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In case you haven't already noticed, we're right in the middle of The Walt Disney Company's full-court promotional press for "The Little Mermaid" (which is available for the first time on Blu-ray combo pack and HD Digital starting next Tuesday, October 1st).

So on the East Coast of the country this past Saturday, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment staged a special screening of this beloved animated classic at NYC's Walter Reade Theater where Jodi Benson (voice of Ariel), Samuel Wright (voice of Sebastian) and Ron Clements (writer/producer) all strolled down the blue carpet.



(L to R) Samuel Wright, Jodi Benson and Ron

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Meanwhile, out on the West Coast of the country, the El Capitan Theatre is getting ready to celebrate the Diamond Edition in-home release of this 1989 Walt Disney Animation Studios production by offering a limited edition, hand-painted 12 field cel which features Ariel.



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And while it's fine that this Ron Clements & John Musker movie is once again in the spotlight and people are once again praising Howard Ashman & Alan Menken's Oscar-winning score, I think it's important to remember that if it weren't for the extraordinary work that Glen Keane & his team of animators did on "The Little Mermaid," it's doubtful that any of animation fans would ever fallen in love with the character of Ariel.

Back last month, I was lucky enough to get a chance to chat with Glen at the D23 EXPO just before he went onstage at the Anaheim Arena to receive his Disney Legend award. And at that time, I mentioned to Keane that I had always been impressed with the work that he & his team had done on "The Little Mermaid." That Ariel had been such a break-through character for Walt Disney Animation Studios because she was an 16 year-old girl who actually looked & moved like a 16 year-old girl. And the guy positively beamed when I passed along that compliment.



"That's great to hear. Because with every character that I've ever drawn, I have wanted to prove to the audience that they were real. That these characters are not just drawings," Glen explained. "This is why I always shaded my animation drawings. Because I want you to feel like you could actually put your hands around these characters."



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Mind you, Keane didn't personally animate every scene featuring Ariel in "The Little Mermaid." But as Steve Hickner points out in his terrific new book, "Animating Your Career " (Brigantine Media, August 2013), Glen made sure that the scenes that he did personally animated really counted.



"And how did Keane select the scenes that he'd personally animate?," you ask. As Steve explained ...

Some films, such as "The Little Mermaid," have about fifteen sequences, while other films, such as "Bee Movie ," have over forty sequences. Each sequence is subsequently divided into discrete shots. Some of these shots last less than a second, while others might be over a minute long. The average eighty-minute animated film is compromised of about 1,300 individual shots. While every shot in the film is important, some of the shots require special attention as defining moments.



Glen Keane working on the title character of "The Little Mermaid" back in 1988.

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Even though an animator will work on a film for perhaps a year and a half to two years, he/she will only be able to animate a small portion. An artist could make a decision to focus on the details of the story and animated every shot for just one sequence in the movie, but his impact as a key animator on the film would be localized to a small portion of the story. The big impact animators, like Glen Keane, know how to make their work count so the audience feels their presence in the film. Keane selects what he feels are the most essential parts of the whole story and focuses his attention on them. But how does Keane make his choices?



When Keane starts a film, the first and most important decision he will make will be in choosing which character he will focus on to animate. On "The Little Mermaid," Keane decided to spend his time on the lead character, Ariel. He knew that Ariel provided him with two distinct challenges: sometimes she would be a mermaid and swim like a fish, and other times, she would be a human and walk on talk feet.



After choosing the character, he next decided on which particular sequences were most important to him. One of the sequences that Keane chose to animate was the section of the story where Ariel declares her wishes in the song, "Part of Your World."



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By evaluating every shot in the movie and pinpointing which ones merited his personal attention, Keane influenced the handling of the character Ariel in the entire movie. Keane's impact on the movie radiated outward like a pebble that is dropped into a pond -- from the specific (a shot) to the general (the entire movie).

And Keane then backed up what Hickner had written in "Animating Your Career" when he & I talked in August. Glen went into great detail about the sculptural animation that he had done at the very start of "Part of Your World."

Take another look at the very start at that musical number. Right after Ariel finishes singing "Wouldn't you think that I'm the girl who has everything," we then begin to turn this character in space. Now you have to remember that this is the early, early days of CG. So when Ariel's singing "Look at this trove, treasures untold. How many wonders can one cavern hold?" and the camera seems to be spinning around her, that's not actually a CG camera move. That scene is all done with hand-drawn animation which took forever to get right.



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But in the end, all of that extra effort was worth it. Because it's this moment in that movie where the audience stops thinking of Ariel as an animated character. As some drawing. It's this exact moment -- thanks to Howard & Alan's beautiful song and the talented people who cleaned up my rough animation drawings & then painted those cels -- that the audience starts thinking of Ariel as this real, living thing. A girl who's dreaming of something more. And since so many of us feel just like that, we dream of something more, that's when the audience falls in love with this character.

And speaking of something more, it saddened a lot of people last March when Keane announced that he was leaving Walt Disney Animation Studios. Effectively stepping away from his home for the past 38 years. And many animation fans wondered what Glen would wind up doing next after he exited the Mouse Factory.

Well, when Keane and I talk last month, he revealed that ...



Photo by Jim Hill

I'm just about to start a little company. Glen Keane Productions. I'm starting very small with animation, drawings and the like. I'm about to start working on a new project that I really can't start talking about yet. But I've got some ideas.

So there you have it. Even as the world is once celebrating all of the effort & artistry that went into the animation & creation of Ariel in Disney's "The Little Mermaid," the man behind this much beloved character is about to pick up his Blaisdell Layout pencil once more. Which is the best bit of animation-related news I've heard in a long, long time.

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