Bambi animation cel with Thumper on ice is one of the most beloved sequences in the film. Bambi and Thumper were lifelong friends. Released through Courvoisier Galleries this Bambi animation cel is mounted to an airbrush and watercolor Courvoisier background.
Bambi is a full length animated film produced by Walt Disney and released on August 13, 1942, by RKO Radio Pictures. Bambi is the fifth animated feature film produced by Walt Disney Studios, directed by David Hand (supervising a team of sequence directors), and based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten. In 2008 the American Film Institute rated Bambi the third best American animated feature film.
Bambi animation cels and Dumbo animation cels were produced only a year apart just as WWII was beginning.
Although the animators had animated deer in Snow White, they were animated, in the words of Eric Larsen “like big flour sacks”. Disney wanted the animals in Bambi to be more realistic and expressive than those in Snow White. He had Rico LeBrun, a painter of animals, come and lecture to the animators on the structure and movement of animals. The animators visited the Los Angeles Zoo and Disney set up a small zoo at the studio with animals such as rabbits, ducks, owls, and skunks, and a pair of fawns named Bambi and Faline so that the artists could see first-hand the movement of these animals. Rico LeBurn’s sketches depicted realistic animals, but as characters they lacked personality. Marc Davis created the final design of Bambi by incorporating LeBurn’s realistic study of deer anatomy but exaggerating the character’s face by making his proportions baby-like (short snout, big eyes, etc.)