Thoughtful Pinocchio

Pinocchio

Released: February 7, 1940                   

Animation art takes many different forms and shapes on its journey to ultimately tell a story on the big or little screen.  When I bought my first piece in 1987, I was only interested in 2D animation art.  I really wanted to focus on the place or feeling that allowed me to travel to a different world than where I was.  Drawings and/or cels were principally what I could afford at the time, and it was very big thrill to freeze frame the video and find your art on the TV screen.  This helped to provide necessary provenance to assure that I was buying an authentic piece until I could learn more about the genre.

It wasn’t until the year 2000, that my interest in animation took a different turn with the purchase of my first animation sculpture of Milo from Disney's Atlantis.  I was excited to pickup my first 3D production piece and hold Milo's world literally in my hand.  I will share that fun story at another time, but from that moment I realized that I had been ignoring a key area of the production process.

Production maquettes, which is a French word meaning “a small model”, have been used as reference on animator’s desk at the Disney Studio since the first feature film Snow White.  Maquettes not only allowed me see to the character,  but also to touch it first hand in a real 3D perspective.  Up until that time I really wasn’t interested in maquettes as I could only experience the escapism I enjoyed with 2D art.  However as my collection continued to grow and encompass all aspects of the production process so did my interest in all forms of animation art.

                                         Original maquette, plaster, armature and paint sculpture, numbered 9

                                         Character Artist: Joe Grant

                                         Acquired:  June 7, 2009

This Pinocchio maquette is a wonderful plaster model created by the Disney’s character props department in the late 1930’s.  Designed by master story artist Joe Grant, this maquette was used by an animator at the studio as reference while creating animation drawings.  Marked number 9 the maquette shows wonderful character personality through Pinocchio’s pensive expression wondering how he will ever get back to see his father.