Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512296
Since the start of animation as an industry, one of its abiding missions has been to perfect drawings in motion. With CG, this goal expanded to make animation that feels as realistic as possible. But to honor its 100-year anniversary, Walt Disney Animation Studios shifted into reverse. Looking back to some of the studio's earliest films for inspiration, the comedy-musical Wish is the story of 17-year-old Asha, an idealistic commoner who dreams of being the apprentice to King Magnifico, the ruler of the land of Rosas. King Magnifico has the power to grant the wishes of his subjects, but when Asha discovers what he actually does with these wishes, she makes her own wish so strong it invokes a cosmic force in the form of a lively, powerful star. Together with a pajama-clad goat named Valentino, Asha and Star set off to save the wishes of Rosas. While the story is original and Asha is a heroine rather than a princess, Wish resides comfortably in the spirit of Disney's classic fairy tales. "Gustaf Tenggren and Kay Nielsen are two of the many [early] Disney animation artists who inspired our look," says Avneet Kaur, Head of Characters and Technical Animation. Born in Sweden, Tenggren designed the evocative backgrounds including the cottage and deep woods for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and he is perhaps best known for the brooding atmosphere of Pinocchio, introducing the illusion of depth he had used in his illustrations for books like Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales. Hailing from Denmark, Nielsen illustrated classic fairy tales in a dark, dramatic style that blended influences from Art Nouveau to Japanese woodcuts; during his short but influential time at Disney, he designed the memorable "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence in Fantasia. While there was no intention of stepping away from CG technology, according to Production Designer David Womersley, there was a desire to capture the artistic atmosphere of the old films. The filmmakers did more than study who crafted them, though. They thought, "What if we look even further back?" says Womersley. "Walt Disney, when he was a little kid, and these [animators] when they were young, they would be looking at these beautiful illustrated books from the turn of the century. There were people like Charles this page: Visual development art for Wish was inspired by early Disney artists such as Eyvind Earle, who was responsible for the atmospheric colors and styling of Sleeping Beauty. above: Watercolor technique was used to create a warm, inviting atmosphere inside Asha's family cottage. WINTER 2023 29 and William Heath Robinson, John Bauer, Edmund Dulac, William Russell Flint—these amazing watercolor illustrators that the people who did Pinocchio and Snow White would have been [able to] go to."