First, an inscription from my Disney autograph book by Kimball (using an inky thumb-print to create his face) along with his wife, who was a former Disney painter, Betty Kimball...
Next, a couple of typically anarchic Kimball pieces: a revisionist Model Sheet for animators featuring misrepresentations of the Disney Studio's most famous character...
...and some images of Jiminy Cricket as he was never seen in Pinocchio, by the man who designed and animated the character in the 1940 film...
Finally, a raunchy cartoon which Kimball sent me in 2002, two years before his death, in which the artist depicts himself playing (rather suggestively) with a model railway - a reference to his life-long love of steam locomotives: a passion he shared with Walt Disney and which led to Kimball building the Grizzly Flats Railroad in his California backyard, using sets from Disney's 1948 film, So Dear To My Heart...
Ward Walrath Kimball (1914-2002) began his Disney career as an in-between artist on the 1934 short, The Wise Little Hen and worked on the first Disney feature-length film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs before going on to create numerous classic Disney characters including Pinocchio's diminutive conscience, Jiminy Cricket; the Crows in Dumbo; Bambi's love-interest, Faline; the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Disney's version of Alice in Wonderland; and Jaq and Gus, the mice in Cinderella, and their nemesis, Lucifer the Cat. He also animated the frenetic 'Three Caballeros' musical number from the Disney film of the same name.
In the mid-1950s, Kimball became a director and was responsible for the Academy Award-winning short, Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom as well as three ground-breaking Disney television shows about outer space. His 1969 animated short, It's Tough To Be A Bird won an Academy Award. Subsequent publicity were adapted to read: It's Tough To Be A Bird - but it's great to win an Oscar!
Images uploaded from my Disney flickr Photo Album.
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