Kent Melton, Disney And Laika Maquette Maker, Dies At 68
Kent Melton, a master sculptor best known for creating maquettes at Disney and Laika, died on Thursday, February 22, at his home in Stone County, Missouri. He was 68.
According to Melton’s family, the cause of death was Lewy body dementia.
Maquette-making is a highly specialized line of work, and Melton was the preeminent artist in the field for decades. In 2015, he was interviewed by Missouri’s 417 Magazine and explained the profession in his own words, saying:
“Maquette” is a term that goes way back to the Michelangelo era that means “model of something that will transform into a larger scale.” I’ll sculpt a maquette in a character moment that personifies who they are to the story. I have to put body language into the pose to express and sum up who this guy is to the story. I try to capture their likeness and essence of personality and position in the story. From that, they scan what I do and then do all other expressions and poses and repositions on the computer.
Melton was born in Springfield, Missouri, in 1955. Growing up in a rural area, Melton had no art education as a child, only what he called a “compulsion.”
“My mom said I started drawing compulsory before age two. Pretty much once I picked up a pencil, I was driven,” he explained.
As a child, Melton was frustrated that he didn’t have access to the toys from his favorite Saturday morning cartoons. Speaking with the Disney collectors group WDCC Caboodles, Melton recalled:
When I first discovered my ability for sculpting I was in the 6th grade. I lived out in the country and there were no stores anywhere near us. So it was rare for me to get store bought toys. I would see commercials on tv for toys that I would love to have and I made my own version of them. I sculpted Mad Magazine illustrations and things from popular culture… Charlie Brown, Beatles etc. I just always knew instinctively I was able to do it.
As an adult, sculpting became a vocation for Melton, and he would sell his work at specialist shows and conventions. While attending a Beatles convention in Chicago, he met Don Dougherty, who worked at Disney at the time. Dougherty told Melton that with his skills, he could make a living in Los Angeles.
“[Dougherty] knew another guy who promised me a job at Disney studios,” Melton recalled. “I ended up taking his advice, and I moved to L.A.”
Unfortunately, the person who offered him a job stopped returning phone calls when the Melton family arrived in L.A., leaving Melton without work and his family living out of a hotel.
By this time, Dougherty had moved to Hanna-Barbera and, according to Melton, felt guilty about the Disney deal falling through. To make up for the missed opportunity, Dougherty got Melton an interview with studio co-founder Joe Barbera.
Melton recalled Barbera saying something like, “Just hire the kid, we’ll figure out something to do with him,” and that’s how Melton landed a job as Hanna-Barbera’s first full-time sculptor. However, his tenure there was short, and Melton said that the studio never did figure out what to do with him. He said he would spend his days at the studio sculpting characters from The Flintstones and The Jetsons.
“I was mostly sculpting from their library. In television animation,” Melton explained. “It’s what they call limited animation, and it doesn’t require sculptures for reference like in feature animation films.
Melton’s continued to pursue feature animation, but it would be several years before he got there. In the meantime, he put in shifts on The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, based on Martin Short’s popular SCTV character, and Tiny Toon Adventures, while regularly submitting his resume to Disney in the hopes of landing a job at the studio.
However, it wasn’t one of those resumes that opened the Disney door for Melton. Instead, it was a chance encounter at his son’s fourth birthday party. The father of one of the other children in attendance was an art director at Disney and noticed Melton’s sculptures while in his home. Recalling the serendipitous circumstances, Melton explained:
The next week, I got a phone call from Disney. It turns out the guy at the birthday party was an art director at Disney. He saw my work, and the next day, he was walking past directors for Aladdin, who were talking about how they needed sculptors for maquettes. He passed on the birthday party invitation with my number on it. They called me, and as they say, the rest is history. With Disney I worked for about 16 films from Aladdin to Tangled.
On Aladdin, Melton created the model used as a base for the cg-animated Cave of Wonders tiger head. According to Melton, that film always held a special place in his heart:
I remember the experience so profoundly. I had never worked on [an animated] feature film before, and I had never seen anything that I’ve done be projected on a screen the size of a house. I did the Cave of Wonders with the big tiger head that talks and moves. And that character was the first computer-animated character ever done in a feature animated film, before Pixar even. When I saw it on film, I said, “It’s alive! I created this thing!” It was scanned right off of my sculpture. And it was so nice because I was just this kid who grew up on a farm, and here I am, sitting in a theater with this giant character that I made happen. I haven’t experienced it since. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but that was the most profound experience.
Other Disney films for which Melton crafted maquettes included The Lion King, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, Tarzan and Atlantis: The Lost Empire. His maquettes were also used for Pixar’s The Incredibles.
In addition to crafting maquettes at Disney, Melton was heavily involved in creating porcelain collectibles for many of the company’s iconic characters. He even got to work closely with Marc Davis, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men, on a series of figures. Melton recalled the experience fondly in the below Instagram post.
After leaving Disney, Melton continued to work in feature animation at Portland’s Laika, creating maquettes for Coraline, ParaNorman, and The Boxtrolls.
Wrapping up his 417 interview, Melton was asked if there was anything he hoped other artists could learn from his career. He replied:
There are so many people who will criticize you and tell you can’t do things. It’s a lot more fun to hang out with people who say, you know what, you can do that. Nothing is impossible. If a guy who didn’t have any art training can be where I’m at, anything is possible. I’m just a guy.
Melton is survived by his wife, Martha; children Seth, Jordan, and Nellie; and grandchildren, Persephone, Toby, Juliet, and Charlie.
Pictured at top: Kent Melton in the 1980s; maquettes from Aladdin