This was the first scene that I worked on for The Lion King. It was a scene where the lionesses were cleaning their cubs. My lioness was lounging in the background not moving very much. On the first day of production I finished 6 drawings and they all were approved. I was responsible for 1/2 second of screen time.

The drawing of Simba leaping was unrelated to the scene I was working on. These are not the production drawings but just quick pen sketches. The production drawings were much more refined with pencil on paper. The next day I would work on another scene. I was now a cog in the machine of production.

Interns were often offered the chance to sketch from models. I took every opportunity to step away from the animation table and observe from life. On this day we had a flamenco dancer posing. I did a whole series of painting on the cardboard that was used to separate scenes.

Once a week there were also painting opportunities. An now looking at the sketch I realize that this was a painting session. I didn’t have my oil paints, they were back in NYC, but I made sure to sketch. It must have been easy to get models since there were so many cast members in the theme parks who would jump at the opportunity.

The animation Halloween party was around the corner. I lamented not having supplies to build a decent costume. Animators tend to blow it out of the park when it comes to Halloween costumes.

This folded postcard was ripped open so fast that a large chunk of the sketch was ripped off in the process. I crudely repaired it with scotch tape which will yellow with time.

At Epcot I sketched the stationary bikes. I didn’t actually peddle a bike myself, I was more interested in the people working so hard to go nowhere.

In the animation studio, I finished my quadruped walk. I had the hind legs stop and the torso stretched until  the back legs and hips snapped forward to knock the Centaur over. It was a lazy cheat, but I got some laughs. Then we started on a layout assignment. Layouts are the drawings used to paint the backgrounds. I though I might like this since I am always sketching people in interesting locations. Something about sketching a location without hint of humanity threw me off. Drawing people is what attracts me to start sketching most scenes. The idea of sketching empty rooms just didn’t appeal to me.

I just didn’t know exactly where I should fit in. I was offered a position as an effects artist and I turned it down. Maybe that was my calling and I just didn’t see it. I stuck with character animation.

Work continued of getting a centaur to run. The scene was filled with glitches which I was working to patch.

Any time I wanted to see the drawings in motion I would have to take the stack of drawings to a camera, called the lion lamb, and shoot the drawings in sequence onto VHS tape. If a drawing was shot out of sequence the whole scene would need to be re-shot. Interns would try and mess with each other by talking to the person shooting so they might loose focus and forget which drawing had been shot.

I was working to add more twist in the torso of the centaur as he ran. With animation the work was never ending and the scene was never perfect. The challenge was to stay sane and put out an entertaining end result.

I took a trip to Germany when I worked at Disney Feature Animation. There I met all my relatives who share the Thorspecken name. I traveled with Herbert who was in the Luftwaffe a the same time that my father was pushing into the Ruhr pocket of Germany in the final days of the was.  It was far more interesting seeing the real Germany compared to the homogenized vision of Germany on display at Epcot. I also traveled to Berlin recently to screen my short animated film COVID Dystopia. Germans seem to like my dark vision of the world. Americans tend to prefer an idealized view of the world.

The interns were invited to sketch a lion on that sound stage in the animation studio.If anything can go wrong it always does when I am sketching. My elegant thin pen ran out of ink half way through the sketch and I had to dig around for my much thicker pen to finish up.

Clearly I started on the left and half way through the pen gave out. The thick sketch on the right hints at some  some frustration and annoyance.

The Lion King was still in production so that is why the big cat came in to model. The design of the characters had already been established so this was more of an exercise in keeping our sketching chops in  shape. By the time I got to sketching the lion, most of the interns had started to leave. Life moves too fast when you are trying to catch it in a sketch.

The next day was to be a mid-term review. I would get to find out how the Board felt I was progressing as an animator. No pressure, just don’t suck.