More Tonal Sketches for Mulan

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Looking through a box full of my old artworks a.k.a my Disney "archive", I came across these tonal sketches I did way back for Mulan (I'd say at least ten years ago!). These are done in graphite, prismacolor and pantone cool gray markers on standard animation paper.

Tonal Sketches for Mulan

©Disney.
My little daughter watches Mulan over and over again and everytime I glance at the TV, I still can't help but watch and enjoy it over again myself. It's such a beautiful movie and brought back a lot of memories and artworks in mind. Seeing some shots that I did, I went through my files and dug up these two artworks what we used to call tonal sketches. Whenever we finished a cleanup layout, we used to include also a smaller composite drawing complete with tonal renderings of both bg and animation pose. This represents how we see the complete layout on the screen and the basis for the background painting. These were done in pencil and grey pantone markers on heavy animation paper ten years ago!

Mulan and Shang

These are a couple of character layout poses for Mulan during the avalanche sequence. I just noticed on the second panel that Mulan's size relationship with Shang and Khan is off. I drew her a bit bigger. But what the heck, it worked.

Workbook Series #2: Mulan Prologue (1st Version)

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Welcome again to my workbook series. Here is the first version workbook that I did for the Mulan prologue that never made it into the big screen. One of the elements I like about this version is the puppetry at the beginning. I remember seeing the tests made for this in CG and they looked amazingly beautiful. I was a bit disappointed when I was informed that the whole sequence has to be revised. The puppetry is an effective intro to the richness of the Chinese culture. But Hans did a brilliant move in adding an equally powerful intro on the second version (Theatrical version. See Workbook Series#1) -- the Chinese brush painting. Dean DuBlois, who was my director for Lilo & Stitch, was the story artist for both versions. Enjoy.

Workbook Series #1: Mulan Prologue

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Though it's the prologue for the movie, Mulans first sequence where the Huns attacked the Great Wall was actually one of the last sequences to be done in workbook. There were two versions and I had the privilege on doing both. It was the second one that ended up on the big screen. Our production designer Hans Bacher wasn't so happy on this decision and in a way I agree with him. But the product turned out really well on the screen and probably one of my favorite start in an animated movie. Here is the version that made it to theatrical release and the first installment in my blog's new workbook series.

Shang-Yu

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Here's another one. A layout pose of Shang Yu giving the halt signal to his men after capturing two imperial soldiers. layout was done I believe in 1997.

Yao

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While doing my move last weekend, I came across my old stack of Mulan artworks (only copies of course!) and found this layout pose of Yao. This is from the avalanche sequence where Yao is sitting on Ling's shoulders. He's about to fire an arrow with a rope tied around it to save Mulan and Shang as they were being dragged by the snow. This was done using prismacolor on 24 fld animation paper. It is one of my favorite layout poses and since I found a bunch of them, there's more to come...