THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER

It's not uncommon for an animation production to outsource some of their work to other studios in order to meet deadlines. While doing freelance animation for Broadcast Arts (the largest animation house in NYC at the time doing work for Disney and others, but now long gone), I was given the opportunity to work on this promotional piece for Disney's upcoming The Prince and the Pauper, starring Mickey Mouse and company. I believe it was for a commercial. The above pencil test animation is the only remaining artwork I have of my involvement on the project. I remember this was my first pass at it and tweaked it several times before it was approved and sent off to clean up, ink and paint, and then camera. I only did the ruff pencil animation for this and never did see the final version of the promo; which wasn't uncommon at that time. A freelance animator usually never saw the final commercial, only having worked on a portion of the whole. My final version (all hand drawn on paper) was passed off to the next phase of production which was clean up and done by another artist. Since this was my first go at the shot, I tweaked the animation to Disney's liking with a whole new set of drawings. That's why I still have these. The final was pretty much the same, only having added some more inbetweens in places to smooth out the action and tying down the drawings of Mickey walking off at the end of the shot. I scanned these drawings into the ADOBE ANIMATE program to recreate this in digital form. I never did see the commercial and have no clue who it was produced for. It wasn't uncommon for a lot of the promotional stuff like this to be slated for viewing overseas and not for the USA market, so who knows?  Enjoy!

Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck copyright The Walt Disney Company and used here for educational purposes only.