Tumgik
#chanticleer
celestialphotography · 6 months
Text
Tumblr media
The koi pond at Chanticleer Garden, Wayne, Pennsylvania
184 notes · View notes
thewaltcrew · 1 year
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Chanticleer concept art by Marc Davis
Chanticleer is likely the most famous of all canceled projects at the Walt Disney Animation Studios. Although these drawings were done in the early 1960s, the studio had been trying since the late 1930s to develop a feature film based on two French stories: the play Chantecler by Edmond Rostand and the Roman de Renart or Reynard the Fox, a literary cycle first collected in 11th-century Europe. The two stories were initially developed separately. Storymen Ted Sears and Al Perkins were the first to work on them, but they quickly ran into the same problem that would constantly plague Chanticleer for its entire development existence: how to make an arrogant rooster into an appealing protagonist.
Sears: We, or any other cartoon outfit, cannot depict a likable, interesting rooster character. Good animators have told me this, and only some revolutionary change or inspiration would make a rooster character sympathetic.
Development on Reynard also ran into similar problems of having a protagonist with a less-than-admirable personality, as Reynard the Fox is one of the most famous sources that propagated the image of a fox as a sly trickster. By 1945, the idea to combine the two properties came about, likely to help alleviate the problem of Chanticleer’s arrogant character by having a villain for him to play off of. Attempts to develop it again continued on through the 1940s, but nothing ever panned out.
In early 1960, Marc Davis and Ken Anderson, uninterested in any of the films in development at the time, took a trip down to the Animation Research Library to find ideas for a film they could develop on their own. Davis, being a fan of musical theater, wanted to do a big Broadway musical-style animated feature. They came across the old treatments for Chanticleer and jumped on the chance. They disregarded the original source materials (aside from the basic premises) and began to develop their own plot, envisioning it as a satiric comedy.
The story would have been about a rooster named Chanticleer who believes that his crowing makes the sun rise every morning. Everyone else in the village adores Chanticleer because they believe in his power too, and they elect him mayor of the town. However, he becomes an overbearing leader, ordering the hens to lay more and more eggs. The townsfolk come to resent him, and Reynard the fox arrives and takes advantage of the situation, wishing to exploit the village for his own benefit. He entertains the citizens, and the chickens stay up all night, becoming too tired to lay any eggs. An angry Chanticleer orders Reynard to leave, but Reynard announces that he will run for mayor against Chanticleer. Chanticleer finds himself in a duel at dawn against a Spanish rooster who works for Reynard and doesn’t realize that the sun has risen without him. Once he discovers that his crowing does not bring up the sun, he realizes his foolishness and is humbled, allowing the villagers to forgive him. Because although his crowing never made the sun come up, it did awaken the citizens for them to be able to start their days.
Cost cutting is what effectively ended Chanticleer’s chances. Walt was pressured to stop the production of animated feature films moving forward, as their already existing catalogue would have been enough for the company to profit off of during re-releases.
Davis: Walt was about ready to dump animation; then he got to thinking, “I owe these people something,” which he did. So he said, “Hell, these guys know how to make these films without me.” I don’t think the others realized how eager the members of this business gang were to get rid of animation. Everything after Dalmatians was done with a minimum of Walt’s supervision. I think he got spread very thin: he got terribly interested in the Parks, his vision of Epcot, and more.
But as preoccupied as Walt was, he didn’t have it in his heart to shut down animated film production for good. He did, however, reduce the output by setting a schedule of a new film every four years rather than every two. This meant that one of the two films in development at the time, Chanticleer and The Sword in the Stone, had to be cut. The decision was obvious, as Chanticleer would have been much more expensive to produce, and The Sword in the Stone was a simpler story with human characters and a cute underdog protagonist.
Davis: We had all the artwork up on the walls, and the money people at the studio came in like it was a funeral. We went all the way through the presentation and met with silence. Then a voice from the back of the room said, “You can’t make a personality out of a chicken!” They all filed out and that was the end of it.
Walt would soon call up Marc Davis to ask him to help out at WED (later called Imagineering), which is where Davis would stay for the remainder of his Disney career (where he would contribute to some of the most beloved Disney attractions of all time), thereby making Chanticleer the very last thing he worked on at the animation studio.
Davis: I had always kind of doubled up: I did story on an awful lot of stuff that was not made, including some damned good things. I think some of the best drawings I ever did for the Studio were for Chanticleer.
Chanticleer has grown a legacy of its own, perhaps solely because of how appealing and well-drawn Davis’ work for the project was. As animator Andreas Deja put it, “Marc designed some of the best-looking characters I’ve ever seen--those drawings want to be moved and used... The designs for Chanticleer show the same level of graphic sophistication as his paintings. When that’s combined with his very thorough knowledge of anatomy and the Disney appeal, the result is outstanding.”
Mel Shaw attempted to rework a new treatment for Chanticleer in 1981, but it was quickly squashed. In 1992, Don Bluth, an ex-Disney animator who, like everyone else, loved Marc Davis’ work on Chanticleer, tried his hand at the story himself with the film Rock-A-Doodle, though to little critical or commercial acclaim.
Although Marc Davis never worked on an animated film again after Chanticleer, some of the designs he created for that film did find their way into his WED project America Sings and later Splash Mountain, when the animatronics from America Sings were repurposed.
research sources from [x][x][x], The Disney That Never Was: The Stories and Art of Five Decades of Unproduced Animation by Charles Solomon, and Marc Davis: Walt Disney’s Renaissance Man, Chanticleer chapter by Charles Solomon photo sources [x][x][x]
251 notes · View notes
chiickies · 4 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
I <3 old animated chickens
37 notes · View notes
tomoleary · 7 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Marc Davis - Concept art for Disney's Chanticleer (unreleased)
Source (X)
42 notes · View notes
danskjavlarna · 11 months
Photo
Tumblr media
Source details and larger version.
From giant roosters to rooster costumes to rooster people, here's my collection of vintage rooster imagery.
45 notes · View notes
lepetitdragonvert · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media
Chanticleer and the Fox /Chantecler et le renard
1857
Artist : William James Webbe (1830-1904)
160 notes · View notes
jahtheexplorer · 5 months
Text
Tumblr media
Damselflies are my favorite! Photo taken at Chanticleer Garden.
6 notes · View notes
gennsoup · 3 months
Text
"Nothing can sit so patiently and watch the dropping of tears as an old dog."
Edmond Rostand, Chantecler
5 notes · View notes
empresa-oscura · 8 months
Text
Tumblr media
Primo... 04/09/23
Así comenzamos Septiembre.
4 notes · View notes
beenbettercomic · 1 year
Photo
Tumblr media
“Who Crowed?”
I wonder how many folks will recognize this rooster.
There are two patrons in this strip. Kat d is an awesome gamer with an Instagram that you should be following.
If you would like to be featured in a monthly strip, sign up!
-Jimmy Purcell.
7 notes · View notes
thewaltcrew · 1 year
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Chanticleer concept art by Marc Davis
(Please check out my previous post on Chanticleer where I discuss the history of its development and cancelation!)
These drawings are specifically of Reynard the fox, some bird townsfolk, and the creatures of Reynard’s dark carnival, run by nocturnal animals and vultures. They entertain the citizens, causing them to stay up all night and miss their work responsibilities in the subsequent days, angering the mayor Chanticleer.
research source [x] photo sources [x][x]
103 notes · View notes
rolkstone · 1 year
Photo
Tumblr media
7 notes · View notes
tomoleary · 2 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
More Walt Peregoy - Chanticleer Concept Art (Walt Disney, 1960s)
15 notes · View notes
chantireviews · 2 years
Text
The Goethe 2022 Long List for Late Historical Fiction
The Goethe 2022 Long List for Late Historical Fiction
The Goethe Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in post-1750s Historical Fiction.  The Goethe Book Awards is a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards (The CIBAs). The Goethe Book Awards competition is named for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who was born at the dawn of the new era of enlightenment on August 28, 1749. Chanticleer International Book Awards is…
Tumblr media
View On WordPress
2 notes · View notes
merry-melody · 2 years
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
6 notes · View notes
choppedupnotkilled · 1 hour
Text
So funny story
The Little Shop AU I just wrote (Single Agent, it's on AO3 and fanfiction.net) is based off of the film Rock-a-Doodle. A movie that I enjoyed watching as a kid several years ago. I thought I remembered that the character Ellen Greene plays in that movie (Goldie Pheasant) was sent by her boss to spy on Chanticleer and ended up falling in love with him and not betraying him. Except after reading some of her Fandom page 7/9 chapters and 10,000+ words into writing this Little Shop fanfiction based on the premise of Audrey being in a similar situation (being sent by her boss Patrick Martin to get leaf cuttings from Twoey and Seymour's secret gardening tips so that he can sell Audrey 2s but ultimately falling in love with Seymour and deciding to not betray him) I realized that that's not what happened in Rock-a-Doodle. I'm pretty sure that Goldie was instructed to distract Chanticleer, not to spy on him.
Anyway
0 notes