Saturday, April 25, 2015

Dazzling Kimballesque Animation Cut Scenes from Brad Bird's "Tomorrowland" Released Online

Disney has debuted an interactive companion website, TakeMeToTomorrowland.com, to promote Brad Bird’s upcoming Tomorrowland. The site begins to untangle the film’s complex alternative history-plotline in which four legendary historical figures—Jules Verne, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and Gustave Eiffel—join forces to create a secret science society called Plus Ultra.
The site includes two short animated pieces that help tell this backstory. Both videos are narrated by someone (Maurice LaMarche?) who sounds an awful lot like Orson Welles, which is probably who it’s supposed to be since Welles plays a role in the film’s prequel novel Before Tomorrowland. The visual style and tone of the animation purposefully evokes the 1940s-50s Walt Disney educational films and “Tomorrowland” TV segment specials (Man In Space, Mars and Beyond, etc) that were directed by Ward Kimball in the mid-1950s, as well as some of Disney’s other science projects like the Disneyland episode “Our Friend the Atom.”
Animation historian Jerry Beck reports on his site Animation Scoop that these sequences appeared in the “earliest edits of the feature, inter-cut with live action actors responding to it,” but were cut out of the picture for timing reasons and instead incorporated into the online narrative. This sequence is being used for promotional purposes. Beck credits the design and animation to Teddy Newton, Dan Jeup, and Andrew Jimenez. Other artists who worked on it include Ryan Woodward, Lou Romano, and Paul Abadilla. As soon as I have a complete credits list, I will post it.
Watch the animated footage sequences embedded below (in two parts) - providing some background on the films mysterious genius club, "Plus Ultra":


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