Animation Artwork Auction.

Okay, so I said I would do a post on what I feel was surely one of the biggest auctions of classic animation artwork ever. Unfortunately I wasn't able to post about it earlier, but I promised myself I would put some of this stuff up on the blog once I got back, which isn't really that bad, because now the prices realised are known, so I can add some of that stuff into the post!

The auction was organized by 'Profiles in history', which is set up by Joe Maddalena, an industry expert on historical documents and the world's largest auctioneer of original movie, television and pop culture relics. You might know Joe from his show 'Hollywood Treasure' which airs regularly on Syfy channel since 2010 and is currently in it's second season (on the show Joe and his team track down, appraise and auction off some of the amazing artifacts ('Hollywood Treasure') they find from Tinseltown's golden years.

Born into a family of antique dealers he staged his own baseball card convention at the age of twelve, two years later he already had over one million baseball cards, and over 100,000 precious comic books and original pieces of art! He's mentioned in the Guiness book of records for paying the highest price ever at a public auction for a handwritten letter of President Abrahan Lincoln.

Above: Joe Maddalena and his team have tracked down a copy of Action comics #1, which featured the first starring role of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman/Clark Kent character. Last November actor Nicholas Cage's pristine 9.0 graded copy (one of five in the world) sold online for a record $2.1 Million Dollars. Guess he didn't want it anymore after it got robbed from his home and was miraculously returned to him, when someone found it in a storage locker.

Okay, so, enough about Joe, let's focus on some of that amazing artwork that was sold last month and let's just hope that the people who acquired will have the finesse to take good care of it, for it could/should have belonged in a museum, so we can all share the grace of such fine talent. Anyway that's why I'm posting some of it up here now. There was a huge bunch of original cels with matching backgrounds, but I decided not to add them here, as I feel they're not as essential.

The auction existed of 910 pieces of artwork, so I can only post some of my personal favorites. The official catalogue was available for $35 Dollars, which unfortunately sold out in no time. However, If you still want to view all of it and at a much higher resolution, Joe put up a free online catalogue (PDF) that is still downloadable at the moment. I suggest you get it immedeately before it dissapears. For all images below: Click to enlarge !

An original background layout drawing for Fleischer's 'Gulliver's Travels' from 1939. Price was originally set at $800 to $1200 and was sold in the end for $4250. Below is another piece from the Fleischer studio, an extremely rare original production drawing from the 1930's of 'Koko the Clown' used for Fleischer's 'Out of the Inkwell' cartoon shorts.

Some of Carl Barks' preliminary sketches, which he did for his paintings:

Here are some of the great original production drawings created for Disney's Mickey Mouse Black & White shorts from the 1930's, just a few, because the collection had such a large amount of them:

Below: Two original production drawings from 'The Klondike Kid', released on November 12, 1932. As with many of Disney's early shorts, it was animated by a legendary team of artists, including Ben Sharpsteen, Freddy Moore and Art babbitt. Directed by Wilfred Jackson.

In this short, we see Minnie sitting on a barrel by the stove in the back of a busy saloon in Alaska, after she was dragged inside and saved from the winter cold by Mickey. He feeds her and gets her warm again while a wanted poster hangs on the wall behind Minnie conveying a $2000 Dollar reward for 'Terrible Pierre' aka Black Pete. A huge ominous presence enters the saloon. It's Black Pete covered in snow, who starts shooting up the joint. The camera cuts back to Mickey feeding Minnie and there you have this production drawing, from a sequence drawn by Norm Ferguson (the first scene with Mickey and Minnie is almost identical and was drawn by Tom palmer, but the angle is slightly different). I put the matching frames from the short below the drawings.

The second drawing is from a sequence by Ben Sharpsteen with Archie Robins assisting him. This was Robins first short with Disney. After Black Pete has kidnapped Minnie from the saloon, he rides out on a dog slay. Mickey of course follows him with Pluto and tracks him down to a lonesome cabane on the edge of a slopy hill. Once entered Black Pete hangs Minnie dangling on a mounted moose head and comes for him, knives in hand. By the way, this was also Fred Moore's first Mickey short, after working on a couple of Silly Symphonies for Disney. Moore (who worked on a scene later on, where the whole cabane shoots down the hill) would eventually become one of Disney's most important animators working on Mickey, and changed his appearance in 1939, turning him into the Mickey we all know now.

An original production drawing from 'Mickey's Good Deed', which was directed by Burt Gillett and released on December 17, 1932. This drawing is part of a scene done by Johnny Cannon. I put the actual frame as it appears in the short below it.

Below a drawing from 'Puppy Love', released on September 2, 1933. Directed by Wilfred Jackson, with animations again done by Freddy Moore, Ben Sharpsteen, Norm Ferguson a.o. The drawing below is actually from the introduction sequence, the set-up, if you will, animated by Johnny Cannon. It shows  Mickey and Pluto on their way to Minnie's home, who now has a dog named Fifi. It's spring and both Mickey and Pluto are happily in love, as are the birds and the squirrels in the trees and even the statues in the park.

Mickey and Pluto are watching the little animals in the tree at this particular point (who were animated seperately by Paula Allen with Sharpsteen (it was Allen's first job on a Disney short). The scene was accompanied by the song 'Puppy Love' by composer Frank Churchill, known for his popular songs 'Heigh-Ho' and 'Some day my prince will come' ('Snow White') and 'Who's affraid of the big bad wolf' ('The Three little pigs').

An original production drawing of Minnie from 'Building a building', released on January 7, 1933. Directed by Dave Hand. This short was nominated for an Academy Award (which was won by Disney's other short 'The Three Little Pigs').

Below is a beautiful original production drawing of Minnie, showing one of her lunchboxes, which she's selling at a construction site to the workmen in the 1933 short 'Building a building'. This drawing comes from a sequence drawn by Ben Sharpsteen, where Minnie sings her song while dancing across the steal beams that make up the primary skeleton of the building. She loses her hat which is picked up by Mickey's excavator.

Some more production drawings of Mickey shorts from 1933,'Ye Olden Days' and 'Giantland', also known as 'Mickey and the Giant'.

Mickey's Service Station from 1935, the first cartoon that featured our three friends together in animated short:

From Mickey's short 'On Ice' released in 1935 and directed by Ben Sharpsteen:

From my favorite short 'Brave Little Tailor' from 1938, a great production drawing of Willy, the giant, and one of Mickey. This short has got such beautiful artwork from Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas. 

From the 'Silly Symphonies' short the 'The Big Bad Wolf' directed by Burt Gillett, released in April 1934, a follow up on Disney's earlier hit 'The Three Little Pigs', which was released in May the year before.

Two production layout's from 'Three blind Mouseketeers', Disney's Silly Symphonies short from 1936, directed by Dave Hand:

Some production drawings from Disney's first animated feature fom 1937, 'Snow White and the seven Dwarfs'.



 

A beautiful production drawing from 'Cinderella' (1950):

Here are some original production drawings from Aurora and Prince Phillip (voiced by Mary Costa and Bill Shirley) from production 2082, Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty', which was released in january 1959. Disney's 16th animated feature was drawn by an amazing crew featuring Milt Kahl, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, Marc Davis and John Lunsbery as directing animators with Clyde Geronimi acting as supervising director.

Mary Blair (sister in-law of animator Preston Blair) did concept paintings for backgrounds for Disney feature animation. She created some amazing designs, trying to capture the feeling that would entice so many viewers.'Alice in Wonderland' (1959) was one of the movies that featured her beautiful paintings, which are pretty high in demand now. The last concept painting is from 'Peter Pan' (1953). The going price was between $18.000 and $20.000 Dollars a piece (click to enlarge):

Eyvind Earl's also created coloful concept designs for backgrounds. These two were made for Disney's 'Lady and the Tramp' (1955), Disney's first feature shot in CinemaScope.

And some more design paintings he did for Sleeping Beauty (as always, click to enlarge):

Below is an original pan production background from 'Alice' from the Tulgey woods sequence, created with Gouache and Tempera on board (not by Blair). it fetched $5000,-

Below: One of the beautiful original watercolor backgrounds from Art Riley and Don schaffer for the 1938 'Silly Symphonies' short 'Merbabies', directed by Rudolph Ising. Riley is also credited as backgroundpainter on the 1953 short 'Don's fountain of youth'. Lee Blair, the younger brother of Preston Blair (and husband of Mary) was one of the animators on 'Merbabies'.