Joe Ranft left CalArts after his sophomore year to join Disney in 1980. He worked with Darrell Van Citters on the Fun With Mr. Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Sport Goofy in Soccermania teams. He worked for Amblin on the Toontown portion of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Ranft was a puppeteer on …
Darrell Van Citters’s father was in the military, so Darrell moved around a lot when he was growing up. He lived in Albuquerque, NM, when he was in high school, and got a job painting cels at a regional commercial studio. He continued on that job during his first year …
Ron Miller died on February 9, 2019. Thereafter, on Facebook and other social media forums, came an outpouring of posts on what a nice and decent person he was. Many of the posts were by people who may have vilified him while he was President and CEO of Walt Disney …
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 …
The Roger Rabbit design of the early Disney development period was more ‘clownish’. When Robert Zemeckis became involved, he wanted Roger Rabbit to be more like Michael J. Fox, the star of his most recent film, Back to the Future. Roger Rabbit’s character evolved through the story process and his …
