Scarlett Stahl: Mary Blair's World of Color
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The final panel included Pete Docter, Michael Giaimo (art director, character designer and visual development artist for Pocahontas as well as visual development artist for Home on the Range), Eric Goldberg; Susan   Goldberg; and Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi (art director on Toy Story 3).  

Pete Docter collects Mary Blair artwork and said “It’s that Mark Twain thing…quote from Mark Twain: 'I’m sorry I didn’t have time to write you a short letter so I wrote you a long one…..' You can easily stick in tons and tons of details but to simplify it down to its bare essences is where the artistry comes in and that’s what is so striking about Mary’s work.”

Eric Goldberg talked about not only Mary’s color sense but also her shape designs. He is a great admirer of Al Hirschfeld, which led him to curvy characters, a concept for Disney in Aladdin to make it more graphic. When he had his chalk talk, he told them “You’ve already animated in this style in Once Upon a Wintertime.” He explained that they had used Mary’s character designs verbatim in the film as well as her environmental designs and that those characters had a kind of beautiful organic shape to them,

Susan Goldberg admitted that Mary had a strong influence on her as a girl. She mentioned that even though Mary’s colors were extreme, you weren’t overwhelmed by them as she had a unique way of using the colors with lighting, which was spectacular. As an example, Susan referred to the gray hedges in Alice in Wonderland with all the bright colors in front, which made the audience focus on the characters and action, rather than being distracted by the background. She also referred to the fact that during Mary’s time at Disney, it was unusual for a woman to be in a prominent position, which is still occuring today.

Michael Giaimo said that Mary was ahead of her time by about twenty five years as she was a modernist like Picasso. He mentioned that her childish natural quality of work appealed to Walt Disney along with her explosion of color. Her use of color influenced the colors that were used in Pocahontas Colors of the Wind, which he worked on.

Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi was first introduced to Mary Blair’s work by Charles Solomon, who was a history teacher at a Disney boot camp. He said that a lot of students were copying Mary’s style but he thought it important that they incorporate her whimsy and charm as well as technique in their work. He felt communication and simplicity work best in films and that is what Mary did so well.

The evening ended after a short question and answer session with the audience. It was short as most everything had already been answered due to Charles Solomon’s skillful handling.

As a footnote:  
It has been said that Animation Art is the true American art form. This event was immensely enjoyable but also was a discussion and demonstration about Animation Art being a very serious form of art, which will eventually be accepted in many more museums than it presently is. Overheard were a few guests, uninitiated in animation art, who said that they had learned so very much about this form of art, which previously they had only thought of it as entertaining and amusing cartoons.

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-- Posted October 25, 2011
-- Text and Pictures by Scarlett Stahl