This brings our conversation to the specifics of his craft, and I ask him about his initial approach to a scene, specifically whether or not he thumbnails his scenes before animating them. Thumbnailing is the practice of doing small rough sketches to work out the business and staging before sitting down to animate. Smaller and much rougher than storyboards, thumbnails flesh out the details. It’s practically gospel in the industry to thumbnail, and great animators from Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston to Richard Williams and Glen Keane have written pages and pages about the how and why of thumbnailing scenes. Some animators even thumbnail in the margins of the frame on their drawings, and Frank Thomas’s drawings frequently show little sketches at the top and bottom left of a page where his thoughts are worked out in advance of his keys.

“No�?, says Ranieri, in a matter of fact voice. “Well I guess I do, sort of.�? Then he shakes his head. “What I do is just throw them down on paper real rough, but full size, real scribbly rough figures and I go through and paper, paper, paper�? he gestures laying paper over top of paper as if at his animation desk, “and when I’ve got what I want I shoot it and fiddle with the timing on the scene machine. And from there - it takes me maybe a couple of hours, and I’ve got something to go show the directors and we talk about it and I get something approved and that’s the way I’ve worked for the past ten years.�?

From the description and the visual retelling it’s easy to see why going back to do it over, for any reason, would be frustrating for the animator. “The problem with small thumbnails�?, he continues, “is that I have no frame of reference. How do you know you have too many poses? It’s just seeing it move in real time and filling in the blanks in real time. That’s invaluable to me. I get to hear the dialogue, see how the character reacts.�?

As to how he ended up moving from LION KING to POCAHONTAS, well no matter what you might know from seeing “Drawn to Animation�? at California Adventure, you only know half of it.

“I wanted to work with Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg on POCAHONTAS,�? says Ranieri. “Not because it was POCAHONTAS but because it was Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg, and I really liked working with Mike on RESCUERS (Down Under). Mike was really great to work with!�? His eyes start to sparkle a little and he pauses in between bites of fish and chips which he has very carefully and symmetrically cut into perfect squares. “What happened was that initially it was a turkey. Redfeather. The voice of John Candy. And it was basically the same character as Timon - a wisecracking animal. So I thought do I want do a wisecracking animal where I have to redo scenes a lot because the director can’t make up his mind or would I rather do a wisecracking animal with someone I really enjoy working with?�? He puts down the fork and leans in once more. “Again, please, please don’t get me wrong. I liked the director, just not how he directed. So I moved over to POCAHONTAS and did some tests using dialogue from PLANES TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES. I did a test with Percy and Redfeather. And then, all of a sudden - boom!�? He stabs the fork into a square of fish, “The animals were silent.�? He takes a bite of fish and gives a knowing glance as he chews.

He sits back shaking his head, his shoulders dropping in resignation. “And I just thought ‘Ughh!’ And you should have seen the scripts.�? He rolls his eyes. “It was like ‘Pocahontas says this and this and this…Flit and Redfeather follow.’�? He gives a withering look. “And I thought Oh no! This is going to be death. Just death. I was scared because I thought I’m going to spend two years of my life having a character just sort of look around like Gilda Radner’s character on Saturday Night Live.�? He does a spot-on imitation of Colleen Fernstone, Gilda’s infamous and wickedly funny eye-darting autistic girl.

“I thought, is that what I’m going to be animating? I remember sitting down with Glen and he was saying ‘You have to get into the character!�? Ranieri takes on the perfect Coach in the locker-room at half-time posture, punctuated with reassuring gestures, “and ‘Just do the best job!’ and on and on and ‘You’ve gotta feel it and find the niche and really go for it!’�? He stops and, with an almost expressionless stare, telegraphs that familiar glazed over look teenagers get about half way through any sincere grown up lecture. “I’m sitting there listening to him and in my mind I’m thinking “yeah, right, you’ve got a main character whose got lots of dialogue and interesting situations and I’ve got ‘Flit and Redfeather follow.’ Yeah…great.’�? After a pause he picks up his fork and with his wrist resting on the table he half heartedly pushes a chip or two around the plate, and then makes a sudden, quick puncture and pops one in his mouth. He chews, almost to one side, looking at me as if to say ‘can you believe it?’ He takes his napkin and wipes at one corner of his mouth and then continues.