Tarzan’s Clayton

In January 1996, besides to the character Professor Porter, Harald Siepermann also started visual development for the character Clayton for Walt Disney’s Tarzan. Harald had just received his new assignment from the Tarzan-directors Kevin Lima and Chris Buck, which was to create visual development for all the characters in the movie.

Clayton from Walt Disney’s Tarzan

In Walt Disney’s Tarzan, the British Clayton was hired by Jane and Professor Porter as guide and protector, during their excursion in Africa. However, Clayton has a second agenda, and that is to hunt gorillas.

 

“When we started with Tarzan, we were aiming at the impossible, by not giving away that Clayton was the villain of our movie, but using Kerchak as a kind of a red herring instead,” remembered Siepermann. “That of course couldn’t work, but we tried anyway. The idea behind it was that not too long ago, in the history of Hollywood movies, the great white hunters were the heroes in these kind of movies. And who would make a better great white hunter than Clark Gable. In fact, he played these kind of roles. So I looked at him a lot.”

Harald Siepermann first look at the actor Glark Gable for inspiration.

By that time the actor Brian Blessed was already cast as the voice of Clayton. Harald actually was not familiar with Brian Blessed, and therefor didn’t model his design after the actor, “…to the great surprise of the directors,” remembered Siepermann, “who were expecting a kind of caricature of Brian Blessed, the wonderful voice of Clayton. I just had a tape with some of his lines but in my ignorance, didn’t know what he looked like, and worked only from what I was hearing. When I had my first sketches ready, I had to board them and run the voice tape to the directors to convince them that it would work, even if there was no resemblance.”

 

“Gable as Clayton was too ‘American’ for my taste, so I looked a lot at J.C. Leyendecker’s work to get a feel for the ‘English Gentleman’: well educated, ready to kill, but deciding against it,” continued Siepermann. “I found out, that Leyendecker’s favorite model was the actor John Barrymore, grandfather of Drew, so I went directly to the source. You’ll find more Barrymore in Clayton than Gable.”

Actor John Barrymore served as an inspiration for Harald Siepermann for the character Clayton.

But while there is the resemblance of Gable and Barrymore in Clayton, Siepermann used several other sources as reference. “I wanted Clayton to be ‘English’, so I tried everything I could, using the likes of David Niven as reference, Errol Flynn, even Prince Charles and Prince Phillip, basically everything I could get hold off…”

Sir Richard Burton

“I never miss out to look not just at other (animated) movies, but at the historical real thing and get familiar with it, doing my research,” continued Siepermann. “This is Sir Richard Burton – not the actor – the first and only non-Muslim, who ever was inside the Kaaba, who first translated the Kamasutra and The Arabian Nights, who discovered the Victoria Falls and the source of the Nile. The blueprint of any generic explorer.”

The directors liked Haral Siepermann’s design for Clayton, and it became an important reference for Supervising Animator Randy Haycock, who brought the character to life.

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