Coming back to Winnie the Pooh!

Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree

Released:  February 4, 1966

Well, I thought I would come back to a previous subject and to follow-up from my Sister's birthday last month.  If you remember my earlier post honoring one of Kim's favorite characters Winnie the Pooh, I have finally found some time to assemble a more respectable image of the production background and the production cels that I was able to find over the years.  

First up is a better view of the complete setup.  It measures out at 16 field and the cels were trimmed to outline of the characters and placed on a new cel.  It includes a number of production markings and also mentions, someone by the name of Mimi?  I wonder want  she played during the production of this featurette.  I was not able to find any film credits on her.  The background appears in the film in sequence 1 in scenes 540.1 and 550.  Below is how the new composited production setup looks. 

                              Original Production Background Setup, watercolor on paper

                                gouache on trimmed celluloid

                              Acquired:  May 20, 2011

                              Artist:  Unknown

                              Sequence 1, Scene 540.1, 550; Sequence 2, scene 119

As mentioned earlier, the production cels have been trimmed to outlined and placed on a blank 16 field cel.  They really go well with the production background.

                              Original Production Cel Setup, gouache on trimmed celluloid 

                              Acquired:  December 20, 2009

                              Artist:  Unknown

                              Sequence 2, Scene 116

                           

Finally, here is more detail view of the production background.  It is painted in a soft palette of watercolor with ink highlights and even perhaps xerographic printed image of the background layout.  Unlike my other background from this piece does not have a Xerox overlay cel of the original layout drawing.  The colors are rich and subtle and I love the way they really make the characters come alive in the scene.

                              Original Production Background Setup, watercolor on paper

                              Acquired:  May 20, 2011

                              Artist:  Unknown

                              Sequence 1, Scene 540.1, 550

The background was clearly painted before April 27, 1965 as noted by the date for when the piece went under the camera.  A full year before I was even born!   The painting was done up on a thick type of paper similar to my other Winnie the Pooh master setup featured in an earlier blog.

So can anyone tell me who Mimi is?  What do you think?