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Hercules

Released:  June 27, 1997

Worldwide Box Office:  $252,700,000

One of my favorite films from Disney's contemporary time period in the 90's was Hercules.  I have always been a bit of a fan of Greek mythology anyway from watching some of the Sinbad movies from mid-20th century and of course there was the Clash of the Titans released in 1981.  So when Disney decided to do their first feature film with mythological characters I was excited to see what they had in store.  

As I had mentioned in previous posts Disney would typically sell selected production pieces from their films during this time at Sotheby's.  Hercules was no exception and I was lucky enough to attend the auction and walk away with a piece that I liked.  On June 20, 1998, the sale offered the fewest number of lots for sale for a Disney animation auction (total of 125). This film enjoyed similar success as experienced with Hunchback and the auction prices again reflected this. 

As I perused the pre-auction viewings at their York Avenue showroom, what was particularly interesting with the lots offered from Hercules was the field size for most of the backgrounds and corresponding cels.  The majority of the pieces offered were larger than the typical 12 and 16 field sizes.  Many in fact were 25 field with many being pan sized backgrounds.   The cover piece in particular was huge. I can only imagine what the animator had to go through creating such large drawings!   I have often wondered if the field of size was in relation to the production designer, Gerald Scarfe?   Mr Scarfe is known for his very fanciful and linear illustrations that frequently appeared in the New Yorker magazine.

Here is my piece, lot 64 on the exhibition wall at Sotheby's offset location during the pre-auction viewing.  My piece measures 19 1/2 by 25 inches....quite a sizable key master and the framed piece is even larger.

What was a lot of fun as well was to see the maquettes.  They were beautifully painted and were very large in scale.  I particularly love Pegasus and Zeus.  As some of you may know I love to collect these as well.  More to share in this space in another post.

With my more limited budget at the time, I was very happy to pickup a multi-layered production background as I had an idea for how I wanted to frame and ultimately display the piece.  I was successful with lot 64 that included both Herc and Phil.  It is comprised of a character cel, 3 underlay cel levels and a single temple on the painted on crescent board (back-most top middle above Herc).

  

                             Original Key Master Setup, gouache on celluloid and board

                             Acquired:  June 20 19, 1998
                             Sequence 11, Scene 44, 45 & 46

                             Artist:  Various

What I particularly like about this piece is that it had the different layers that added depth and dimension  as well of course featuring a funny scene with the main characters.  The piece is also feature in the "Art of Hercules" book and can be see on page 168.   This piece depicts a key place in the film and I also like to have backgrounds that can speak for themselves without the character cel.  There is a lot to view in this very detailed background of what looks like a "New York" version of the city of Thebes.  One of the other fun features of this background is that it appears in the film in three separate scenes (as noted above).  It is a fun piece and has more film time than most backgrounds.

                             Original production background, gouache on board

                             Acquired:  June 20 19, 1998
                             Sequence 11, Scene 44, 45 & 46

                             Artist:  Unknown