WINNIE THE POOH

2011

Winnie the Pooh is Disney's 51st animated feature and the second one telling the many adventures of Pooh Bear, Christopher Robin and friends (Although there had been many movies about Pooh. Only in the 2000s the studio released The Tigger Movie (2000), Piglet (2003), The Adventures of Roo (2004), and Pooh's Heffalump Movie (2005) produced by Disney Toons). Based on the stories by Alan Milne, the first Pooh movie (which was originally released as 3 separate short stories) was released in 1977 and at that time Winnie the Pooh wasn't even popular in the US, so producing the film was sort of a risk for Walt Disney.

Nevertheless, the film was an incredible success due not only to the great story of the Hundred Acre Wood, but also to the amazing voice talents and animators that brought the characters to life.
But this time around, the movie was produced with some incredibly talented artists that will probably be as important to their time as the original cast and crew in 1977.

In the leading role in 1977 Pooh was voiced by Sterling Holloway,  one of my favourite voice actors in Disney history. He gave life to Pooh, Cheshire Cat, Kaa, Roquefort.
Tigger was voiced by Paul Winchell, who didn't have many other voice appearances but did an amazing job at giving Tigger his distinct voice.

In 2011 both roles were given to Jim Cummings, who has worked on so many shows that it's impossible to name them all. Some of his roles are Taz (Looney Tunes), Cat (Catdog) and of course Tigger and Pooh in the animated series.

Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas were the lead animators of Winnie the Pooh. Again, some really incredible artists who were responsible for some of the most memorable characters of the classic Disney features.
This time around, Pooh's supervising animator was Mark Henn, whose been responsible for some of the greatest characters of more recent Disney Films like Ariel, Mulan, Pocahontas and others.

Tigger was animated amazingly by Milt Kahl, one of the best Disney Animators who was responsible for animating Alice, Robin Hood,  And pretty much every character in the Jungle Book.
For Disney's new version,the role was given to Andreas Deja, one of my favourite animators of Disney's renaissance, who was in charge of animating Scar, Jafar, Hercules and other great characters.

Overall the movie is a great rendition to classic Winnie the Pooh stories and shows how amazing the simplest form of 2D animation can be.