Monday, December 31, 2007

The Genius of Marc Davis



Here you can see the evolution of two of my favorite scenes, the Wench Auction & Carlos at the well. The opening shot is from a Pirates of the Caribbean booklet that I have had since it was originally published, and have read and re-read it many a time. It’s great to see Davis surrounded by all of his sketches for this classic attraction. First up are a few Marc Davis sketches; I love this man’s style. He really put characters in to his characters! The Red Headed Wench seemed to have the most changes from sketch to reality; the final AA figure is definitely more buxom!





Next up we have the first 3d rendering, a very detailed small model:



This shot appears to be a larger (and extremely detailed) model:



The scene as first displayed, shown in these Panavue Slide views:





And how it looks now; not a whole lot of change going on here, which suits me just fine. Jack Sparrow not needed here:





Moving on to scene 2, this is the famous well scene, with the mayor getting dunked while his beloved snaggle-toothed lady tells him not to be “cheeee—ken” (chicken, for those of you who don’t speak snaggletooth). First we see the Davis sketch for the next three waiting to be dunked (or shot).



And here is the scene in 3D, displayed in a finely detailed miniature; one would have to look hard to be sure that this is not the actual scene itself.



Next up is the scene as it was first shown to guests, courtesy of this Panavue slide:



And a few recent shots; the biggest changes to this scene are the new lines of dialogue that now include Jack Sparrow.









To all, I wish you a very Happy New Year! See you in ’08!

See more vintage and contemporary Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean photos at my main website.

5 comments:

Brian said...

Marc Davis was one of the big art influences for me. His work inspired me to use pen and ink with washes of color on top. And all because i had some postcards out of a vending machine at Disneyland.

I got to meet him right before he died at the Disney Villains show at the Cartoon Art Museum where he rambled on and on much to the delight of everyone attending. I was so happy to meet him in person.

Unknown said...

Awesome post, Dave!

'Nuff said...

FoxxFur said...

Where did you get that image of the second model? I'm not sure it's so much a model as a mock-up. We know that WED made full size mock-ups of some of the audio-animatronics for the Haunted Mansion before building the real thing to test whatever it is they wanted to test; the only photo we had for years of the Hat-Box Ghost proved to be a mock-up version. I know there's also a mock-up version of the ghost bride that was made; a photo of it was appearing in WDW souvenir guides in the late 80's. The fact that the scenery is made of just painted cloth or plastic in that photo lads me to believe that this is a shot of a WED mock-up to the attraction. It makes sense, I mean, this was the first time they were dealing with so many figures all at once, they'd probably want to pre-stage it before pressing "Go!"

Daveland said...

Foxxfur: The 2 bw photos that I refer to as models came with a batch of 1966 Disneyland publicity photos, most heralding New Orleans Square's opening.

sambycat said...

what i love about this post - and your site in general - is the nostalgic photographs (duh) and this entry just reminds me how much of my love for disneyland came through my memories and my view master slides! i mean what other park or place would/could kids sit and imagine about after having been there (or not considering i was afraid to ride the haunted mansion for a long long long time, but i loved my slides!)...

sigh! thanks for the work you do!