Wednesday, March 26, 2008

"Disney's Gettin' Lazy" #2 - Mr. Toad & Jungle Book

For the chase scene at King Louie's Palace in The Jungle Book (1967), the animators thought: "Hey guys, we don't have to animate anything new! Let's just break out some 20-year-old animation from Mr. Toad & trace over Ratty, Moley & Mr. Winkie with King Louie, Baloo & Bagheera! & don't forget to replace the deed to Toad Hall with Mowgli, alright fellas?!"

I vaguely remember some animation from Mr. Toad where Toad is hanging from the chandelier & saving Moley from decapitation & Ratty from a bunch of weasels was reused for another Disney film, but I can't remember exactly what film it was. Maybe Robin Hood? If anybody can enlighten me on this, let me know & I'll compile & post it here as Part II.

Thanks & remember to leave comments!

*UPDATE* - Hans Perk & Michael Sporn both let me know (at almost exactly the same time!) about a translated Russian article about Disney animation reuse. You can find the article here: http://www.prodisney.ru/index.php?page=clones.php . Part I is translated in English, but if you want to read parts II & III, you have to translate the webpages using BabelFish.

Thanks again Hans & Mike!

2 comments:

Eric Noble said...

Aw man, even "The Jungle Book" is not immune to these practices. Oh why did Woolie Reitherman have to do reuse old animation?

Hika Yagami said...

There are more copycats after Jungle Book was made but these copied from the Jungle Book itself. In Robin Hood, Little John and Clucky do the same dance as Baloo and King Louie. But I guess Little John practically being Baloo's twin(and voiced by the same guy) was part of the reason. And in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, they made Christoper Robin copy what Mowgli did(throwing rocks and sliding down).

Robin Hood also had Marian do the same dance Dutchess did in Aristocats.