European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - July 3, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                T. A a a a Quot a. A Walt Disney Simba the Young lion is the Center of attention As he struggles to find his Way through adventures in the new Valt Disney animated musical the lion King. A the lion King finds just the right tone by Luaine Lee Scripps Howard a a the first question you ask Hicri you see. Walt Disney s smash hit the lion King. Opening Friday on. The cafes circuit is How do they do that the characters a a wide array of animals from the african Plains a not Only look like the real animals they i also Rescomb a the actors who play them. That a not an Accident. Andreas deja who supervised the animation of Gaston in Beauty and the beast and Jafar in Aladdin defines his Best villain yet with scar voiced by briton Jeremy Irons. Deja pored Over photos of Irons when he was Ere. Uting scar. Quot there s something in his face that i really like certain aspects. There san Eer iness when you look at his eyes there a a darkness., i wanted to keep that Quality so i gave scar dark circles around his eyes and combed his mane As if it were. Slicked Back a a. A deja 37, and the other animators like to eavesdrop As the actors record their lines. Quot i would watch him Lons in recording sessions and then run Back to Quot my desk because i  wait to get started with the animation a says deja. Robert Guillaume is the voice of Rafski the shaman Baboon a a i was a Little chagrined when i _ Learned it was a Baboon a says Guillaume who is Best known As the outspoken Butler in Benson. Quot Baboons have certain associations in the animal kingdom a lie says. Quot but i always find a Way to make something Rue Tyx  Rafski does resemble Guillaume just As the Youthful lion Simba looks like Matthew Broderick who  him. To portray the lion King the filmmakers chose James Carl Jones. It was Jones voice that reverberated through the sinister being of Darla a Vader and heralds the Call let tors of radio and to networks. Reciting the dialogue of Mufasa Wasny to something Jones could do in his spare time. A this took a lot of Fine tuning a he says. Quot luckily there was a lot of time. To do it and the budget to do it because its a major. Motion picture a.,. Disney kept Jones and his co stars coming Back for six months rephrasing a line changing an inflection adding hew dialogue. The other voices include whoops Goldberg and. Cheesch Marin As hysterical hyenas Jonathan Taylor. Thomas As the cub Sim a and Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella As the Laurel and Hardy of these. Re Geti a a Skinny Meerkat and a flatulent warthog a a except for Sabella and Lane each actor read his part in a room by himself. Dialogue was later spliced together. A a. It has taken four years to realize Disney s magnify. Cent Story a an original idea that came from the. Disney Story department and not from the classics of literature. The More than .1 million drawings were crafted by. 500 artists working under 13 supervising animators. The supervising animator keeps everything con. Sis tent says Tony Bancroft who created the bump limits warthog. A in Beauty and the beast there a like Oliree different Belles if you really look at it Quot he says. Quot somebody dropped the Ball. That a Why you have supervising animators and directors also so there is a consistency of the character.�?�. The animator is really an actor who draws says Bancroft 26,.�?othe voice is recorded first and that a. My jumping off Point. Listen to it Over and Over again and study All the inflections and its up to me. To get the visual acting. In a kind of a Behaviourist. In that i study Peoples behaviour and stereotypes of characters and try to put that in a and a Little of myself in that  a unlike some of Disney a More fanciful movies this one is based on nature. Six of its creators trekked to Africa to study the Topography the vegetation and the animals. Bancroft and animator Mike Surrey who created the mischievous Meerkat studied and sketched Ani Mals at the san Diego zoo and the wild an ind Park. The final aim is not Only to recreate the Ani mul but also to vitalize humanize and characterize these wild creatures. A a it a a performance we re creating a says Bancroft. Quot we re not just  producer Don Hahn 38, thinks that animation has finally been accepted As a legitimate facet of feature filmmaking. A i think that Spielberg or George Lucas or Scorsese defined Tive action filmmaking in the �?T70s. I think you re seeing a Little bit of that with this generation of animators. They re saying a i want to express myself As a director but with animation a with drawings and paint and Art  a it its hard to imagine How 600 people could come up with a consistent vision. It All starts with the Story says Hahn who also produced Beauty and the beast. A storyboard artists take the Basic material and visualize it on a storyboard a explains Hahn. A it looks like a comic strip. They do More than that they Craft bits of business in sequences where there is no Dia rogue or in song sequences. They re supplied with the Lyric and they have to visualize All that. All that business comes from the Story people. Then the animators take those ideas and move them and add another level of their acting ability on top of that.�?�. The music in the lion King is As impressive As the pictures. The score by German born composer Hans Zimmer mixes african choral works with electronic music and even touches of Mozart the songs were written by Elton John with lyrics by Tim Rice Evita Rice who usually writes theories for an existing tune had to work backward with John. A Elton is one of those rare examples of a composer who actually likes to get the words first Quot says Rice. The two of them rarely worked in the same room. Quot basically i would have endless meetings Here and collaborate with the team Here and i would have written the lyrics having worked with the directors and producers and writers. Then id Send an agreed Lyric off to  Many times the plot would change slightly forcing Rice to draft new lyrics. A and we already had a Good tune from Eiton but we had to change the words. So i ended up writing words to the tune in the end  Rice was amazed by Johns Speed. A the has always said if he does no to get a tune right in 20 minutes he just throws it away. I witnessed him create Circle of life the opus at the beginning of the film from Start to finish. I gave him the lyrics at the beginning Quot of the session at about 2 in the afternoon. He did no to want it before. By half past 3, he d finished writing and recording a stunning