There’s a great post about the classic Ward Kimball short TOOT WHISTLE PLUNK AND BOOM (1953) at the appropriately named Ward-O-Matic, the blog of Atlanta-based animation director Ward Jenkins. The entry includes dozens of frame grabs, which are inspiring to look at even if you’ve already seen the film countless times, as most readers of the Brew surely have. In these stills, one can admire the amazing character design work of Tom Oreb and color styling of Eyvind Earle, but the film is equally impressive to watch in motion (which is not always the case with highly styled animation). The inventive graphic movement created by Kimball, Art Stevens, Julius Svendsen and Marc Davis adds the perfect complement to the contemporary designs of Oreb and Earle. I can’t say enough great things about this cartoon, but don’t take my word — just check out all the visual goodness at Ward’s site.

After the recent post about Ward Kimball paintings, somebody emailed to ask whether I had a color version of Kimball’s painting of Disney colleagues Tom Oreb and Jesse Marsh, which was printed in ANIMATION BLAST #6. Indeed I do. Click on it for the full image.

I saw this drawing by Tom Oreb (character stylist on SLEEPING BEAUTY and TOOT, WHISTLE PLUNK & BOOM) for the first time yesterday. I’m not sure what it’s from, though it seems to be a design/layout drawing for the DICK TRACY TV series (1960) or a sketch from that era. For all its simplicity, the drawing works beautifully. It has personality, style and humor (the hands especially are funny), but more than anything, it’s just plain fun to look at. Oreb knew exactly where to add little hints of dimension, showing the underbrim of a hat and the inside of a character’s shirt, to give a sense of form to the otherwise flat designs. And below is a page of doodles by Oreb. Not quite as impressive, but still nice to see (click on the image for the full version).