The Queen Transforms

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

Released:  December 21, 1937

Several years ago, I had the privilege of meeting and getting to know Snow White art collector, Stephen Ison.  Over the course of a number of conversations, Mr. Ison shared some information about his collecting interests and had offered me the chance to stop by and view his collection if I ever made it to Indianapolis.  Well being that my family lives less than two hours away in Dayton, Ohio, I could not resist the temptation to view his extensive collection and accept his offer.  Mr. Ison had just completed a move into a new house where an entire third floor of his home was dedicated to his animation collection and in particular his Snow White art.  Stacked three high all the way around the vast room, his collection was beautifully showcased in a museum like manner.   Complete with furniture crafted in Albert Hurter style, his private museum showcased the best pieces from his book published by the Indianapolis Museum of Art exhibit several years before.  I particularly wanted to see the cel setup of the magic potion scene and the background setup of Snow White at the wishing well.  Both setups were stunning and it was great fun sharing stories about our collecting experiences.  In fact you can see this setup first hand in my earlier post on my April trip to SFO.   His collecting focus with one film had rekindled my interest in acquiring pieces from this early era of Disney animation and in particular Snow White.   

Another key piece in my collection is this remarkable drawing set of the Wicked Queen.   This five drawing set is from the transformation sequence where the Queen changes from her beautiful evil self to the Old Hag after drinking the magic potion.  Depicted below is a composite of all five drawings as seen onscreen during that fateful moment.  The Queen is drawn in graphite on a 16 field animation sheet with four individual drawings for the whirlwind effects, bubbles and lightning.  I just love the detail that you can see on the bubble effects drawing alone.  Keep in mind that all elements in the screenshot were completed by hand and without the aid of modern technology that we have today.

Original production drawing composite, five production drawings, graphite and colored pencil on 16 field animation paper, digitally composited

Supervising Animator (Queen):  Art Babbitt

Effects animation: Various Studio, unknown

Scene 7a, Scene 21a  
Acquired:  September 27, 2003

This drawing setup is rare and when an animation colleague from Los Angeles offered this to me from his private collection, I could not wait to see it up close.  I am a big fan of understanding the animation process and learning the techniques on how the filmshot is ultimately created.  This drawing set really showcases that process.   In the above setup, I have composited the five drawings (using Photoshop) to illustrate how the scene would have come together in the film.  From the drawings in this set, I don't believe all of these are key to each other but they are from the same scene after examining the scene are frames apart from each other.  But you get the idea of how cool this set recreates what you see on the big screen.

To show the art further, here are the individual drawings below.  The shot starts out with the swirling effect as the bottom-most cel in the scene.  If you have been following along with most of my posts, you probably would agree with why I chose this drawing as part of my blog logo.  Enjoying this art form has a way of pulling you in!

Next, we would add the bubble effects and lightning.

We continue with the wicked Queen just before she falls out of the camera view and begins her transformation.  Art Babbit was one of the key animators who worked on the wicked Queen and he personal supervised the animation of this scene.  Considering her narcissistic personality, the Queen exemplifies a calm evil nature while remaining definingly beautiful.  One of the best Disney villains to show up on the screen even after 75 years.  She is an amazing character and to think that she is nothing more than a drawn image!

And lastly, we layer on the final effects animation cel of the counter swirl to add more dimension to the scene.

The amount of hand-drawn effects to create one frame of animation is staggering when you think of the work involved.  Very impressive setup!