Pomeroy continues, “I had just come off of Treasure Planet and I was going into what we call down-time. This was the start of my training in computer animation. In those first few weeks of class, night after night after night I would go home and think to myself ‘What have I done? It’s hopeless! I just can’t understand this. It’s not coming to me, it’s not inspiring me’ and I felt like a total failure.�? The artist believed that the animation he had fought his entire career to preserve was no longer within his grasp and that the demands of the computer were greater than his ability or passion. It hit him particularly hard that this was about learning something new because Pomeroy was responsible for training and teaching younger artists in the 1970’s at Disney and then went on to be in charge of training artists who came on board Bluth. As he talks you can hear the words drop down into the well of his stomach, echoing between breaths. But just when all is lost, almost whispering, John Pomeroy brings the story to its climax and you understand why he was Bluth and Goldman’s right hand in story telling all those years. Pomeroy came out of class one night in despair and there pasted to his desk was a scriptural quote on a post-it note that had been right under his nose for several months. Says Pomeroy, “I got it, loud and clear. And ever since then it’s been one of the best times of my life.�?

Exorcising Ghosts
Ever since that moment it’s as if the Disney that held such promise in 1972 is ready to break like the dawn of a new day on Pomeroy and his colleagues. He feels that he’s “cracked the code�? and can begin to think like an animator again. He’s even doing some character tests. “You should see what the guys before me are doing!�? The trainings have been rolled out in groups, and the first group through included such artists as Nik Ranieri whom Pomeroy praises as now exhibiting some of his best work in CG animation.

Long before jumping technological hurdles though, Pomeroy had to learn to step out of the skin of Milo Thatch. A character he admits he had inside of him for a considerable time after the production wrapped. “I’d find that whatever I was doing it was in the style and feel of Milo. It was such a liberating design, such a personally liberating character and such a powerful experience that I had to consciously get him out of my system!�? He points in particular to the way that the graphic simplicity of the character design helped quicken the path to his emotional heart, and I wonder out loud with Pomeroy about how it parallels the freedom that Milt Kahl is said to have found in the character designs influenced by Picasso and the cubists. Those are the blocky fingers and impossibly angular geometry that seems to defy anatomical truth in characters from “101 Dalmatians�?, “The Sword in the Stone�? and “The AristoCats.�? These were designs that dominated Kahl’s approach and all of Disney’s work from 1959 through 1977. Unlike Kahl’s peers, however, Pomeroy’s compatriots on “Atlantis�? seem to have taken to the Mignola-influenced character designs without too much grousing. Where artists like Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston complained about Kahl’s “blocky�? cubist graphic influence, Mignola’s designs proved a refreshing change for many of the current crop of Disney artists. But unlike Kahl, Pomeroy escaped falling into the trap of relying on a specific graphic language. There isn’t enough of his work on “Treasure Planet�? available to the public to be certain of it, but from the way he tells it the CG training hasn’t give him any choice.

Whether or not Milo is the last hefty piece of hand-drawn animation from Pomeroy that audiences will experience, it’s probably best to view the presumed end of “traditional�? animation at Disney with a heaping dose of skepticism. Whether by graphite or by pixel, the great Disney tradition that Eric Larson wanted to pass on so badly thirty two years ago has some very deep roots in a stalwart few over on Riverside Drive. Roots that at least in a couple of cases were successfully transplanted from Disney elsewhere and back again. And whatever this older, wiser and more faithful John Pomeroy discovers in the new technology currently in favor at Disney Feature Animation, he will always and forever have a legendary mentor to join a bookish alter ego whispering in his ear. Only this time, John Pomeroy is staying.

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-- Rhett Wichman