digging through boxes and drawers I found some historic ‘ducks’, probably from 1988 / 1989, – ALFRED JODOCUS KWAK. the concept had been developed by dutch entertainer HERMAN VAN VEEN, HARALD SIEPERMANN and myself did all the thousands of drawings for 3 comic books, 4 educational books, the storyboards and style-designs for a 52-episode tv series ( produced in japan ) as well as tons of drawings for the connected merchandise ( about 400 different products available in some bigger stores and QUELLE at that time ). there was no photoshop, it all had to be drawn with steel-nibs and chinese ink on some white sheets called ‘paper’ and colored with extremely life threatening chemicals out of funny looking felt-sticks. I know from my students that these little unknown details have to be explained to a younger generation…
© van veen / siepermann / bacher
my name is hans bacher, – I work as production designer in the animation film industry. for the last 40 years I lived and worked in duesseldorf, london, paris, los angeles, manila and tokyo. now I am professor for film-design at the nanyang techn. university in singapore.
All of these are beautiful.
Remember watching this when I was a kid! Absolutely loved it!!!!
This brings back a lot of memories (Not only this pen and paper technology you mention)! I knew of you and Harald S. as Disney artists first and was amazed when I saw a few years ago that you two did Alfred. I watched the show religiously and owned the original comic book as a kid.
The pictures were colored with Magic Markers?!!
from hans -
the felt-tip markers I used were AD-markers and PANTONE-markers, later the alcohol based GRAPHIC-markers. airbrush was done with PANTONE- fineliners, and highlights and corrections with gouache.
Brilliant!
Magic Markers constituted a rather dangerous hazard:
I heard of some illustrators who worked with them for a long time and now suffer from a variety of diseases, all connected to the respiratory and/or to the nervous system.
But I loved the smell of them, anyway.
Just as much as I really liked the smell of gas at the petrol station in the 6o’s.
from hans -
yes the benzol in them affected the liver and the kidneys, I got very ill from them. well, when you work and you are successful you don’t think of the problems threatening you when you get older.