise licensees. It contained folders with design ideas, the pantone color palette used in the film, character poses, pre-production art, and promotional videotapes. Licensees were flown to Los Angeles for the presentation. Steven Spielberg and Michael Eisner were scheduled to be at …
