Interview with the Animator of Aladdin’s Genie Eric Goldberg

“Seeing characters become larger than life always brings me joy.”

~ Eric Goldberg

 

One of my favorite parts of the Tomorrowland Media event a few weeks back was our meeting with Greg Goldberg, the Supervising Animator for Genie at the Disney Studios.  He has had a long career as animator, film director and voice actor. It was so wonderful hearing him talk about the process of creating the Genie and about Robin Williams.  You could tell how much he cared for Robin when he told stories about making the movie.  Here are some of our favorite parts of the interview.

 

 

Mr. Goldberg said that they tried several different styles for the genie.  Anything from a long beard, to a hat, horns.  But found that he got better when he was less adorned.

 

If you look at all the “good” characters in the movie Aladdin, they are in shades of blues – from Jasmine’s outfit to even making Genie all blue. Whereas the bad guys were in shades of reds and dark colors.  This was done purposely to help the audience know which characters we should root for!

The Directors, Ron Clements and John Musker (Hercules, Little Mermaid) wrote the Aladdin script with Robin Williams in mind.  They put together this short video so Robin could see the potential of how his humor can fit an animated movie – with ad-libs and all!  He recorded over four 4 hour sessions and Eric said Robin would come in and give it 198%.  He’d be pretty quiet just eating his lunch pre-sessions, but once he was in front of the mic recording for the movie he’d give turn into the Genie. With the new release (out October 13th in Blu-ray) there will be over 16 hours of his recordings never heard before.

 

Eric said he went through every hour of those recordings to pick his very favorites to include in the Diamond Edition Blu-ray+DVD.  These are actual outtakes of Robin Williams though some didn’t make it into the DVD as they were more adult humor if you catch my drift!  We’ve all heard stories of how Robin Williams would go off with some pretty hysterical one-liners.

 

He was honored to be asked to create a tribute to Robin Williams and created this beautiful illustration.

We then had a chance to ask him some questions.  Someone asked him what his favorite part of Aladdin is and he said is the “Friend Like Me” song.  They researched Cab Calloway style of song and dance to create this scene in the movie.  He loved how all the animators brought the characters to life.

Another blogger asked him when he knew when he wanted to be an artist and he said was four years old and started drawing Woody Woodpecker from the newspaper.  He taught himself how to create Flip Books and that was the start of his love of animation.

 

 

He also shared a little fun fact – he is the voice of Tweety Bird! He even gave us a quick sample.  Eric was kind enough to give us all a quick tutorial on how to draw Genie.  How’d I do?

 

I look forward to watching Aladdin with the unheard recordings of Robin Williams.  Be sure to check it out! Aladdin is available on Disney Movies on Anywhere now and will be available on Blu-ray + DVD starting October 13.

 

What is your favorite part of the movie?

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