The Bare Necessities, The Jungle Book, Disney

Anyone who loves animation loves The Jungle Book. Great animation, great music, great everything. Disney at their best back in 1967. You could say that this was the end of an era as Walt died during its production. It may not be thick on plot, it may have lost a lot of the book, but it makes it all up in sheer style. Its renowned soundtrack features five songs by the Sherman Brothers, but the one that stays in everyones mind is, of course The Bare Necessities by Gilkyson.

Anyone looking into how to do character animation should study The Jungle Book. It’s interesting to listen to Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson talk about this animation. They were part of a team at Disney that pretty much invented character animation as we know it today. It doesn’t matter what medium you’re working these are the people who wrote the bible of character animation, “The Illlusion of Life”. It is still recomended today. This is where the twelve principles of animation comes from. The idea for Baloo scratching came from studying real bear footage which showed that bears really like to scratch. The eyes are what draw you into a character. The snake Kaa has no arms so the animators improvised by using the coils.