Saturday, July 2, 2011

Fred Moore

Fred Moore's talents baffle me. How can someone so young show so much skill
as an animator? He was 19 years old when he started at Disney in 1930.
I heard the story that he submitted drawings done on grocery paper bags, I wonder if that's true.
In any case, this kid changed the Disney animation style forever.
And not just Disney, you can see his influence on all the other studios as well.
Fred had a knack for a variety of things. He perfected squach and stretch, characters now showed real mass and therefor looked more believable than ever  before.
And drawings with charm....oh boy ! No wonder Walt put him in charge of the dwarfs in "Snow White". Look at these rough doodles below, fantastic intuition for personality.
Where did all that come from ? He hadn't had the time to observe and experience much at that young age. (Or do a lot of bad animation before becoming great).
He was just gifted like crazy.
Frank, Ollie, Marc and Milt all told me what a nice guy he was. "Couldn't do a drawing without appeal!" And Fred helped everybody, looking at their scenes and
drawing over their animation. He really WAS the Disney style at that time.
I will not get into the tragic aspects of his later life here. Let's just look at some of his stuff and get inspired.