Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1521473
SUMMER 2024 39 SUMMER 2024 39 Marlon West was early in his career when he joined the crew of The Lion King, serving as an Effects Animator after starting with the company as a trainee. Trainees didn't work directly on forthcoming titles but rather were given what he calls "homework assignments" like reanimating splashes on Bambi and smoke from The Little Mermaid. "[But] after about two months they found some low-level stuff for a brother to do, like draw some shadows under Simba," says West. He also assisted with the effects for the final battle at Pride Rock, made challenging because many of the fire scenes were animated in slow motion. "We were [normally] doing 12 drawings per frame, but in slow motion you're talking like 48 drawings," he says. Coming off Beauty and the Beast, where he was trained on the job, Lund also recalls the learning curve. "There is a lightning scene, and I remember it was the first time I'd actually had someone explain to me how it worked and how it doesn't just zigzag down like you'd do in your spiral notebook," he says. "I'm working on lightning [for a project] now, and I'm still doing it exactly the same way I learned on The Lion King." For both men, the most challenging things to animate were sometimes the least remarked on. "I think the hardest scene I did was at the beginning of Scar's song," says Lund. "He lands on the ground, and there are these cracks forming—so we had to animate a crack growing but then moving back in space, and it's swimming all over the place." "[That song] 'Be Prepared' had a lot of changing perspectives of rocks that were rolling and the camera panning up," agrees West, "but the toughest scene for me personally—something that no one looks at and goes, 'Boy, that looked cool!'—is in 'Hakuna Matata' where [the warthog] Pumbaa's on a vine getting pulled up by Simba. He starts off straight on, and then as he goes up out of frame, the camera pans up. Because it's hand-drawn flat paintings, the background has forced perspective. I remember that was really hard to do, but no above: Scar continues to reign as one of Disney's most feared villains. opposite: Understanding how to depict lightning was a learning curve for Assistant Effects Animator Dan Lund.