Bullwinkled

A quick sketch I did for a pitch that was never presented.

It was in early August 1989  and I had recently finished up with Little Mermaid when I once again returned to Walt Disney TV. It was a different animal entirely by then. The once tiny staff had ballooned enormously and had taken over much of the once almost empty address on Cahuenga. I eventually found my  all official looking name tag formally spelling out  Michael Perazza instead of Michael Peraza, posted on a nice room with a balcony view. I figured with a room like this, the spelling was close enough. I was just moving in when I got a call to come to a meeting. I was immediately asked to help kick off a new series idea that Gary Krisel, President of Walt Disney Television Animation, along with Tad Stones were putting together for a pitch.  Gary was an unusual executive in that he was approachable with suggestions and took time to listen to any valid opinions. He had taken a wildly diverse background in finance and marketing and progressed from producing hit records as president of Disney's Worldwide Music Publishing to overseeing some very successful animated creations for Disney TV. Like most of us, Gary was also a fan of the old classic Jay Ward show "Rocky and His Friends" later to be know as its more famous moniker "The Bullwinkle Show". Tad  was the point person on this and he was likewise excited over the possibilities. I remember all too distinctly though, my first question to both of them. "So does Disney actually OWN the rights to these guys?" I went on to explain that I had been to Universal Studios only the day before and watched the "Rocky and Bullwinkle" live show right next to the "Duddley-Do-Right" Emporium, so how could Disney have the rights? Gary answered quickly that we (Disney) did in fact own, "all the video rights." That answer didn't quite settle my questioning little mind but I assumed we wouldn't be going forward into development without the rights all sewed up. Boy was I ever wrong.

A few of the sketches I made for the pitch

Jay ward created many iconic characters for his shows  including Crusader Rabbit, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Peabody and Sherman, Hoppity Hooper, George of the Jungle, Tom Slick and Super Chicken. Those of use who like to start out our mornings right will never forget his other creations like Cap'n Crunch, Quisp and Quake breakfast cereals. His Bullwinkle show however was most likely his most fondly remembered cast. He had segments within the show such as "Fractured Fairy Tales" and "Aesop and Sons" that were a hilarious send up of childhood stories told with a wry satiric wit. The announcer, "William Conrad) might be out of breath prompting another onscreen character to question his huffing and puffing while very often "breaking the forth wall" and addressing the TV audience at home. Just a few of the terrific voice talents used on the show included Bill Scott (Bullwinkle,George,Dudley Do-Right, Mr. Peabody), June Foray (Rock,Natasha, Nell Fenwicky), Paul Frees, Hans Conried, Charlie Riggles, Edward Everett Horton (Narrator for Fractured), and Daws Butler. Subjects from current events to politics and famous celebrities were often the genesis of these entertaining shows. An inside joke around the Jay Ward studio was to add a "J" throughout the shows for middle initials or store front signs in homage to "Jay". Examples are Bullwinkle,  J Moose, Rocky J Squirrel and so on.

I had known Tad back when he was at Disney Features Animation for a bit and his excitement over this project easily matched mine which was bordering manic. Tad was as talented behind a drawing board as he was on the typewriter, yeah, no laptops in those days. Gary asked if I could have a full presentation ready by the following Monday morning. As it would give me a week plus the weekend, I said most definitely yes, no problem. Tad and I went back to his room to kick around ideas. Tad was a terrific artist and doodled some jiffy doodles about a butter and popcorn caper  cooked up by Boris and Natasha that Bullwinkle and Rocky would foil of course by the end of the episode. I came up with "Fractured Scary Tales", a spin on Jay's famous series within a series. The basis of this would be to lampoon the then never ending slate of horror films the way the fairy tales had been targeted for an earlier generation. It wasn't easy gathering the reference for the Ward characters back then but luckily Tad was way ahead of me and had scrounged up a few video tapes of the old shows that I could study. As I viewed the old episodes I quickly realized that although some references-  like the cold war, was dated it all still had such a sharp freshness about it that was a joy to watch, and listen to. The limited animation Jay had used was well planned and designed to work exactly in that format and the overall art direction was wonderfully reminiscent of the UPA styling so prevalent of the 1950s.

More drawings of mine that never saw the light of day

I dove into staging the setups to illustrate Tad's funny ideas for the popcorn caper building upon his suggestions. One nice thing about working with Tad is that he listened to your ideas. You could bounce things back and forth, improving the storyline  together instead of a producer just ordering a single inflexible direction with no opportunity to improve.  After I did Tad's "popcorn" segment, I then did some drawings for horror spoofs I had including "PieDay the 13th"  and "Nitey Nite on Elf Street".  The first would take that mask motif and turn it into a pie tin where helpless victims were soon eating custard pie without aid of knife or fork. I also made fun of the Freddy Krueger character by making him an elf with cooking utensils instead of razor blades on his glove. He would visit chubby kids on diets during their dreams and stuff their gullet full of junk food. I came up with some snappy writing to back up the visuals along with the never ending puns.  I also added a "Mr Know-It-All" segment that would pay homage to Jay's original segment. I wanted to have Mr Know_It_All (Bullwinkle) show the folks at home how to set up their home tape recorder. Yes this was many years before Goofy would find himself in a similar situation. He would also help get rid of that annoying "flashing red clock" for good. I had Bullwinkle's voice down and a so-so version of Rocky to hep with the presentation. I showed Tad my assembled setups on Wednesday morning and he liked them. For the rest of that day and til the end of the week I had plenty of time to  complete the entire pitch in color. Tad meanwhile worked away writing up a hilarious verbal storyline that would be narrated during the pitch while I just kept my nose to the grind ... er...  animation desk. Our offices were literally side by side so we could constantly check in on what the other was doing and add some suggestion or remark or just bug each other. I could hardly wait to see this show get into production.

Happy Landings Bullwinkle.

I came in early Friday morning around 7:30, my usual time and turned on the coffee maker in the kitchen to make a little wake up juice. While I waited for the caffeine brew to drip, I sat down to finish up a couple of minor color details on the Bullwinkle presentation.   I'll never forget what happened next. Gary Krisel came running down the hall shouting, "We don't have the rights! Put down your pencil! We don't have the rights!" Gary was a tad upset. When Tad got in a little while later, he too would be a tad upset. I was a tad upset and I wasn't even related to him! Gary had unfortuantely been given the go-ahead by the Disney legal staff that we indeed had all the rights when we only had rights to the "video distribution" of the Bullwinkle show. In other words he was up Frostbite Falls without a paddle. It wasn't his fault nor mine or Tads. Placing blame was pointless anyway as we were all in panic mode now as the presentation was only days away.  We had to get a replacement pitch and fast! Luckily at about  the same time Tad had also been hard at work in development with a possible spinoff series coming out of an old "DuckTales" episode I had worked on that had paired Launchpad with a superhero of sorts called "Double-O_Duck". He secret identity was Drake Mallard but we woiuld eventually know him as "Darkwing Duck".

Days of DuckTales, PART 4 (fin)

I opted to re-deisgn the small comic Mansion completely into a Tudor estate 

I had done work for TV years before like Hanna-Barbera  but had long since settled into working for Disney features. As such we had the budget and the time to put in extras and push the quality. Even the Disney TV division had devoted more resources into their product than most of the other studios and it had showed in "Gummi Bears". I had busted my hump like everyone else to make "Ducktales" special so when the day came to screen the first episode I had been busy finishing a couple of keys for a future show. Everyone started coming down to tell me how great the show looked and I finally caved in and went down to enjoy it. I wasn't quite prepared for what I was to see. I was less than enthused over the results on screen. I think everyone's accolades beforehand made it seem all the worse when I viewed it. When the lights went up I saw a lot of happy faces looking at me to get my opinion. What could I say? I just smiled and nodded, not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings. Over time I realized my reaction was one of outright ignorance. The show had a set and limited budget and schedule. Everyone involved did the best they could.

A scene based on but not found in Carl's comic

I confided my feeling with Alan that maybe the "DuckTales" show wasn't exactly up to par as a Disney production and he assured me that it was actually a good effort by the studio. He was right of course and when "Ducktales" aired, it was an immediate hit with fans of all ages. Soon after it premiered and over the years since that time I have been fortunate to meet many fans from all over the world who really love the series. I guess sometimes we just get too close to our own work and need to step back, take a deep breath and listen to other opinions a bit more. As I looked back through my notes and artwork while researching this blog, I realized I had worked on two out of four versions of "Scrooge McDuck" to reach the screen. The first was "Spirit of '43", followed by "Scrooge McDuck and his Money" in 1967 (Ward Kimball supervised and wanted to include the darker side of Money, something he said Walt would have done but was vetoed), "Mickey's Christmas Carol," and "DuckTales". I guess maybe we could include the 2 second clip of him during the opening of "Mickey Mouse Club",  ... nah.

Studio invite to Wrap Party

"DuckTales" went on to a second season in 1990 with 25 additional episodes and eventually reached a total of 100 for the entire series. It also became a theatrical feature with the release o f"DuckTales, Treasure of the Lost Lamp." There have been two spinoffs to date, "Darkwing Duck" (which I did the original concept art for over a long weekend when it was just known as "Double O'Duck") and another one entitled "Quack Pack" and tons of merchandise from clothing to action figures. Carl Barks was very impressed with the "DuckTales" series when it first aired on television but lost interest in the later episodes citing too many characters and the complicated plots. I received a mysterious yellow envelope addressed to Michael Peraza delivered by the traffic boy. I opened it to find a small yellow invitation to celebrate our hard work. So late on a Monday evening after work, the Disney Studio threw a nice little wrap party for us at Maison Gerard. Looking around the restaurant I realized how lucky I was to have worked alongside these people, from management, writing and the art department they were all amazing and I was kind of sad to see it end.  Still, it is truly fitting that the series originally inspired by Carl's' creation in a comic book was now not only a hit Disney series but would be re-introduced to a fresh generation within a new line of comics entitled what else? "DuckTales"! Disney Fine Art announces latest works from Disney Art Director Mike Peraza

Days of DuckTales, PART 3

Scrooge on thrilling ride thru a dinosaur skeleton

In the mid 1980s, Disney Television Animation was comfortably ensconced in a dark walnut stained multistoried building that resembled an accordion from the side. I had a nice spacious office in one of the accordion "flaps" with windows sandwiched between the writers' rooms and the directors' rooms. Alan Zaslove was next door and Steve Clark one more beyond. Alan would come in and we'd kibbitz about the latest script and he would want to see what I was designing for it, especially if he was directing the same tale. He was also a veteran animator and contributed wonderful ideas for his episodes. I enjoyed his company immensely and loved to listen to his stories of life at UPA working on classics like "Gerald McBoing! Boing" and his experiences alongside animation greats like Bo Cannon and Shamus Culhane. He gave me a helping heaping of model sheets and art from those UPA days after seeing how enthused I was over that era of animation and the artists involved. The impact of the style and technique not to mention subject matter that the innovative artists at UPA employed cannot be understated. The UPA "look" has been retro-fitted by every studio to some degree since in one series or another from Nick to Cartoon Network and Disney to Warners. Alan was also an "old school" director and by that I mean he earned his way up through the ranks with talent. He was excellent at distilling the story given to him in a script and producing remarkable little thumbnails to hand out to his storymen to further illustrated his perception of the actions he wanted. He was also just plain fun to hang out with.

Olivia Miner caught working

Our staff at this point was still very small which was wonderful as far as we were concerned. When someone had a birthday party, our Production Manager Olivia would squeeze the entire crew into the kitchen to warble the song and blow out candles. I can assure you that that simply can't be accomplished anymore with the large Disney staff sizes of today. We all had out assignments and got things done on or ahead of schedule. Back then we were a "Lean, Mean Animating Machine". That didn't stop a few of our rowdier prisoners from scaling the walls with gags and jokes. We had many, MANY characters designed for the series, some memorable, some well.... We had one cartoon weasel drawn with a nose that resembled something that should not have sprouted out of that part of the anatomy. Actually being a Disney character, he really shouldn't have sprouted anything anywhere. Let me first say this, I knew the guy who drew it, and he didn't mean it to be mistaken for anything other than a nose. In face when someone mentioned it, he grew so red I thought his head would sizzle and pop. Now keep in mind all this work made us hungry and the studio would sometimes order  pizza for lunch from a place called Pizza Man to thank us for our efforts, or thinking back maybe it was to punish who knows?. Both of these events came together one one day when we had a frantic scramble to ready a pitch to extend the series into the second season. At the last minute it was discovered that we needed one more art piece so I was asked to rush out it less than an hour before the meeting. Brad explained it was OK if I didn't get it done which I of course took as a personal challenge.

DuckTales crew (Mike Peraza/Indiana Jones) Halloween 1986

I had previously blown up the offensive weasel character to five feet using a xerox cut out glued  to foam core and was waiting for the right time to unlease the varmint. I might add that the enlarged drawing not have a nose job done but was still "au naturel"  as his original design at this point. I attached a used Pizza Man box and articulated hands and along with my "DuckTales" drawing, some cord and tape, scurried up to the roof. The corner room meeting was in process although Brad told me later it had gotten tense. Suddenly mid sentence, eveyone looks to the window to see the 5 foot tall weasel being lowered and holding a pizza box. After a moment to swing in the breeze the "pizza weasle" opens the box and displayed my sketch. I then dropped the paper puppet and ran downstairs to my room. I barely got to my desk when I heard the uproar down the hall with Brad leaning into my doorway gasping between laughter, "Thanks Mike, I owe you one!" They were still cracking up as he went back to the meeting and closed the door. That gag was hardly the last prank played by me or others during "DuckTales" production. I don't have room to list more except for their secret code phrases: rubber band door, trashcan pyramid, smoke in the kitchen, stink bomb, elevator attendant among others. Oh by the way, we got a second season in spite of all the fun.

Days of DuckTales, PART 2

I designed Scrooge's estate to have a heliport, pool, etc.

If I listed every single member of our remarkable "DuckTales"crew, this chapter would be 3 pages longer so please forgive me if I only mention a few. Fred Wolf wore the bill as "Top Duck" Producer with Tom Ruzicka watching his back, direction by Alan Zaslove and Steve Clark, with Tedd Anasti and Patsy Cameron story editing the "tales" supported by  seasoned writers such as Mark Zaslove. The Ducktales Art staff included our fearless leader, Brad Landreth as Art Director, Skip Morgan was his trusty associate,  Mike Peraza on Key Layout Styling and concepts with Ed Wexler providing additional layouts. Storyboards were expertly sketched by Thom Enriquez, Rick Chidlaw, Marty Murphy, Steve Gordon and Hank Tucker ( They even allowed me to storyboard a couple of shows). Background Painting wizard Paro Hozumi brought breathtaking color into the settings assited by Gary Eggleston and topped off with Jill Stirdivant adding perfectly matching color models. 

Our character designs were greatly enhanced by a couple of friends of mine also from Disney features, Ed Gombert and Toby Shelton. I had contacted Ed and Toby, telling how much greener the grass was growing over at TV. To my happy surprise they liked my spiel and joined up.  Toby went on to become a producer in later years at TV while Ed and I were to escape back to features for "Little Mermaid". For some reason a schism developed that wedged between the two animation divisions as far as what was perceived as "raiding" the feature talent pool. It sounds preposterous but it was very real. Staff was called in and asked not to contact feature folks about joining our ranks. I'm just glad we smuggled Ed and Toby out before the barb wire wall went up. Of course they never did discover the third escape tunnel...

My first assignment was to create concept art that would be used to pitch the series to management. Having a great idea for a series and getting a greenlight to produce it doesn't always go hand in hand in Hollywood. We formed ranks and went to work. Brad was in charge of assembling the pieces and I was joined by Skip and Paro to round out the team. We created about a dozen pieces that looked like mini posters of what we perceived as the "DuckTales" world. Some were inspired by Carl Barks comics while most were completely original creations. It was real teamwork as we all shared working a bit on this one, then add something at that one, redo this other one, etc.. The pitch was presented and we held our collective breath. Would the suits like the series proposal or was it "duck season" with us as targets? Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg and the rest of management loved it! Bob Jacquemin who was in charge of the new syndication unit really flipped and convinced Eisner to let him ramp up the series 13 episodes to a full slate of 65 for sydication. Michael Webster got us together and relayed the good news and we were ready to fly! Donald Duck would in essence drop off his nephews Huey, Duey and Louie with his Uncle Scrooge while he joined the Navy. Together with their housekeeper Mrs. Beakly and Scrooge's disaster prone pilot Launchpad they would travel the world over during their colorful feather-brained adventures. Now I was sweating. I had to design the mansion Scrooge lived in not just interior and exterior but cut-a-way sections of the various rooms and scaling charts for character placement. I also had to crank out settings from the City of Duckburg to Wild West towns. In short, I had to have settings ready to supply to the storyboard department and to give the background artists something to paint. The hectic hurried "we need it yesterday" pace in television production is a bit different from the ho-hum leisurely shall I say ... relaxing pace one works under when vacationing at the resort villa we call feature animation.

I start with a tiny thumbnail 2" wide

An average week for me on "DuckTales" went as follows: Monday morning arrive as usual at 7:30, either first one in or second following Michael Webster. Tedd and Patsy also got in early and would give me a heads up on the latest story. Plenty of doughnuts and bagels in the kitchen, hey maybe THAT"S where I started my "animator's gut! Damn those rainbow sprinkles! Anyway, I would have a script  soon after and would zip through the story in a few minutes. I love to read which helped me digest the nonstop scripts quickly. By the time the rest of the crew arrived I could give any who asked what the breakdown of the storyline was so they could just sit and draw. I also made a list of locations as Skip did with characters. I then would thumbnail about 15 very tight drawings of those locations, handing out a few to the layout staff to blow up and finish after running them by Brad who almost always OK'd my doodles. Working off little thumbnails was something I had learned from veteran Disney Legend Ken O'Connor. Using his methods I could generate from 10 to 12 layouts a day and these were keys, meaning each was very different. 

Blew it up on xerox then cleanup 12"wide

Cranking out the large number of exotic locations so quickly was possible for me due to a huge clip file I had assembled in my room with reference on subjects from ancient Egypt to rocket travel, basically anything that might be a location for an episode. This was a tip I was handed by Disney storyman Vance Gerry who maintained a marvelous clip file in his room at the studio. My mini library was open to anyone who needed it. The next step would be for me to caricature the location to fit the story and business while adding a few "duck" features wherever possible. Sometimes if I had a few moments I would do rough color treatments to pass along to Paro, not that he needed any help, just that sometimes when you're drawing in black & white, you're thinking in color. He appreciated my suggestions and always used them. Paro was a fine example of the traditional step used by Disney production in theory, that every step gets improved as it goes through the creative process. That certainly was the case on "Ducktales" due to the dedication of the staff and management.  As the day wore on we would get our assortment of corrections to the script. I say assortment because they arrived in a multitude of colors, blue pages, pink pages, yellow and so on. A troubled script could look like some kind of freaked-out technicolor phonebook within the span of just a couple days.

Days of DuckTales PART 1

A color rough I did as a suggestion during the series Mike Peraza

Michael Webster, was an animation veteran from Quartet Films, Hanna Barbera, Murakami Wolf Films, Leo Burnett Advertising and Rankin Bass but when he answered the call to join Disney Studios, animation history was in the making. In 1984, CEO Michael Eisner created the Walt Disney Television Animation division and placed Michael Webster in charge to oversee the production of its programing with help from Production Manager Olivia Miner. Apparently Michael Eisner's son had one heck of a sweet tooth for a specific candy and so "Gummi Bears" was quickly put into development before he got a tummy ache. The small but extremely talented staff included Producer Art Vitello, Layout Ed Wexler and BG Painter Gary Eggleston and Thom Enriquez doing storyboards. This crew was really sharp. The studio asked me to help out with the launch so I did some promotional art under Art's able supervision to be used in spots like TV Guide and Disney veteran Ken Anderson whom the studio also roped in contributed his usual great design eye for Gummi Glen. Of the two early series that the fledgling department produced, "Adventures of the Gummi Bears" and "Wuzzles", only Gummi Bears became a success and subsequently aired on NBC for four seasons. Disney Fine Art. Disney Afternoon.

1 of over 600 key DuckTales layouts I designed

Two years sped by and I was working for Ross and Jan Bagdasarian on their first full length animated feature, "The Chipmunk Adventure" when I got a call from a friend at Disney TV Animation. They were doing a pitch for a new show called, "Fluppy Dogs". I worked on it because the person who was in charge was Brad Landreth, one of the nicest people in animation. I also did it for the money which was very good. Unfortunately the plot was a little insipid, they were "not actual dogs, they just looked like dogs" and because of that, they were escorted  to a dog pound. These "dog-like" creatures used a "fluppy crystal key" to open inter-dimensional doorways to their lame adventures. Umm... yeah, that was the setup. It wasn't Brad's fault, not mind either, just another less than terrific idea for an animated series donated by the suit factory. Oh yeah, almost forgot, they were each a different color, like Teletubbies or any other the other endless parade of rainbow hued character gangs substituted for children's programming.

"Back to the Klondike" key setup

I did some concept art and storyboarded the opening sequence that was used as presentation art to help greenlight the Fluppy Dogs project.  Fortunately for the children of the world this stinker bombed and was never heard of again, at least not in our inter-dimensional portal. 

First concept sketch of mansion by Mike Peraza

I kept working on the chipmunk feature doing boards and concepts alongside my good friend and amazing artist Dan Haskett when I was once again contacted by Disney TV. They were going to do a new series based on Carl Barks' famous creation Uncle Scrooge. They were still "negotiating" with the main studio whether Donald could be a part of it but the nephews were on board already. Yes, Disney was and is very protective of its stars. Maybe they had seen Fluppy Dogs? Nevertheless, being a comic book collector and fan, I had also met Carl a few years earlier (Great guy!) and I was ecstatic at the possibilities of putting his genius on the screen.

My "Fluppy" friend Brad was heading it up as Art Director and when they asked if I was interested, I couldn't quack YES fast enough. The artwork posted here I didn't know I even had as I thought I had thrown out most of that stuff many years ago. My wife Patty  found the ones that are shown here in some boxes filled with animation memories in our garage and looking back, I'm glad I didn't toss them.

Ariel's Undersea Adventure

        I recently had the pleasure of spending the day at WED, now referred to as Walt Disney Imagineering, to see a couple old friends and to get a tour of one of their latest attractions, "The Little Mermaid" ride. The people there are old school friendly but definitely high tech with innovations when creating these wonders for the Disney parks.

        Bob Weis set up an in depth session for me with the lead imagineer on the project, Larry Nikolai. I was met at the door by Tori, a young lady whose smile was contagious, and she led me through the maze to my destination while answering my many questions.

        I was shown models, audio animatronics, paintings, and even got to see some of the scenes up and running with animation. The ride will be narrated by Scuttle while the guests ride on a Disney omnimover which is what is used in the Haunted Mansion. The effect of going down into the water is fantastic! You will love it. Many classic scenes from the Disney film have been recreated for this adventure with a delightful embellishment added for the ending that I was happy to see. Jody Benson, who was our voice of Ariel reprised her role so with all the care the imagineers have taken here it really has the feeling and soul of the film in this wonderful new attraction.
Disney Fine Art presents new works from Disney Art Director Mike Peraza

Basil of Baker Street, Part 4

First time director gives Vincent (Ratigan) Price the
background of his character at the recording session.

Vincent Price was perfect as the vocal embodiment of nefarious villian, RATIGAN!  Or as his character would remark, "... an extremely large mouse!" I usually didn't attend voice recording sessions because I really liked having only the audio in my mind when testing for new characters, unblemished by the live session although the expressions and physical traits could be helpful at times to study if we choose that person to provide the voice. You wouldn't believe the physical theatrics I've seen when someone was trying out for a role waving their arms, making faces and jumping around instead of concentrating on their vocal acting. A few times after such a session a director would be excited after what he thought was a great recording test only to find the rest of us who hadn't attended the recording less than enthused because we were able to concentrate solely on the voice. My other excuse was that I was usually swamped with work. When Vincent Price came in though, well that was different. As we all knew who he was mainly due to his horror themed later films and the booth was packed with most of our small crew. John Musker was directing the recording on the floor with Vincent Price when he asked for the same take one too many times.  We were dying in the booth, laughing and I'm sure John thought it was funny in time too. 

Me and my pal "Big Ben"

 We had a lot of fun in those days at Disney. John instigated the first of many Caricature Shows in the studio library where his wife Gail worked. Everyone at the studio was invited to contribute and most of us did.  At Halloween, the animation staff would wear their finest and strangest mostly homemade costumes. I'll have to post some of those around October.  And any Disney animation artist worth their salt could flip a pushpin into a facing wall or ceiling and hit the spot. It was a benefit of long hours of having so much ready ammunition around. We became adept with whipping out those tiny terrors of pintacular precision. 

Sometimes we used the wall, other times the ceiling. We could toss them with a curve or slight rise, like a baseball player on the mound pitching to a heavy hitter. On Basil we took it up a notch. We used to make blowguns out of pan cels and shoot special darts which were our solid lead pushpins from the 1930's and 1940's. We could hit the target from one end of the hall to the other. The pins hit so hard that when we pulled the softer lead, the steel points stayed in the back side of the closed door. Wonder what they thought after the animation staff left to relocate to Glendale? Must have looked liked a metal porcupine had farted cold steel quills!  Tons of silly sketches flew back and forth among artists during production a lot of which I kept copies of thankfully. A funny gag drawing could make a long day seem a lot shorter. A prop I had brought in for the Toyshop sequence was an old hand crank bubble machine I had picked up in an antique store in London.  I put it to good use when Musker had to leave his office across the hall to attend a meeting one afternoon. I had found some "Super-Duper Long Lasting Bubble Liquid"  for the fuel but when John returned, there were bubbles over his desk, moviola, floor, everywhere. Those bubbles just stayed, and stayed! Luckily when they finally went away they didn't leave behind any damage, only that springtime fresh clean smell, ahhh.

Our favorite little corner of the world

 The film was enjoyable to be a part of because it all seemed to work. The story and the crew were a good matchup. The directors were all top notch. I was lucky to work with people like Matt O'Callahan whose story sketches were great inspiration to all of us. Rob Minkoff and Mark Henn  breathed life into the violin playing mighty mouse of deductions and his trusty sidekick Dawson. Glen Keane was unleased for one of his best performances to date with his portrayal of the notorious Ratigan. Henry Mancini was and still is one of my favorite composers and I was able to work with him on other films besides Basil and he even invited me to his studio office early one morning for a chance to see and hear his latest magic. Then out of the blue, the title was questioned. Management decided to test market the name "Basil of Baker Street" to some small kids and came back to us that it wasn't working and that the children preferred the name, "The Great Mouse Detective" much better. 

They were also concerned over the recent box office failure of Steven Spielberg's "Young Sherlock Holmes" and wanted to distance themselves from that film. This totally ridiculous move by management led to the infamous memo that went out with new titles for all the classic Disney Animated features to date. One inside joke of course was that "Aristocats" was the sole title unchanged in the fake memo. This memo circulated throughout the company and internationally and the animation staff thought it was hilarious. Management was furious besides being embarrassed and called an inquisition to nab the perpetrator but to no avail. No one on the crew was going to rat out the culprit although we all knew the author. It's funny that decades later the current  Disney management team has renamed, "Rapunzel" to "Tangled"  somehow because "The Princess and the Frog" didn't meet someone's box office expectations (I thought it did well) and they are blaming both titles with attracting girls only. As the old saying goes, "... only the names change," especially at later day Disney.

     

Sherlock Holmes Musem London

  By this time Don Griffith had retired, along with Woolie, Frank, Ollie, Milt, and other great disney alumni. Part of the magic for me was seeing these guys and learning what I could from their immense talent. I also missed hanging with the veterans during break times or lunch and hearing some great stories of "the old days" with Walt. Brad Bird, Tim Burton and John Lasseter had also moved on and so the studio had lost even recently acquired top talent. In addition to the creative ranks being depleted, we had also been moved in the middle of production, to a converted warehouse in Glendale off the studio lot and out of the old animation building. I missed our old digs, the backlot walks, the morgue and its history. At this point I also decided it was  time to move on. 

Setting up what would become DTV

All the locations on Basil were set and the background keys were done. There was tons of reference we had collected and donated if anyone needed to go back to the source. I went to work for the Bagdasarians on, "The Chipmunk Adventure", and for Disney TV on their new small screen offerings, "Gummi Bears" and "Ducktales". Ken Anderson was also brought on board for the launch of "Gummi Bears" designing the main tree so that was a highlight to be paired with the maestro again if only for a brief stint on publicity concept art. Some of my former crewmates on "Basil", Ed Gombert, Toby Sheldon, and others soon joined the party at Disney TV which added to the fun we had over in North Hollywood.

Basil Wrap Party with me attempting to channel Miami Vice

        My wife and I were eventually invited back to the House of Mouse for the wrap party with the film officially entitled, "The Great Mouse Detective". We could each bring a guest so I brought Bill Frake and my wife invited his lovely wife Kathy. Bill had introduced us to Rowland Wilson and his equally talented wife Suz. We had quite the adventure one night at the Magic Castle which for time I won't go into here. Bill was a layout man I had known and worked with and he had contributed a bit to Basil and I wanted him there to enjoy the party . As the evening went on, two of the film's directors, John and Ron came by to say hi and catch up. As he sat down at our table, John Musker leaned forward and asked if I was interested in Art Directing a new film he and Ron were going to direct, something called, "The Little Mermaid."