Glen
Keane
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Glen Keane (born April 13, 1954) is an American animator, author
and illustrator. Keane is best known for his character animation at Walt Disney
Studios for feature films including The Little
Mermaid, Aladdin,
Beauty and the
Beast, Tarzan,
and Tangled. Keane
received the 1992 Annie Award
for character animation and the 2007 Winsor McCay Award for
lifetime contribution to the field of animation.
Life and career
Keane was born in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, the son of
cartoonist Bil Keane,
creator of the The Family
Circus, and Thelma
"Thel" Carne Keane. He was raised in Paradise Valley,
Arizona.
Keane's interest in art developed as a child by observing his
father's work as a cartoonist.[1] (Glen's
younger self is represented in his father's comic strip as the character of
"Billy"). In his early attempts to draw, his dad gave him a copy of Burne Hogarth's Dynamic
Anatomy, and instructed him to analyze the body forms and the creative
approach to life drawing. After high school, Glen applied to the California
Institute of the Arts-School of Art, opting out of accepting a
football scholarship from another college. In a lucky twist of fate, his
application was accidentally sent to the Program in Experimental Animation
(then called Film Graphics), where he was mentored under the now-renowned
animation teacher Jules Engel.[1]
Keane left CalArts in 1974 and joined Disney the same year. His
debut work, which was created over a 3-year period, was featured in The Rescuers, for
which he was an animator for the characters of Bernard and Penny, alongside the
famed Ollie Johnston.
In 1975, during the production of his debut film, Keane married Linda
Hesselroth, and they are the parents of design artist Claire Keane, and
computer graphics artist Max Keane.
After "The Rescuers" was completed, Keane went on to
animate Elliott the Dragon in Pete's Dragon. Keane
also animated the climactic bear showdown in The Fox and the
Hound. In 1982, after being inspired by the groundbreaking film Tron, Keane
collaborated with fellow animator John Lasseter (Toy Story, Toy Story 2) on a
30-second test scene of Maurice Sendak's
Where the Wild
Things Are, which was optioned for them by Disney executive Tom
Wilhite.[2] The test integrated traditional
character animation and computer-generated backgrounds (see YouTube), and, like Tron, was a
cooperation with MAGI.
It was also Disney's first experimentation with digital inked and painted
characters.[3] But, the project turned out
to be too expensive, and the studio was unwilling to invest further in the
planned featurette. The test for Where the Wild Things Are was
revolutionary for its time, and a predecessor to the famous ballroom scene in Beauty and the
Beast.
In 1983, Keane left Disney as a contracted employee and worked as a
freelance artist.[1] During this time, he
worked on the character of Professor Ratigan in Disney's The Great Mouse
Detective. He also did some work on The Chipmunk
Adventure where he did the sequences of "Boys and Girls of
Rock N' Roll" and "Getting Lucky". He returned to Disney to work
on the characters of Fagin, Sykes and Georgette for Oliver &
Company. Keane rose to lead character animator, becoming one of
the group sometimes referred to as the "Nine New Men". In this post
he was responsible for animating some of Disney's most memorable characters in
what has been referred to as the "New "Golden Age" of Disney
Animation. Keane designed and animated the character of Ariel in the 1989 film The Little Mermaid.
Then the eagle Marahute in The Rescuers
Down Under. Subsequently, Keane worked as the supervising
animator on the title characters for three Disney hit features: Aladdin,
Beauty and the
Beast and Pocahontas.
While living with his family in Paris, France for three
years, Keane completed work on Disney's 1999 Tarzan
for which he drew the eponymous character. Keane then returned to Disney's
Burbank studio as the lead animator for Long John Silver in Treasure Planet. In
2003, Keane began work as the director of Disney's CGI
animated film, Tangled
(based on the Brothers Grimm
story Rapunzel),
which released in November 2010. In Tangled, Glen and his
team hoped to bring the unique style and warmth of traditional cel animation to
computer animation. In October 2008, due to some "non-life threatening
health issues", Keane stepped back as director of Tangled, but remained
the film's executive producer and an animating director.[4]
On March 23, 2012, having worked approximately 37 years at Disney,
Glen Keane left Walt Disney Animation Studios. Keane said in a letter sent to
his co-workers, “I owe so much to those great animators who mentored me —
Eric Larson, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston — as well as to the many other
wonderful people at Disney whom I have been fortunate to work with in the
past nearly 38 years. I am convinced that animation really is the ultimate
form of our time with endless new territories to explore. I can’t resist
its siren call to step out and discover them.”[5]
In addition to his work as an animator, Keane is the author and illustrator of a series of
children's Bible parable books featuring
Adam Raccoon and King Aren the Lion.
Filmography
Filmography
Year
|
Title
|
Credits
|
Characters
|
Notes
|
1973
|
Layout artist
|
TV series by Filmation Studios
|
||
1977
|
Character animator
|
Penny,[7]
Bernard [7]
|
||
1977
|
Character animator
|
Elliot the Dragon [7]
|
||
1979
|
Animator/Models
|
|||
1981
|
Supervising Animator
|
The Bear [7]
|
||
1982
|
Models
|
|||
1983
|
Animator
|
Willie the
Giant [7]
|
||
1985
|
Character animator
|
Gurgi, Eilonwy [1]
|
||
1986
|
Supervising Animator
|
Professor Ratigan [7]
|
||
1987
|
Animator
Storyboard artist
|
|||
1988
|
Supervising animator
Character designer
|
Sykes,[7]
Georgette,[7] Fagin,[7]
|
||
1989
|
Supervising animator
Character designer
|
Ariel
[7]
|
||
1990
|
Supervising animator
Character designer
|
Marahute [7]
|
||
1991
|
Supervising animator
|
Beast
[7]
|
||
1992
|
Supervising animator
|
|||
1995
|
Supervising animator
Visual Development
Story
|
|||
1999
|
Supervising animator
Story
|
|||
2002
|
Supervising animator
|
John Silver
|
||
2003
|
Animator
|
|||
2010
|
Executive producer
Animation director
Story
|
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