Kent Melton, a master animation sculptor who is best known for making clay maquettes for features such as Aladdin, The Lion King, Mulan, The Incredibles and Coraline, has died at 68. His family told The Hollywood Reporter that he passed away on Thursday at his home in Stone County, Missouri, of Lewy body dementia.
Melton played a big role in crafting maquettes for the top Disney features of the 1990s renaissance, as well as Portland-based studio Laika’s Coraline, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls and Pixar’s The Incredibles in the 2000s.
At Disney, Melton created maquettes for Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Mulan (1998), Tarzan (1999) and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001). He also handcrafted sculptures for DreamWorks’ The Prince of Egypt (1998), The Road to El Dorado (2000), Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) and Don Bluth and Gary Goldman’s Thumbelina (1994). He also created porcelain-based sculptures for the Walt Disney Classics Collection.
Melton grew up in rural southwest Missouri, and taught himself to draw every day after finishing his farm chores. He later took his cartoon sculptures of The Beatles to a music festival in Chicago. That’s where he met a Disney employee who told him that he could find a job working at the studio using his sculpting talents. After moving to Los Angeles, he was able get hired by Hanna-Barbera as the studio’s first sculptor, through the same stranger he had met at the music festival.
For Hanna-Barbera, he sculpted maquettes for characters from The Flintstones and The Jetsons and worked on The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley. He also created character-based sculptures for Warner Bros.’ Tiny Toon Adventures. Then, a chance encounter with a parent at his son’s fourth birthday party led him to getting hired a Disney.
“Kids were coming in, and parents would trudge in behind them,” Melton told 417 Magazine in 2015. “I noticed one guest just staring at my sculptures for Warner Bros. on the table. The next week, I got a phone call from Disney. It turns out the guy at the birthday party was an art director at Disney. He saw my work, and the next day he was walking past directors for Aladdin, who were talking about how they needed sculptors for maquettes. He passed on the birthday party invitation with my number on it. They called me and, as they say, the rest is history.”
“I try to interact with the medium as much as possible,” Melton said in his 417 interview. “Let the clay or paint tell me what it wants and carry on a creative conversation with the art to find out where it takes me. I love the process. “When I was a kid, I never kept anything. I never cared about the final work; it was just the process that I loved. I love the experience of painting, drawing, sculpting, playing music, carving — anything. That’s what art is; it’s an experience.”
“Working in film has been great,” Melton said. “I’ve gotten to meet a lot of cool people and childhood idols. It’s always nice to meet people who have accomplished something with their life. There are so many people who will criticize you and tell you can’t do things. It’s a lot more fun to hang out with people who say, you know what, you can do that. Nothing is impossible. If a guy who didn’t have any art training can be where I’m at, anything is possible. I’m just a guy. I’m just fascinated hearing about other people, whatever it is they do. I’m just a Missouri boy like all the other Missouri boys. I just happen to get to work with talented people and hopefully influence people in a positive way.”
Survivors include his wife, Martha; children Seth, Jordan and Nellie (an artist and animator) and grandchildren Persephone, Toby, Juliet and Charlie.
[Source: The Hollywood Reporter]
