Beauty Again

Disney Theatrical, which produces stage high-end stage entertainment, launched in a big way when its interpretation of Disney’s animated feature premiered on Broadway on April 18th, 1994. Last week, it marked the 25th anniversary of that event.

The production kept to a safe path by sticking closely to the animated source. It’s not a too off critique to view it as a more elaborate, lavish and expensive version of those mounted in the company’s theme parks, like for example, the 30-minute, long-running production in Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Walt Disney World, Florida.

The two-act libretto with intermission, is extended with several new songs. Not the least of which is a subtly re-worked version of “Human Again” which lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken had originally created during the production of the animated feature. Basically, it’s seeing Belle’s and Beast’s relationship develop from the point of view of the Enchanted Objects including  Lumiere, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts and Chip.

When the anniversary snuck up on me, I quickly came up with this image to celebrate the musical. It’s a moment from “Human Again” where Belle reads to the Beast the tale of King Arthur and his knights of the fabled Round Table. No Enchanted Objects here to pull focus from these leads.

Here, I again demonstrate in red pencil how loose my sketching stage can be when my inking part is to happen right on its heels. The pillow in the Beast’s left arm is an invention to help sell the idea that he reflexively needs to protect himself in sympathy of protecting the characters of the story that Belle is reading. It’s not used in any of the few images that I’ve seen from the stage play. The stack of books to the left, is a last addition to help balance the composition.

In that inking stage, I employ my developing style of broken and doubled lines, with dots, dashes and bubbles. Light shading with the same red pencil used in drafting the art, is used to add areas of contrasting tone and suggest some volume to forms with approximate shading.

As I’ve detail previously, the choice of a red pencil has mostly to do with red being “R” in RGB which is the three channels that typical scanners (and digital photography devices) record images. So then the red channel reveals a pretty high contrast version of what is black and what is not (the white and red parts). The human eye probably likes red  as an association to “warm” and living mammalian things. I like that artist in the past drew with red pencils and crayons in the explorative comprehensive stages. It seems to be a color that’s easy or cheaply produce for drawing painting.

Did you find the hidden Mickey?

Do you agree with the reasons behind the pillow and stack of books?

Wallpaper version at “monotonae Annex” on Tumblr.
http://monotonae.tumblr.com/post/184350426590/celebrating-the-25th-anniversary-of-the-premiere