artist research: milt kahl

Milt Kahl is one of history's most renowned animators, most noticeably for his work for Disney. As one of Disney's Nine Old Men, Kahl was considered the finest draughtsman of Disney's animators. Back in the day when each character was animated solely by animator, Kahl was significant in portraying Disney's original and unique style of character design.

I've always loved the character designs of Disney's work and more specifically the characters put forward in the earliest days of Disney. Thanks to Kahl it was easy to recognise a Disney character from elsewhere and the animation process that Kahl took the ideas from Ken Anderson and Bill Peet and polished them into the recognisable characters I know of today.

I appreciate Kahl's line work in all the examples shown above as each individual character develops through simple sequence drawings and looking at them in comparison to my own work and ideas I can really see where I can improve and also generate new techniques.

Through Kahl's work in Disneys' Robin Hood, even from a young age, I have tried to mimic the ways in which he worked each animated sequence and the movement he portrayed with each character, something I aim to work on. Through Kahl's examples I am able to see where I am going wrong, what I am doing right and also can highlight where I aim to be with my drawings.