- Hi, I'm Jess.
- Hey, I'm Austin.
- Hi, I'm Floyd Norman,
veteran Disney artist and storyteller.
I worked on great films like "Sleeping Beauty,"
"101 Dalmatians," "Sword in the Stone,"
and Walt's final film, "The Jungle Book."
And that ties into our task today because
from Walt Disney's "The Jungle Book," we are going to
be drawing little Mowgli and Kaa the Python.
- Oh, man. That's gonna be cool.
(laughing)
- I'm scared.
(laughing)
- Floyd, speaking of what we're drawing today
do you have like a favorite sequence
from the jungle book that you worked on?
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
I would say hands down my favorite sequence,
because, I guess because I was so involved in it,
was the wonderful...
the second meeting of Mowgli and Kaa.
Walt wanted a song and Robert and Richard Sherman
wrote a song called, "Trust In Me."
That we took that song and Vance and I,
my partner, Vance Gerry, re-storyboarded the sequence.
We had already made one pass, but once we had a song,
at the suggestion of Walt Disney, we reboarded the sequence
and it's Mowgli as he sort of wanders around, half-dazed,
half-asleep and the coils of the snake
and beautifully animated by Frank Thomas.
I have to add that Frank, one of the nine old men,
did just a masterful job of bringing my drawings to life
on screen and just making that sequence sparkle.
Yeah, I've got a question for you guys
because you're younger.
And just coming into this amazing business.
Did you guys animate on paper?
Did you do traditional hand-drawn animation?
- Less for full animation and more for design for animation.
But in college, that's how we learned to animate
was traditionally.
- Yeah. Yeah.
The basics, the basics.
The bouncing ball.
Squash and stretch.
You got a sense of weight and volume.
These traditional animation principles still come in handy.
Even after you make the move to digital.
It's good to come from that.
You know, that basic solid foundation
- Like what's the secret to drawing
a good Mowgli and Kaa, Mr. Floyd?
- Well, you know, Mowgli and Kaa the Python were animated
by the top Disney animators.
And Milt Kahl in particular,
we would get Milt Kahl's drawings, his sketches
his rough sketches, not all his final sketches,
but his very rough drawings.
And we would study his technique.
That's how you got to be better.
That's how you became a better artist.
You saw the best work and you emulated that.
So how do you do a good Mowgli drawing?
How do you do a good drawing of Kaa the snake?
Study the work of those who are better than you are.
- Yeah. I draw with crayola.
So I'm just like sitting here.
- Doesn't matter.
- It's just like, "Oh, okay."
- You could still make a good drawing with a crayon.
Hey, Jess, Austin, how are your drawings coming?
(laughing)
- I think it's actually looking okay.
- How's your drawing coming, Floyd?
- My only challenge is to, as I often tell my students,
I try to draw him on model.
Because when a Disney character is drawn off-model,
oh boy, that's regarded as a sin.
(laughing) - Fear.
- You know, I started out in the 1950s.
By the time I got to the early seventies
and I was animating on a Disney feature film.
I was beginning to feel like maybe I know
a little bit about animation now.
And I was animating Robin Hood, and this was in Iran.
Yeah. The early seventies we were doing Robin Hood.
And I was animating the fox and it was fun.
I was enjoying myself and I was having a great time.
But, you know, it takes a while
to build that kind of confidence.
And you have to do a lot of bad stuff
before you can start to do a lot of good stuff.
- Would you say that was your favorite film?
- Actually, it was one of the films
that I liked the least at Disney.
(laughing)
Well, because of Walt Disney owned the studio
and probably it was his studio.
He could walk into your room at any moment unannounced.
And Walt would do that.
People don't, you know, big bosses
and executives don't do that today.
They usually, you know, when they're coming in
there's been announcements and preparations.
But Walt Disney could simply one day just wander
into your office and you look around
and there's the boss standing in your office.
- Oh my goodness.
- So you feel like, what you wanna do is just
fall off your chair and hide under your desk.
- But you can't.
- You can't.
Can't do that.
He's already seen you.
But that's okay.
He was a good guy.
I don't mean to say this, that Walt could be intimidating,
but he wasn't a bad guy.
You know, he was, he didn't treat people poorly.
He was very generous, very gracious.
And I never had any problems with the boss.
- Wow, that's awesome.
- Hey guys, how are you finishing your drawings?
- I'm making it up.
(laughing)
I'm just like,
"Hey, so I should probably draw a background."
Oh wait. I don't know how to draw those.
Anyway, time to make it up."
So like I'm drawing some...
I think what are leaves-
- Okay.
- and trees and bushes, and it's fine.
- Okay.
You don't necessarily have to draw a background.
I mean, you can just sometimes just throw
in a splash of color.
- Yeah, it's really not much of a background.
I say background to be nice to myself.
It's really just like blotches of color.
And I'm like, yeah, this is fine.
I don't know what I'm-
- Nothing wrong with a good blotch.
(laughing)
- We'll see.
You can be the judge of that.
- [Austin] Oh wow. - [Jess] Oh, so cute.
- [Austin] Oh my God.
- [Floyd] Wow.
- These are so cute.
- Geez.
Floyd, yours is so cute.
And you give it like a little blush.
- There's like no comparison.
It's just, it's a hundred percent.
It's a hundred percent Mowgli.
- The Mowgli up in the tree at night.
It's really interesting.
But even though that was one of the...
Some of the first stuff animated on "The Jungle Book"
was that sequence of Mowgli up in the tree at night
and Kaa, you know, sneaking around.
And then this is nice with the jungle background and Kaa.
Really nice.
- I love your poses, Austin.
It's so cute.
- I am very impressed.
These are really nice.
- Wow. Thank you.
- Yeah, you guys, you put me to shame.
- Oh, no.
- Don't say that.
(laughing)
- I'm gonna go scream.
- I've been upstaged by the kids.
(laughing)
- A hundred percent inspired by the master, so...
- Hey, I will give you the Walt Disney compliment, you know.
And Walt was not lavish handing out compliments.
But he...
if he liked what you did
he would say two words:
"That'll work."
- Oh.
- And that was high praise from Walt Disney.
"That'll work."
- I'm having a crisis...
I think I'm having a crisis right now.
(laughing)
- Austin just fangirling over here.
- I am. It's a lot.
I'm trying to keep it together.
I'm just like, "No, it's okay, like, be cool."
And I'm like losing it.
- To check out these drawings and more just like them.
Check us out on Instagram @drawoffshow.
(cheerful music)