Walt Peregoy in the early 1960s during the production of The Sword in the Stone (1963), for which he did the background styling.
According to the official D23 Twitter account, the Disney Animation Research Library reported news that Walt Peregoy, the veteran animation artist who worked as the legendary color stylist on Disney's classic One Hundred and One Dalmatians, headed up Hanna-Barbera's background department for a time during the late-Sixties and was named a Disney Legend in 2008, passed away two weeks ago at his home in Encino, California, on January 16 at the age 89.
Edited from Cartoon Brew: Born Alwyn Walter Peregoy in Los Angeles, California, in November 17, 1925, Walt spent his early childhood raised on a small island in San Francisco Bay; Peregoy often described his background as "American white trash." He was nine years old when he began his formal art training, attending Saturday classes at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Berkeley. When he was 12, Walt's family returned to Los Angeles, where he enrolled in life drawing classes at Chouinard Art Institute. He dropped out of high school in the tenth grade, and went to work at Disney at the age of 17 in the position of "traffic boy," the lowest-rung employees at the studio who ferried artwork and supplies between offices. He quit after just a few months, saying that the studio felt too much like a factory, and wouldn't return for another eight years.
Following a short stint as a cowhand on the Irvine Ranch and a tour with the Coast Guard during World War II, Peregoy moved to San Miguel de Allende in Guanajuato, Mexico, and continued his art education, where he studied painting and sculpture at the University de Bellas Artes "under the influence of [David Alfaro] Siqueiros, Diego Rivera and [Jose Clemente] Orozco." Later in the 1940s, he lived in Paris where he studied painting. A key influence on him at this time was the French painter Fernand Leger.
In 1951, with a young family in tow, he was rehired to the Walt Disney Studios where "he started at the bottom again." Peregoy initially worked for four years in the animation department serving as an inbetweener, assistant animator, designer and clean-up artist on Peter Pan (1952) and Lady and the Tramp (1955), before production designer Eyvind Earle recruited him to become the first lead background painter on Sleeping Beauty.
Walt's unique style meshed well with that of his contemporary stylist Eyvind Earle, and their work on the Academy Award-nominated short Paul Bunyan (1958) was a departure for Disney. "My style was unusual for Walt Disney, but he tolerated me," Walt later said. Although, since he was "tolerated" for 14 years, the artist sheepishly admitted, "I had to be doing something right."
Walt is perhaps best known for his work on the studio's next feature, 101 Dalmatians, the project that allowed Peregoy to apply his fine art training on a Disney film. "To this day, Walt Peregoy's color styling in One Hundred and One Dalmatians remains a fine example of how color can be used creatively in animation while serving more than a merely decorative function," modern animation authority Amid Amidi once said. As the film's color stylist, Peregoy worked closely with production designer Ken Anderson, helping develop a new way of painting backgrounds. With the background linework printed on a separate cel level (thanks to the innovation of the Xerography process) and overlaid on top of the painted artwork, Peregoy designed the paintings as broad flat areas of color "with the awareness that it was not necessary to go in and render the hell out of a doorknob, or a piece of glass, or a tree."
Color styling key by Walt Peregoy for "101 Dalmatians"
One of Walt's conceptual works made for One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961). "There's not another artist in this world that has my color sense," Walt once said. "It's not 'warm' or 'cool.' It's what I feel. How am I going to know what color to put there before I get there? It's really what I feel."
"Peregoy in the 1950s was a true 'Modernist' - a talented fine art painter who brought Modernism to Disney with strong abstractions in both layout and painting technique," Pocahontas art director Michael Giaimo told Amid Amidi when he wrote the book Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation. "His work was a purer abstraction of reality as opposed to, say, the beautifully designed but more grounded work of Eyvind Earle."
From left to right: Vic Haboush, Tony Rizzo, Walt Peregoy and Tom Oreb during the production of "101 Dalmatians," 1958
Peregoy continued making significant contributions to other major animated films at Disney including The Saga of Windwagon Smith (1961), The Sword in the Stone (1963), Mary Poppins (1964), Goofy's Freeway Troubles (1965),The Jungle Book (1967) and finally Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. While at Disney, he appeared in the famous Disney documentary 4 Artists Paint 1 Tree alongside Marc Davis, Eyvind Earle and Joshua Meador. You can see him, introduced by Walt Disney, at 5:40 in the video embed below:
After being let go from the studio in the mid-Sixties, he then started working in television creating backgrounds on Format Film's The Lone Ranger. On that show, he used a daring combination of grease pencil-on-cel with torn-construction paper underneath. He also worked as background artist on The Shooting of Dan McGrew, Quacker Tracker, The Music Mice-Tro, The Spy Swatter, and The Ruby Eye of the Monkey-God. Below, you can see a de-constructed background from the series that shows the grease pencil cel level and the separate color level underneath. "Powerful for Saturday morning, but you couldn't say the backgrounds were Saturday morning crap because they weren't," Peregoy told interviewer Bob Miller.
Grease pencil-on-cel layer of background painting from "The Lone Ranger."
Construction paper level of the same background painting from "The Lone Ranger."
His innovative work on The Lone Ranger led to being signed on at the TV powerhouse Hanna-Barbera in 1968, where he led the background department for five years. He either stylized or supervised the background designs of The Adventures of Gulliver, The Banana Splits Adventure, Wacky Races, The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Cattanooga Cats, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines, Scooby Doo Where Are You!, Where's Huddles?,Help!...It's the Hair Bear Bunch!, The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn't, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, Popcorn, the ABC Afterschool special Cyrano, These Are the Days, Davy Crockett on the Mississippi, and Scooby's Laff-A-Lympics.
After serving as background stylist on Emergency +4 and background artist on Raggedy Ann and Andy in The Great Santa Claus Caper, he worked as layout artist on Star Fairies, Galtar and the Golden Lance, Samson and Delilah, Noah's Ark, Moses, Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, David and Goliath, Daniel and the Lion's Den, and Foofur.
In the late-1970s, he returned to Disney's theme park division WED Enterprises, working on attractions and contributing his unique view to the design of EPCOT Center in Florida such as Kraft's The Land pavilion and Kodak's Journey into Imagination, where his influence included concepts, architectural facades, sculptures, and murals for many of the pavilions.
For The Land pavilion at EPCOT Center, Walt designed key elements for the entrance mosaic and central atrium, including the original mural and balloons. His style was also showcased in the boat ride Listen to the Land.
He continued working freelance in the animation industry during the 1980s and 1990s on projects that included My Little Pony: The Movie, Barbie and the Rockers: Out of This World, CBS Storybreak, Tiny Toon Adventures, Happily Every After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, and The Specialists (below), a segment on MTV's Liquid Television:
In later years, Peregoy was an outspoken critic known as much for his colorful profanity-laced tirades against the animation industry as he was for his art. An interview with Peregoy (warning: very crude and offensive language) can be heard on the Animation Guild website (http://animationguild.org/interviews-n-s/). His work was recognized by ASIFA-Hollywood with the Winsor McCay Award (http://youtu.be/9S2zLKbOIxk) for lifetime achievement in 2012 at the 39th Annual Annie Awards.
Walt Peregoy at work at the Disney Studio in 1958.
Animation Guild Prez Emeritus, USC Chair of Animation and author Tom Sito wrote:
The wonderful Walt Peregoy has left us.
One of the last great designers on 101 Dalmatians. He was fun to be around. He ran counter to the image of that Disney artist "Aw-shucks, gee-whiz" gentility. A real salty dog, whose language could make a sailor blush, which is probably why he was not interviewed more.
But he was proud to be a Disney artist, proud of his achievements, and demanded respect for his talent. He encouraged other young artists not to feel bad or be intimidated because they had talent. If you're good, dammit, let the world know.
RIP Walt, a well deserved rest.
"Walt was one of the most talented, difficult, brilliant, ornery, honest artists I ever worked with," remembered Marty Sklar, Disney Legend and former vice chairman and principal creative executive of Walt Disney Imagineering. "He was a prolific artist of subjects he loved: far-out city concepts, shapes and colors. He also loved horses - just look at the anatomy and dynamic movement in his drawings of horses. You knew right away that there was knowledge and love in those drawings! There were few who equaled his work, and I'm so glad I had a chance to work him."
Below, a gallery of artwork by Peregoy:
Color keys from "One Hundred and One Dalmatians" (1961).
"Paul Bunyan" (1958) background painting by Walt Peregoy.
"The Sword in the Stone" (1963) background concept painting.
Concept paintings for a Disney industrial film "Steel and America" (1965).
"The Jungle Book" (1967) concept painting.
Concept paintings for Symphony of the Seed attraction at EPCOT's The Land pavilion. Painted ca. 1980.
"Railroad Non-Objective," a personal painting by Peregoy.
I just heard yesterday that veteran nineties voice actress Christine Cavanaugh passed away over a week ago on December 22. It's so sad because I really loved her work. She was born in Utah and moved to California after college to pursue her acting career. Probably best known as the voice of Chuckie from Rugrats, Babe the Pig from Babe and Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory, she also worked on Darkwing Duck, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Critic, Cave Kids, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, 101 Dalmatians: The Series and others. She retired in 2001 at age 38 to be closer to her family and was never heard from again until now. A long and prolific voice career, but 51? Way too early to go. She did not have any children and divorced her husband whom she met in college at University of Hawaii. Her friends are paying their respects including Tara Strong, Candi Milo, Bill Farmer and EG Daily. Tad Stones, producer of Darkwing Duck, said this about Ms. Cavanaugh:
Christine Cavanaugh was the heart of my most popular series. Without Gosalyn, Darkwing Duck would not have sold. And without Chrissy, Gosalyn wouldn't have had the balance of sweet and mischievous that made her such a memorable character.
Tonight, Turner Classic Movies is pleased to present a new recurring on-air showcase series of Treasures from the Disney Vault. Several times a year, hosted by Ben Mankiewicz and Leonard Maltin, TCM will introduce a wide array of Disney classics for the entire family to enjoy, including animated shorts, feature films, live-action movies, documentaries, nature films and made-for-television movies.
The opening evening will feature three classic Silly Symphonies shorts Santa's Workshop (1932), On Ice (1935) and Chip An' Dale (1947); followed by the first episode of Walt Disney's long-running weekly TV series introduced by Ben and Disney Imagineer Gary Landrum, The Disneyland Story (1954). The night will also include the wonderful behind-the-scenes film that combined a live-action tour of the Walt Disney Studios facility with animated shorts featuring Robert Benchley, The Reluctant Dragon (1941); a personal favorite of mine, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955); the Oscar-winning True Life Adventure The Vanishing Prairie (1954); another film I like, Third Man on the Mountain (1959) starring Michael Rennie, James MacArthur, Janet Munro, and Herbert Lom; and Perilous Assignment, an hour long behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of the movie on location in Switzerland.
The fun begins at 8 pm. There will be more to come in the new year, including live-action Disney features Treasure Island (1950), Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) and Pollyanna (1960); animated films The Three Caballeros (1944) and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949); classic nature documentaries The Living Desert (1953) and The African Lion (1955); made-for-television classics the Davy Crockett series; special episodes from Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color; documentaries about the studio, Walt & El Grupo (2009) and Waking Sleeping Beauty (2010); and 1932 Oscar-winning animated short Flowers and Trees.
Martha Sigall has passed away at the age of 97.
Martha Goldman Sigall was born on April 17, 1917 in New York. She spent much of her life in the animation business mainly working in the ink and paint department and other associated activities at various studios, eventually compiling over fifty years in the Hollywood industry.
Moving to California in 1926 where by chance living around the corner from Leon Schlesinger's Pacific Title and Art company, she ran errands for the staff at around the age of 12. On July 13, 1936, she became a painter at Leon Schlesinger Productions (Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies), starting out at $12.75 a week, then later an inker. After leaving Schlesinger, she worked at Graphic Films (a small Hollywood animation house which served as a precursor to UPA) and MGM studios in the Cartoon Department unit as an assistant in the camera room, as well as free-lanced on numerous projects from The Pink Panther to Garfield and ink and paint artist on Animalympics and Snoopy: The Musical.
She has received a Golden Award from the Animation Guild in 1989 and the June Foray Award from ASIFA-Hollywood at the Annies in 2004, and she was a guest of honor at the San Diego Comic Con in 2005. Martha has contributed to commentary on several Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs and documentaries reminiscing her memories at Termite Terrace.
Martha had every animation history book and a private collection of every Warner Bros. cartoon on VHS. Sigall not only worked with, and knew, many of the greats in the industry: Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Mike Maltese, Frank Tashlin, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, Leon Schlesinger, Irv Spence, and so on, but was personal friends with all of them, their wives, and their families. She loved talking about stories of how fun animation was and her days at Schlesinger's studio (she had co-edited the in-house newsletter in the early 40s!) and her later jobs during the golden age, that she wrote an autobiography/memoir, Living Life Inside the Lines: Tales from the Golden Age of Animation (I highly recommend her book for those who love those old, black-and-white cartoons). In it, she reveals Leon Schlesinger was a genuinely nice man with a sense of humor and talks about Mel Blanc and many other people, some of whom, like assistant animator Harold Soldinger, no stories had ever been written. She has had wild experiences working and laughing with the Looney Tunes crew, partying with them on bowling and baseball nights and weekend scavenger hunts, and performing in the company's theatrical troupe.
She loved listening to light classical music, reading WatchWorks comics, and is a fan of Netherlands artist Edo Draaijer. She spent her final years of retirement in Culver City and was friends with many people in the animation community, such as Jerry Beck, Keith Scott, Stan Freberg, June Foray, Art Leonardi, Willie Ito, Dan Haskett, Nancy Beiman, Floyd Norman, Ken Duncan, Bob Kurtz, Tom Warburton, Jenny Lerew, Steve Hulett, Tom Sito, Mike Peraza, and Tom Ruegger.
Martha was more than an ink and paint girl. She was a bright link to animation's past. Someone who was there near the beginning. She cared for the work, she cared for her fans, she cared for the history that she embodied. She was a great person and will be truly missed. Now she is off to heaven to join her husband Sol and the rest of the Schlesinger staff.
Rest in Peace and thanks, Martha.
Five days ago, I went back to the Walt Disney Family Museum for the second part of the Animation Basics seminar series. The second class was about design and character development, the use of maquettes, and casting and voiceover for the role. The guest speakers were Ricky Nierva, production designer; Matt Nolte, an animator; Jerome Ranft, character sculptor; Kevin Reher, casting director/feature producer; and Natalie Lyon, casting manager.
Ricky Nierva describes his role as Pixar production designer as the person in charge of the overall look of the film and makes sure it fits the director's vision. When he graduated from CalArts, he worked in the clean-up department for The Lion King. After working as a storyboard artist for Dexter's Laboratory at Hanna-Barbera, he left with Ralph Eggleston to Pixar where he became a storyboard artist on Toy Story 2, lead character designer on Monsters Inc, character art director on Finding Nemo, and production designer of Up and Monsters University. Ricky showed us some early drawings of Sulley to his final look and how the character transformed; in the early stages, some of the drawings had Sulley skinny with tentacles for legs and was originally a terrible scarer. He presented a quote by Steve Jobs that helps him with his work, "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." In the first seminar from an earlier post, Ronnie explained storyboarding is RE-storyboarding. Ricky explains designing is similar, as in designing is RE-designing. He showed a page from Illusion of Life (an animation book by veteran Disney animators, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, that both he and I highly recommend) drawings of realistic snakes and how they evolved to become Kaa from The Jungle Book. Part of working as a designer is doing a lot of research. For example, he and several artists visited a university ichthyology research center to study what a fish looks like, how they move and what their personalities are like. He later showed many beautiful drawings he did for Finding Nemo; thousands of drawings were made during production, since "everybody has a million bad drawings in them and the only way to make a good drawing is to draw them out." However, Ricky taught that you are your worst critic and it is best to work with a team. He recounted one drawing of Bruce the shark he thought was terrible and wanted to throw it in the garbage, but some other artist insisted the drawing was great and wanted him to hold onto it. When designing, Ricky looks for simplicity. When designing Carl, Ricky shaped his head like a square because a square represents immobility and someone stuck in his ways, which described Carl himself, and was influenced by Spencer Tracy. For Russell, he drew a circle for his head because a circle represents someone who is dynamic. Ricky showed an animation test and many drawings of Carl and how he evolved to his final design, while trying to see how he can be improved; there were these drawings of Carl doing various things, such as balancing spoons on his face and just trying to find his personality. Ricky also told us how he received an amazing photo of a man who looks just like Carl!!
He also was told by a person who watched Finding Nemo that Dory looks like Ellen DeGeneres. Although she voiced her, Ricky didn't think Dory looked anything like her, but he was really glad that Dory's character portrays Ellen's characteristics. Lastly, Ricky taught us a few things about art and design: find character and essence, not a beautiful drawing; explore; inspiration is everywhere; and draw like a child.
Matt Nolte has been working at Pixar for ten years. When he graduated from CalArts, he saw Toy Story and was entranced by the animation and his desire to work at Pixar, but also scared at having to work with computers. He is a big fan of Bill Peet, who worked in the story deparment at Disney in the forties and fifties and later wrote and illustrated his own books. Matt spent the the second half of his discussion describing his job as character art director and work on Brave. He works drawing the characters, finding their personalities, relationships with other characters, and how they fit into each scene. He likes to listen to music while drawing fit to the assignment and noted numerous times to working closely with production designer Steve Pilcher while working on Brave, as well as director Brenda Chapman. Matt showed us a drawing of Merida giving Elinor the cake and how she slowly transformed into a bear. However, the transformation was too cartoony and silly, he was told to look up the works of animator Jiri Trnka (I plan to post something about him in the future) for inspiration, which shows a lot of power to make the movie like a dark fairy tale. When designing Elinor as a bear, Matt looked up many different species of bears, particularly polar bears. Matt patterned a polar bear's mannerisms to Elinor as a bear because Elinor is proper and elegant (she hasn't changed on the inside) and polar bears are regal. Matt explained it is a long process drawing up the characters because you usually don't find out who the character is until the end. When Brave was complete, he related to Merida and her horse Angus to him and his mountain bike. He has three children and lots of pets.
Jerome Ranft grew up in Whittier and loved going to Disneyland. After studying sculpturing, his first job was a sculptor on The Nightmare Before Christmas and his first job at Pixar was a freelance sculptor for A Bug's Life. Some years later, Pete Docter called him at Las Vegas to work on Monsters Inc and worked on many more films later. Jerome often builds his sculptures out of steel and his greatest influence is sculptor Herbert Haseltine. He also works with Imagineering when statues of Pixar characters are being built for amusement parks, consulting with the employees on keeping the character's essence.
Kevin Reher and Natalie Lyon, Pixar casting directors who have been working together for several years, explained the process of casting actors for animated movies. Once a script has been approved, a team of story artists create drawings of the characters and the casting director tries to think actors who would be a perfect candidate to do the voice. Casting directors are usually provided a voice sample of an employee giving the casting director an idea of what the character should sound like. Sometimes, it isn't temporary. Examples include Edna (Brad Bird), Squishy (Peter Sohn), Eve (Elissa Knight), Crush (Andrew Stanton), Roz and Dug (both Bob Peterson), Linguini (Lou Romano), and Heimlich (Joe Ranft). When finding a possible actor to hire, they have a character sketch with audio clippings of the actor to see if the actor is a good choice. A sketch of Lord Macintosh, MacGuffin and Dingwall were attached to audio clips from movies and interviews of their respective actors Craig Ferguson, Kevin McKidd and Robbie Coltrane (one line was from Hagrid of the Harry Potter films). Kevin and Natalie recommended tips on finding actors: no Saturday morning cartoon voices (too cartoony, exageratted); funny is money (find actors who bring comedy to the character); and a casting director needs to find animate-able voices, a voice that can help the artists flesh out the character. Casting directors want to find people who can evoke a character and animators study the voice and personality. They also recommended to not hold auditions or cast actors too late (originally Pixar tried to get Fran Drescher to voice Rosie the spider from A Bug's Life) or too early (in many of their past movies, there were too many actors to choose on to voice one character). Although Kevin and Natalie prefer having the actors stick to the script, they do sometimes allow opportunities for them to improvise, like Billy Crystal for example ("I'm giving you gold here"). They showed a clip of Tom Hanks on Bravo talking about his experience voicing on Toy Story, which he explained he would be sitting in a booth running through his lines or saying a single line in different ways in front of the casting director and several people who looked like "East German Communist judges." Lastly, they showed some behind-the-scenes clips of actors from Monsters University performing their lines.
During the Q&A, there was one person who talked about how much she loved and really connected to the movie Brave (this is because they had such a strong director) and another person talked about John Ratzenberger's roles (who is their good luck charm and has voiced in all of the Pixar films). At the end, I got to meet all five speakers and sign my sketchbook; I was able to talk to Jerome about his relationship with his brother Joe. The remaining three seminars are all happening in the spring back-to-back with the animation seminar at the end of February, the music seminar in March, and the lighting seminar in April. Purchase your ticket at www.waltdisney.org
Walt Disney (1901-1966) is without a doubt one of the most influential and significant figures of the twentieth century. What child doesn't grow up watching Disney films?
Walt Disney is an American hero - the creator of Mickey Mouse - and a man who has made a lasting impact on the art of the animated film. His success story is like none other: a cartoonist from Kansas City who went bankrupt on his first movie venture but later became the creative genius who produced unmatched works of animation.
I have been wanting to do a post on him for a long time, which is why I decided to do that today because it is Walt Disney's 113th birthday.
It would be unthinkable to do this blog and not once mention him. He is the reason why people got interested in animation in the twentieth century and why we still love it today. His animation did more than change it into an art form, he forever changed the entertainment world and the lives of many people, including mine.
To celebrate his legacy, here are some pictures to enjoy. I had so many that it was hard to only pick a few.
