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Disney Completes Dali Animation

Posted by michael on 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."

3 of 313 comments (clear)

  1. One of Fantasia's Successors by Mr.+Fusion · · Score: 5, Informative
    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:

    • 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

  2. There's more on this in Wired Magazine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This month's issue has several images from the movie, along with a photo of Dali and Disney together during the collaboration.

  3. It screened at Telluride by gessel · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.