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Disney Completes Dali Animation 313

Posted by michael from the surreality dept.
jbottero writes "Wired News has an interesting piece on a Salvador Dali animation coming out of Disney Studios. It seems that in 1946, Walt Disney and Dali teamed up on a short film called Destino. The film was shelved for money reason, and now, 57 years later, Disney animators has finished what Dali started. The six minute film will be shown in theaters next year before a Disney feature film. The remnants of the aborted film include 150 storyboards, drawings and paintings, which have sat for the last half-century in the Disney vaults. Notably, some of the project was modeled on the animation program Maya. An interesting quote from the article, Dali describes Walt Disney as one of America's greatest surrealists."
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Disney Completes Dali Animation More

Disney Completes Dali Animation

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  • disney does for dali (Score:5, Funny)

    by Frymaster ( 171343 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:07PM (#6948099) Homepage Journal
    disney can now do for dali what it did for the hunchback of notre dame!

    i can barely wait for the action figures...

  • Dali Rocks!!! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As Dali was the greatest painter in the last 100 years, I'm very excited to see this, but who did the completion? Modern surreallism tends to be dull and played out, and Dinosaurs was probably not very mind boggling.

    I hope they did large amounts of acid to try and get the same inspriation that Dali had.

    • Re:Dali Rocks!!! (Score:5, Funny)

      by mcpkaaos ( 449561 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:39PM (#6948409)
      I hate to burst your modern, surrealistic bubble, but Dali's inspirations came from his dreams, not from drugs. Taking acid to obtain Dali's inspiration is like kicking yourself in the nuts to get as pissed off as George Carlin.

    • Re:Dali Rocks!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'd like to imagine that whoever had this daunting task would have enough existing material to copy the style.

      And as far as the acid comment...

      "I don't do drugs, I am drugs.
      -Salvador Dali
    • Magritte was infinitely better than Dali.

    • Re:Dali Rocks!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DrLudicrous ( 607375 )
      I'd say that is debatable. One of the greatest, yes, the greatest, no. I'd give that to Picasso, whose most famous periods of painting were almost exactly 100 years ago.

      Lysergic Acid Diethylamide did not exist until 1938- most of Disney's best stuff predates this, or came just after it (think Fantasia, 1940). I am of the opinion that Disney's animators were definitely fungally-enhanced when they did Fantasia. Dancing mushrooms?

      • Re:Dali Rocks!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by eclectro ( 227083 )

        I wouldn't even go that far. Dali had a few unique paintings and drawings, then things slid downhill. A case study in dysfunctionality.

        I wouldn't call him one of the "greatest". I would however call him one of the most famous. Famous should not be equated with greatness.

        There's a couple of interesting books out about him.

        The Great Dali Art Fraud and other Deceptions [amazon.com] Out of print, get it through a library. Covers art scams that he was involved in. Evidently he would hire himself out to sign blank sheets

  • Notable ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animaether ( 411575 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:13PM (#6948150) Journal
    Notably, some of the project was modeled on the animation program Maya

    And this is notable, why ?
    Maya has been a mainstay for movie production involving 3D elements for a long time now. Or is this supposed to conjure images of Maya-on-Linux and thus make it relevant to Slashdot somehow ?

    This isn't any more notable than a CGI team doing shots for CSI using Bipeds from Character Studio ( 3ds max plugin ) for one of those tacky sticks-in-bullets-holes-tell-us-where-the-bullets- went animations.

    Effects houses will use the software that gets the job done, and hardly ever is the choice "notable".

    Just my 2cts on -that- topic.

    Disney completing a shelved project like this, for a 6-minute short, on the other hand, is more interesting.

    • Re:Notable ? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by shadowcabbit ( 466253 ) * <cx AT thefurryone DOT net> on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:23PM (#6948260) Journal
      It's notable because now thousands of geeks are going to flock to the theater to see whether or not they can tell which bits were done in 1946 and which were done on Maya in 2003.

      Seriously, though, the fact that an unfinished project using 20th century technology was completed almost 60 years later using 21st century technology, and supposedly it's going to look completely seamless-- I'd call that remarkable.

      (On a related note, is it just me, or does the phrase "20th century technology" still not evoke the feeling of "whoa, that's old" as it should?)

      • It's notable because now thousands of geeks are going to flock to the theater to see whether or not they can tell which bits were done in 1946 and which were done on Maya in 2003.

        Sadly, yes, they will even though it means doing business with the corporation that was a strong proponent of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 [wikipedia.org]. This bill became law and stifles our ability to build on Disney's work like Disney built on Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill Jr. [wikipedia.org]. We can't share and preserve countles

      • From the article: "...the remaining paintings, sketches and storyboards, along with 15 seconds of a test reel, were enough source material for director Dominique Monfery and his team of 25 Disney animators, based in Paris."

        It sounds to me like they basically just took the outline that had been created, and made a completely new animation. I don't think that anything on screen will be from the 40's, but the storyboards and whatnot will have guided the 00's animators.

    • Re:Notable ? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mskfisher ( 22425 ) * on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:32PM (#6948344) Homepage Journal
      It's notable because they took the original ideas from the 1940s and were able to render them much more easily with the tools we have available today.

      If the film had been completed in the 1940s or '50s, it would've been more difficult (or at least time-consuming) to get the perspectives correct. As the article says:
      "It makes perfect sense that Disney used computer technology to do the 360-degree turns and to make some of the images seem more dimensional than they might in a 2-D cartoon," said [Leonard] Maltin, whose books include Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. "Dali's work was always very dimensional, and he was keenly interested in playing with perspective."
      • I remember reading about the Disney company's first (?) use of CG, in The Black Cauldron. There was a shot where the characters step into a rowboat and it was supposed to bob up and down, but when the animators tried to hand-draw the boat, it deformed like it was made out of rubber. So ... the hundreds of perspective drawings required by the Dali short would have been just horrendous, if not impossible.

  • Dali is great surrealist (Score:3, Informative)

    by methangel ( 191461 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:14PM (#6948161)
    I recently did a project that was about Salvador Dali. What a great surrealist! Here is a link for any interested in browsing some of the pieces hosted by the Dali Museum. http://www.salvadordalimuseum.org

    • Museum is a must visit. (Score:2, Informative)

      by unity ( 1740 )
      If you are a Dali fan, you MUST eventually make it to the museum in St. Petersburg, FL. There you can stare at the HUGE paintings and get sucked into their depth.

      I think they have somewhere > 200 of his works in total. They have historical information on him as well as some of his sketch books and sculptures as well as pictures of him.

      I liked the pictures of his pet ocelot.

  • Sounds Like They Did It Right (Score:5, Interesting)

    by the darn ( 624240 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:20PM (#6948215) Homepage
    I always cringe when Disney takes one of their early artistic works (back when it at least seemed like someone cared what made it to the screen)and trots it out all "modernized" or worse, sequelized. In this instance, at least from what I can gather, they've produced something with artistic merit. I saw sketches and such of this project on the Fantasia Legacy DVD, and immediately was impressed by the bizarre vision it presented. Noone today would consider Disney avant garde...but it (well, more like HE) really was back in the day. I'm glad to see this innovative idea finally come to fruition. One can only hope that it might serve as a wake-up call as to the potential of animation as art, instead of just babysitting-fodder.
  • somehow I have the feeling that even though the original work had multiple authors (disney, dali), this "finished" version will be entirely disney's and not a cent will go to the Dali estate. Mickey just wouldn't have it any other way. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
  • going for the "adult" crowd, eh?

    • Re:Disney Does Dali (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ahoehn ( 301327 ) * <andrew AT hoe DOT hn> on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:59PM (#6948588) Homepage
      Actually: I was at Dali Universe [artsworld.com] in London last weekend, and realized how much of Dali's work contains adult themes; and by adult themes I don't mean balancing checkbooks. I would say that a good third of the works I saw at the exhibition had overt sexual themes. I'll be interested to see what Dali without the sex looks like in a Disney cartoon.
      Of course this goes well with Disney's tradition of subtley showing phalluses to children.
      • Of course this goes well with Disney's tradition of subtley showing phalluses to children.
        that's not Disney's tradition, it's Tyler Durden at work!!!
      • Dali was one big walking hardon....
        Im sure most people only knows the oil paintings he made like the clocks and elephants...
        But most of his work was hand drawings and let me tell you, they where not for the faint of heart.

        There was an exibition last summer here in finland with about 100 of them. 99 of them included atleast breasts or female geneterial (SP?)...

      • Re:Disney Does Dali (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Equuleus42 ( 723 )

        I'll be interested to see what Dali without the sex looks like in a Disney cartoon.

        Being that Disney owns Miramax (the company that makes films that generally use the word "fuck" more times than the word "the"), perhaps they will put Destino at the beginning of one of those films...

        I've been to the Dali Museum [salvadordalimuseum.org] in St. Petersburg, FL, and while there are a lot of pieces where adult themes are tossed about, there are plenty of pieces that aren't... If you get to visit the St. Pete museum sometime in the fu

  • "one of America's greatest surrealists?" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:25PM (#6948277)
    one of America's greatest surrealists.

    Hmmm, that's hardly much of an achievement. Can anyone name any good American surrealist? Dali was probably taking the piss.

  • Wait a second... (Score:3, Funny)

    by stubear ( 130454 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:26PM (#6948281)
    ...is it the second Friday of the month already? I knew there had to be a reason why /. posted a positive story about Disney. Can't wait until Monday when they post the anti-Disney slant to this story :)
  • Dali describes Walt Disney as one of America's greatest surrealists.

    Would the same still be true regarding disney's contemporary political positions?

  • One of Fantasia's Successors (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mr. Fusion ( 235351 ) * on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:30PM (#6948324)
    With all the cutbacks and bad decisions Disney's made these past few years, it nice to see they've resurrected a gem of an idea like this one.

    So what happened originally you ask? Here's an excerpt from The Straight Dope [straightdope.com]:

    • Destino's fate is shrouded in as much mystery as its beginning. Disney and Dali, by mutual agreement, abandoned the project in 1947 after numerous storyboards and a 17 second test reel were completed. Hench said Disney felt the market for omnibus features had evaporated. Others privately felt that Dali's more extreme style and ideas may have been too much for Disney's midwestern sensibilities. After work on the short was shelved, much of the artwork was stolen from the studio and eventually showed up on the New York art market. Dali and Disney, however, remained good friends afterwards and continued to visit in each other's home countries.

    For more related articles, here are some great links too:

    -Mr. Fusion

  • There's more on this in Wired Magazine (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:33PM (#6948349)
    This month's issue [wired.com] has several images from the movie, along with a photo of Dali and Disney together during the collaboration.

  • Do they slice a cow's eye open? (Score:5, Funny)

    by SpaceRook ( 630389 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:35PM (#6948381)
    That would be cool.

  • It screened at Telluride (Score:5, Informative)

    by gessel ( 310103 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:36PM (#6948384) Homepage
    It really was worth the hype. Disney himself (grandson of the Walt) introduced it, and was justifiably proud of it. It's being introduced to compete for an Oscar. The joke was "imagine having your animated short up against Salvador Dali and Walt Disney."

    Anyway, it's a surprisingly effective melding of Dali imagery and Disney animation. The animator at Disney who had done the original work is still alive and still working at Disney, and worked to finish the movie, and the original soundtrack was restored for it.

    It's short, but if there's a screening, it's worth going just to see it. There's so much detail that the video transfer will be meaningfully less.
  • 57 years! These people must be on the Duke Nukem: Forever dev team, too.

  • Some Kind of Record (Score:5, Funny)

    by Esion Modnar ( 632431 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @06:41PM (#6948420)
    I mean, 57 years to produce 6 minutes of film.

    That's like a minute per decade, almost.

  • Destino (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Destino"
    What could happen if the minds of genius like Walt Disney and Salvador Dali produced an amazing piece of art to be seen in the big screen? The answer is the never-completed animated short "Destino".
    Work, in the form of original concept drawings, as well as 18 seconds of animation, done by Salvador Dali in 1946 at the Disney studio , is being dusted off by Disney vice chairman Roy E. Disney and will be completed as an art house cartoon by the Disney studio - well, at least according to the London
  • For those of you who don't know, Dali has a small history in film: IMDB's profile [imdb.com]. They also have a wonderful picture of him.

    Most notable of those is Un Chien Andalou that he did with the somewhat famous director Luis Bunuel. It's only a few minutes long and it makes *NO* sense at all, but it's very fun to watch.

    • SOMEWHAT famous? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by chochos ( 700687 )
      Some would say Buuel is the greatest surrealist filmmaker ever...

      The story makes no sense. The images make some sense. It was a critique/homage to Federico Garcia Lorca, a gay writer that was part of their group (the surrealists in Europe in the 1930's). Garcia Lorca was an Andalucian, Buuel called him the andalucian dog. He wrote a poem to Dali that was the inspiration for the eye-slashing scene. There is also a critique in that movie, to the writer Juan Ramon Jimenez: the rotten donkey on the piano is

  • Huh? (Score:2)

    by El ( 94934 )
    Was I the only one who read the headline and thought "Cool, Disney has done a cartoon about the Dali Lama!"
  • So when will this film become public domain?
  • Note that Harryhausen and some animators are going to complete one of Harryhausen's very early works. Thought that might also be of interest, as it's an animation work that will be completed many years after it began.

    Some of the interviews with Harryhausen on (I think) the Jason and the Argonauts mention this as well. (But searching /. does not have any mention of it.)

    Details: http://www.turnerclassicmovies.com/ThisMonth/Arti c le/0,,28065%7C28067%7C28069,00.html
  • ... having done some 3d modelling in the past, I feel sooooooo sorry for those sorry son's of a bitch, that have to model dali's visions in Maya! Even starring at his paintings give me a headache... I can just picture trying to recreate them... in 3d of all things. Poor poor bastards! ;)

    At least it wasnt escher!

  • Bah! (Score:2, Funny)

    by farnerup ( 608326 )
    Wake me up when Disney starts collaborating with H. R. Giger.
  • Think about it, a bunch of crazy animals walking around and talking on this crazy mystic world. It's very sureal. It's not fine art, but ti's bizzare none the less.

  • ....and the copyright hasn't expired yet.
    When are they doing a version of jungle book?

  • Surreal Disney (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jack William Bell ( 84469 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @08:03PM (#6948994) Homepage Journal
    . . . Dali describes Walt Disney as one of America's greatest surrealists.

    Disney is dead, watch your overcoat. [wikipedia.org]

  • The movie would have been done on time, except the clocks kept melting. Thanks, I'll be here all week!

  • When I think of Disney, I do tend to think of subtle adult jokes and lewd references in the background.

    Salvador Dali drew all his tree knots like little anuses. Those of you that think this is a flame google +"Salvador Dali" +Anus. From what I remember, he seemed to think all tree knots looked like little anuses. I think this is strangly approperate for a disney production.

    Still... his anus fixcation aside, definatly one of the great artists who's style seems to be under-rated in the 21st century. Eve

  • Wow! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Len ( 89493 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @08:31PM (#6949156)
    The remnants of the aborted film include 150 storyboards, drawings and paintings, which have sat for the last half-century in the Disney vaults. Notably, some of the project was modeled on the animation program Maya.
    Wow, Dali really was ahead of his time!

  • MPAA (Score:2)

    by HiThere ( 15173 ) *
    However good it may be, I won't be seeing it. Or fronting any money for someone else to see it. Neither the MPAA nor it's members should be subsidised.

  • Spellbound (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gidds ( 56397 ) <slashdot.gidds@me@uk> on Friday September 12, 2003 @09:16PM (#6949356) Homepage
    Some more of Dali's 'lost' work that I'd like to see is the dream sequence in Hitchcock's film Spellbound [imdb.com]. A short sequence made it into the final film, but it was originally planned to be 20 minutes long; some of the filmed-but-cut material sounds fascinating.

  • Speechless (Score:3, Informative)

    by inkswamp ( 233692 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @10:08PM (#6949585)
    I have no idea how to react to this. I'm stunned. I've known about the existence of Destino for a long time now, and have found stills from it published in various places, but I never dreamed that I'd actually get the chance to see it. I am rabidly fanatical about Dali's work, his life, his artisitc philosophy (the "paranoiac-critical" method he used to create his imagery.) I know a lot of artists and art historians (in academic settings particularly) view Dali and his work with disdain, but it's foolish to ignore the impact his work has had. Andre Breton is often (and rightly) credited with starting the surrealist movement, but it was Dali who took it and ran with it and expressed it in ways that nobody else could imagine. If not for Dali, IMO, surrealism would have been a momentary artistic curiosity and not much else. Dali made it what it is, so let me repeat what he boldly and correctly announced to Time magazine:

    I AM SURREALISM.

    As usual, he was right.

    And my favorite quote of his (also my email sig):

    The only difference between me
    and a madman is that I am not mad.

  • So nice to have you back where you belong.

  • Dali describes Walt Disney as one of America's greatest surrealists...

    Watch the dream sequence in the Winnie the Pooh movie if you don't believe this.

  • The thing that most people seem to miss about this. The reason for finishing the project is not the love of Dali's work. It is because of the ownership of all of the works that went into the project.

    Dali put in the contract that Disney did not own the works used to create Destino until it was made and released.

    What are 22 original Salvidor Dali oils worth on todays market?

    This may take them a few million to finish the project. They will make much more than that with the garage sale that follows.

    As a
  • Dali and Disney??? this means we finally get to see Snow white's breasts! although they'll probably be a part of her left ear which actually comes out of her nose and enters the top of her head.

    Why is her dress melting into a river??? I gotta go to sleep.

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