Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

WALT DISNEY STUDIO
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) 
original production animation drawing
green, purple and black pencil on untrimmed animation sheet, image size: 9" x 8.5"

This excellent final animation drawing of the wicked Queen as the Old Witch was created by a Disney Studio animator in production of the animated feature, and a cel painting was made directly from it. After poisoning Snow White with the apple, the Witch flees up a rocky slope; in this scene the Witch laughs as she clutches the dead tree limb with which she tries to pry loose and roll an enormous boulder onto the pursuing Seven Dwarfs. It is her final moment of triumph, and it turns out as hollow as her attempt to have Snow White "buried alive."

Walt Disney's outstanding animator Norm Ferguson was the Witch's main animator throughout the film, and he supervised the animation of the Witch in the crucial scenes of this sequence. The animator wrote the studio designation “421” at lower right to indicate this original's place in the scene; studio stamp denoting production, sequence and scene numbers appears at lower left. The initials "KOB" are written at lower right; likely those of Mr. Ferguson's assistant animator Ken O'Brien.