before I became the official production designer for disney’s MULAN in december 1994 a small team of visual development artists had explored all different artistic directions for a possible style of that project. some of them had nearly worked on and off for 2 years on that. it was a challenge, the chinese typical painting-look was very difficult to copy for the use in animation. it still was supposed to be a disney movie but the studio wanted to come up with a story-typical style for the new projects. it had been successfully done with HERCULES, ALADDIN and LION KING where art-historic and geographic elements had been combined and ‘disneyfied’. below a few of the hundreds of paintings and sketches from that early stage of development. some more will follow
© disney enterprises, inc
my name is hans bacher, – I work as production designer in the animation film industry. for the last 45 years I lived and worked in exciting places around the world. after 7 years of teaching in singapore I am back at my homebase in manila, working on a few more books.
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These are so good, thanks for sharing these treasures.
I really love the colors in the second painting.
I think the word that defines these magnificent works is “solid”. The rocks and the elements that are seen in the images are well-defined forms, are rough, hard, palpable. I think that this is the difference of the path that eventually took the art of film. That’s what I see.
You know better than I, whether it was so or not.
Thanks Hans.
Beautiful! Thank you for sharing.
Interesting… These are all great but more than anything show what an important part your artwork had in making the picture.
I suppose you can tell they were struggling with the style while any of your work for the film I’ve seen feels natural and almost effortlessly brilliant. I’d be curious to know if it took you personally a lot of trial and error to get to that point on this particular project?
from hans –
thank you for the kind comment. not that I want to sell my book DREAM WORLDS, but there is a big chapter about MULAN and the struggle to develop the style for the film.
Okay, thanks! The book was already on my list of art books I need to buy so I’ll be sure to read up on it sooner or later.
Very intresting the way projects materialize and all the hard work that goes into each production. Very dedicated production artist’s that clearly love what they do