Céu D´Ellia

movies, animation, comics, illustration & environment

Fievel Goes West

Fievel Goes West was a Steven Spielberg and Robert Watts´ production. From an original idea from David Kirschner, with Flint Dille and Charles Swenson´s screenplay, it was directed by Simon Wells and Phil Nibelink. Simon, at that time, was coming to the company as one of the main artists from Richard Williams´s studio, which just finished Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Phil was an animator from Disney, with participations in almost every film of that studio generation, including The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Company, or The Black Cauldron.

The art director was Neil Ross, already producing a lot of very impressive paintings that would attract me to visit his room, almost every day.

Upper left to down right 1st row: Simon Wells, Phil Nibelink, Uli Meyer with Harald Kraut, Kristof Serrand 2nd row: Glen Sylvester, Greg Manwaring, Thierry Schiel (under Isabelle Beaudoin working supervision #notreally), Rob Stevenhagen 3rd row: Shane Doyle, Scott Santoro, Panagiotis Rappas, Raul Garcia 4th row: Nancy Beiman with Calvin Leduc, Neil Ross, Peter Western, Bibo Bergeron Last row: Luc Chamberland prays to Kinder Egg with Roy Meurin, Steve Cav with Rudi Bloss and glimpses of Andre and Denise, Denise Dean, Patrick Mate

Upper left to down right
1st row: Simon Wells, Phil Nibelink, Uli Meyer with Harald Kraut, Kristof Serrand
2nd row: Glen Sylvester, Greg Manwaring, Thierry Schiel (under Isabelle Beaudoin working supervision #notreally), Rob Stevenhagen
3rd row: Shane Doyle, Scott Santoro, Panagiotis Rappas, Raul Garcia
4th row: Nancy Beiman with Calvin Leduc, Neil Ross, Peter Western, Bibo Bergeron
Last row: Luc Chamberland prays to Kinder Egg with Roy Meurin, Steve Cav with Rudi Bloss and glimpses of Andre and Denise, Denise Dean, Patrick Mate

Among many others, the supervisors and main animators working around me were Uli Meyer, Kristof Serrand, Glen Sylvester, Thierry Schiel, Rob Stevenhagen, Roy Meurin, Shane Doyle, Greg Manwaring, Scott Santoro, Panagiotis Rappas, Calvin Leduc, Luc Chamberland, Peter Western, Bibo Bergeron, Raul Garcia and Nancy Beiman.

To this post of my portfolio, because of Copyright, I´m only showing a few short giffs from the scenes I most like, between those I worked on with my crew. I had a big team of assistants, some of them, including Stephen Cavalier and Denise Dean, are still today good friends of mine. There was also Andrea Simonti, Rudi Bloss, Dave Webster, Ennio Torresan, Marco Trandafilov and Fabio Lignini.

My Tarantula spider poses on my hand, in London, in the beginning of the nineties. I studied it to understand Arachnida species movements. I called the spider, Wayra, an Inca´s Wind God name, because originally this specimen came from Chile deserts, but bought in a British pet-shop.

My Tarantula spider poses on my hand, in London, in the beginning of the nineties. I studied it to understand Arachnida species movements. I called the spider, Wayra, an Inca´s Wind God name, because originally this specimen came from Chile deserts, but bought in a British pet-shop.

The Scorpion Sequence, when Fievel comes to have a surprising and quick fight with a Scorpion in a hole in the desert, became a big hit of mine, in the studio. I was at that time testing some “Arachnida” concepts on how to animate spiders and scorpions. I had even a real tarantula living in a cage, at my home, that I would occasionally bring with me to visit the crew. The impact of the finished animation on the pencil test was so good that both the directors and the producers requested to complete the color and backgrounds of the sequence as soon as possible.

In the Cat Attack Sequence everybody in the studio did animate something, since the whole sequence was very complicated, full of mice and cats, jumping and running around. I had a lot of fun doing it, because I started to analyze live action shootings of crowd pattern movements, and realized pretty interesting things I wanted to work more on. So, when Simon Wells and the associate producer, Steve Hickner, came to give to me and my team, the Puppet Speech Sequence, I offered to them to animate the crowd in a more detailed way, giving personality to each individual in it, and with some random patterns I was studying then. They were a bit surprised, because that was not the usual reaction of animators, who hate crowd scenes. I remember Hickner replying: – Well, Spielberg loves crowd scenes!

Fievel-Puppet-Still

The Puppet with John Cleese´s voice

There were already many different mice to be used in crowds, but not enough for my sequence. So, we developed a new bunch of them, based in caricatures Ennio did from the artists around. To animate Fievel, in this sequence, I kept him in a very slow pace, in contrast with the weird Puppet and the restless crowd. The animation of the Puppet was my biggest challenge. In the beginning of the sequence the audience shall not realize he is a wooden toy, but only a slightly different mouse from the West. Slowly, its wires and its “puppetness” are revealed, as well as the Cat Raoul, hidden above and manipulating it. The cat´s voice is from former Python, John Cleese. And being myself a Monty Python admirer, that only added more joy at work in this sequence. From Simon´s suggestion, I animated one of the Puppet movements as a Silly Walking Sketch. The whole sequence became very popular among the artists, pretty much because of all the caricatures, and even got a Nancy Beiman´s article, in a specialized magazine.

Céu D´Ellia

The Puppet and the crowd of mice

The Puppet and the crowd of mice

Fievel Sc04 Mother & Sisters

 

Fievel Sc06 Puppet 02

Comment( 3 )
  • patrick mate

    hello Ceu
    Thank you for this post
    Lovely to go in memory lane ,thanks to you.
    I remember very well your shots on Fievel.Great Work !! to you and your team you rock!!
    I hope you are well,all my best to you.
    Patrick

  • ceudellia

    Hi Patrick,
    Thanks for the visit and the lovely comment.
    My best regards to you too.

  • Timothy McKenzie

    Hello there, Ceu D’Ellia.

    This is Tim speaking. Now, as for the film that you help worked on 30 years ago — 1991’s An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, that is — I do remember that movie very well…very well INDEED.

    And in fact, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West is one of those movies that I may well remember watching on TV or especially on VHS videotape long ago…SO long ago now…when there was once a time when I was very much a small fry of a little boy.

    And I may do well remember that one time when my mom and dad once kid with me over the so-called lazy eye technique that was being taught to the character of Tiger (voiced by the late Dom Deluise) how to utilize against Cat R. Waul (voiced by Monty Python’s John Cleese) and his gang of cats in the movie by An American Tail’s Fievel himself (voiced by Phillip Glasser) and the dog character Wylie Burp, which just so happened to be legendary Classical Hollywood actor James Stewart’s last performance in the movies before he died in 1997.

    But besides the lazy eye technique being taught to Tiger by Fievel and Wylie Burp, or even the fact that Fievel Goes West featured Jimmy Stewart’s last performance in the movies, and usually in cartoons and animation, we all see cats chasing and trying to eat mice, which is still way too commonplace as far as animation goes, nevertheless, I know a cartoon mouse girl character in the movie that still really touched my heart with her singing and that had still continued to do so to me after all these years, of course.

    No, it isn’t Walt Disney’s most famous cartoon character creation Mickey Mouse (actually done in collaboration with animator turned technical wizard Ub Iwerks) nor is it Timothy Q. Mouse from Disney’s original 1941 version of Dumbo (which Disney recently withdrew from Disney+ over a bunch of cartoon ravens who actually helped Dumbo the baby elephant fly with his ears!); no it isn’t Jerry Mouse from Hanna-Barbera and MGM’s world-famous and Academy Award Oscar-winning classic Tom and Jerry cartoons from the 1940s and 1950s, nor is it even just An American Tail’s Fievel Mousekewitz himself, no!

    Rather, as far as the cartoon mouse that still continue to really touch my human heart the most, especially after all these years in my life, it will have to be Tanya Mousekewitz, An American Tail’s Fievel’s oldest sister, or at least the incarnation of Tanya Mousekewitz as seen in An American Tail: Fievel Goes West and voiced for that movie (and the short-lived Fievel’s American Tails TV show from which it spawned) by The Powerpuff Girls’ commander and the leader Blossom Utonium’s original voice actress Catherine or Cathy Cavadini 30 years ago in the year 1991.

    And you realize, of course, Ceu, that Fievel’s sister Tanya Mousekewitz is really the cartoon mouse that really touched my heart most and which I am really, really, REALLY talking about! And I am very, very, VERY glad and grateful that the beautiful and lovely musical collaboration between Cathy Cavadini (famous for voicing the Powerpuff Girls’ commander and the leader Blossom for Cartoon Network between 1995 and 2014) and the late great James Horner (the movie music composer guy who did the music for everything from Star Trek’s Wrath of Khan and Search for Spock to the original 1986 Don Bluth An American Tail movie to the first Land Before Time movie to the 1988 George Lucas/Ron Howard fantasy collaboration Willow to Braveheart and Apollo 13 to James Cameron’s Aliens, Titanic and Avatar movies before finally getting killed off in a plane crash in the year 2015) really, really, REALLY allowed Fievel’s sister Tanya Mousekewitz to not only touch my heart or even pull my very heartstrings with her singing of the song ‘Dreams to Dream’ but also put a really, really, REALLY BIG smile on my face especially every time she opened her mouth to sing a song or two for the whole wide world, especially after all those 30 years!

    And, as a matter of fact, here’s a reminder for you, Ceu:

    That whenever I revisit An American Tail: Fievel Goes West nowadays, after all these years, I can still relate to the subplot in An American Tail: Fievel Goes West that involves Fievel’s sister Tanya Mousekewitz and her epic dream quest to sing a song or two for the whole wide world to hear her let out her very beautiful and rather lovely singing chops! Especially on some kind of emotional level!

    And I really do think that Tanya’s epic dream quest to sing a song or two for the whole wide world to hear in An American Tail: Fievel Goes West almost certainly reminds me of my very own big dreams, or my very own epic dream quest, if you will, for if Tanya Mousekewitz wanted to sing a song or two for the whole wide world to hear her sing, then I always wanted to make a movie that I always dreamed about, or perhaps even something for the whole wide world to come and see (even if it is my own great huge big screen big budget epic version of the likes of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, or even James Cameron’s Avatar movie combined, and whether it might be called Dexter’s Odyssey or whatever other title, shape or form it may assume, either way, I pretty much wished to even look back at the things that shaped or formed me, even as a child growing up).

    Also, I really like the two songs that Fievel’s sister Tanya Mousekewitz sang for the whole wide world in the movie An American Tail: Fievel Goes West; one, in particular, was the beautiful and lovely ballad ‘Dreams to Dream’; the other song that Tanya sang for the world was ‘The Girl You Left Behind’, which she sang in a saloon dance hall of all places. And if I were you, Ceu D’Ellia, I would seriously, certainly, and pretty much hang my dream epic movie story ultimately on the mood that the song ‘Dreams to Dream’ from An American Tail: Fievel Goes West created, and especially the way Cathy Cavadini singing Tanya’s version of the song Dreams to Dream affected me emotionally!

    And by the way, Ceu D’Ellia, if there’s a character design or two of An American Tail’s Fievel’s sister Tanya Mousekewitz that I really, really, REALLY like the most, it would have to be:

    1. Tanya Mousekewitz’s teenage-like incarnation/character design as seen in Fievel Goes West (complete with the furry ponytail hanging from the back of her head)

    And

    2. Tanya Mousekewitz’s Fievel Goes West saloon dance hall showgirl makeup and regalia and all (complete with a big feather top and that beautiful, lovely gown!).

    Anyway, apologies for the long comment, Ceu, but I can really still relate to Fievel’s sister Tanya Mousekewitz’s epic dream quest to sing a song or two for the whole wide world to hear in An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, especially after all these years!

    And finally, Ceu, not only do I very well remember An American Tail: Fievel Goes West way back when I was a little boy those many years ago, but 30 years later, I do think that you, and all others that were once involved in the making of Fievel Goes West should be very, very, very, VERY PROUD of your experiences on working on the movie FIevel Goes West, and especially that one time that you once worked with Steven Spielberg, Phil Nibbelink, Simon Wells, Charles Swenson, Flint Dale, James Horner, Will Jennings, Cathy Cavadini, Phillip Glasser, Dom Deluise, James Stewart, Jon Lovitz, and even John Cleese, among so many others who were once involved in the making of An American Tail: Fievel Goes West at Spielberg’s short-lived London, England, UK-based Amblimation studio (itself the ancestor of DreamWorks Animation, the studio behind Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon, among other films) 30 years ago.

    Tim McKenzie

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