masterpieces

so far I guess I have recreated more than one hundred backgrounds from disney’s BAMBI. you probably know that only a few originals from the film are left because most of the scenes where shot in levels with the MULTIPLANE-camera, had to be painted in oil on glass, and after the shots were successful some poor guy had to scrape off the master-paintings from the glass. glass was rare during WWII and had to be reused. the recreated BG’s below were seen the last time in original around 1941/42. the first one is about one third of the full length of the opening pan of the film, shot in 8 levels to create the feel of depth.

© disney enterprises, inc

who killed cock robin?

‘Who killed Cock Robin? I, said the Sparrow, with my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin.’ – this is the first verse of the 1744 published rhyme in TOMMY THUMB’S PRETTY SONG BOOK. the DISNEY SILLY SYMPHONY with the same title was released on june 26, 1935. DAVID HAND directed the short, the main characters – COCK ROBIN ( BING CROSBY ) and the MAE WEST – like JENNY WREN were designed by JOE GRANT. there are some additional hollywood star caricatures of that period, like a cuckoo bird – HARPO MARX, and the KEYSTONE COPS.

© disney enterprises, inc

mulan findings 5

here is some more visual development artwork for disney’s MULAN. it was done sometime early 1994 before I joined the team

© disney enterprises, inc

kem weber

KEM WEBER, 1889 – 1963, born in berlin, germany, was a furniture- and industrial designer, an architect, art director and teacher. his first name KEM is the short for his full name KARL EMANUEL MARTIN. before he enrolled at the school of decorative arts in berlin in 1908, where he studied with BRUNO PAUL, he was trained as a cabinet maker. already in 1910 he became involved in the construction of the german pavilion at the the brussels world fair. after graduating in 1912 kem worked for the german government on a display for the san francisco PANAMA PACIFIC INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION in 1915. to supervise the project he was sent to san francisco and was stranded there after WW1 ( 1914 – 1918 ) erupted. while teaching in santa barbara, california, kem opened his own design studio, became a U.S.citizen in 1924, and headed to L.A. as an art director for barker bros. furniture. from 1927 on he also designed modern sets for hollywood movies and private residences in his own studio. in 1934 his AIRLINE CHAIR became famous.

kem weber’s design style of POST ART DECO and MODERN STREAMLINE DESIGN got the attention of walt disney who made weber the principle architect for the new disney studios in burbank in the late thirties. kem designed the whole look of the new studio, inclusive all the furniture and the interior architecture. the very specific desks, like the animation desks, layout-, BG- and checking desks, as well as the director’s- and ink&paint desks, are not just brilliant designed in their functionality, they look stunning as well. weber’s design influence became almost iconic with the disney look of the late 30s, he even developed a very special font to be used throughout the studio.

when the new disney studio opened in december 1994 his influence was still visible everywhere, in the interior architecture and furniture, and even the KEM WEBER FONT was visible everywhere. kem weber’s furniture pieces from the old studio, like all different desks and armchairs have become collector’s treasures all over the animation community.

© disney enterprises, inc

mulan findings 4

this is the color script for one of the first sequences in disney’s MULAN that went into production – the song sequence I’LL MAKE A MAN OUT OF YOU. the head of background in the florida studio BOB STANTON painted the thumbnails

© disney enterprises, inc

big day

I just found these historic color-slides hidden with 1000s others in one of my slide boxes. it was a big presentation in the disney studio that day, sometime in the fall in 1995 – the first presentation of the style designs for MULAN. we had mounted on boards some of the older paintings together with the latest look. that was as far as I remember the meeting where I was asked by some higher ranks if I could add a bit more detail to my designs, they looked too empty, the audience might think disney could not afford more elaborate backgrounds. oh well…

© disney enterprises, inc

mulan findings 3

you probably remember the MULAN-poster, the red-one on the left .this version was used in the US and in europe, other versions were developed for the rest of the world – here you can see 2 alternatives for asia. FRED TIO and his designers in disney publications created the designs. I remember the presentation meeting, wow, I could not believe my eyes. stunning! it could not be better! but not everybody was excited, for some of the executives the motif and the execution was not ‘disney’ enough. it was a fight. fortunately the poster was chosen and became a huge success. the cover for the follow-up vhs-cassette ( at that time there was no DVD yet ) is another story, less nice.
anyway, the dragon was from the beginning the ‘leitmotif’, I developed the first one for the emperor’s seal. for internal use I came up with a preliminary logo as header for our artwork with a more stretched dragon. that dragon made it into the final logo. for a while I was involved in the search for that logo, a typical lettering and even the title. in the very beginning it was FA-MULAN, as you can see we had several very different titles and chose the simple short ‘MULAN’ in the end. a good choice.

funny coincidence – I live now for 2 years here in singapore. and in one of singapore’s many parks, the chinese garden, there is a HUA MULAN ( her original name ) sculpture.

© disney enterprises, inc

mulan findings 2

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

albert hurter

ALBERT HURTER was the first visual development artist in the disney studio, most of characters and environments for the disney shorts in the thirties, the SILLY SYMPHONIES, but as well as for the features SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, PINOCCHIO, DUMBO, FANTASIA and THE RELUCTANT DRAGON were designed by him. born in switzerland in 1883 he studied architecture in zurich and went then for seven years to an art academy in berlin. probably because of the dangerous situation and the beginning of WWI he left europe in 1914 and went to new york where he was introduced to the animation film industry. in the barre-bowers studio he worked on the MUTT & JEFF cartoons and became very fast well known for his amazing drawing talents. around 1930 he applied for work at the disney studio where he was disney’s VISUAL SKETCH ARTIST for more than a decade, drawing whatever came to his mind, playing with the ideas of a new story and working on films they would be produced long after his death, like PETER PAN and LADY AND THE TRAMP. I am sure that he introduced the disney artists to european masters like HEINRICH KLEY, WILHELM BUSCH and the caricature artists of the SIMPLIZISSIMUS. in 1942 he died of a weak heart, and seven years later a book HE DREW AS HE PLEASED was pubished, put together by TED SEARS, one of the story artists hurter had worked with. the book has about 700 of hurter’s sketches throughout his years at disney, and a lot of them have always been my favorites. I post them below in a bigger size.

michael sporn has posted the complete book in 2 parts on his blog – you can find it here and here.

© albert hurter and disney enterprises, inc

mulan findings 1

you probably have made that same experience – you search for something and find tons of stuff way more interesting than what you were looking for. it took a long time since my archives has grown too big, but it was worth it. you will see a lot of it in my next posts. today I start with some of my oldest MULAN color designs, from 1995, a mushu cel set-up and a directional map with sequence numbers.

© disney enterprises, inc

analysis 2

for the background analysis below I chose a beautiful recreated pan-BG from a 1936 DISNEY short – DONALD AND PLUTO. it is the first disney cartoon where donald duck and pluto star together. directed by ben sharpsteen the animation was done by al eugster, shamus culhane, fred spencer, norm ferguson and bill roberts. as in most of the early shorts nothing is known about the layout- and background-artist. you can see in the final BG that is was painted by a master. he could have done the walls just in one flat color, especially because it is a pan and you don’t even have a chance to see too much detail during the camera-move. but he wanted to create a believeable atmosphere. there is not just one flat color on the walls in a room, you have reflected colors from objects around, light coming from different sources and there are shadows. besides that there was one golden rule in the old days – a BG should contain well distributed the 3 basic colors – YELLOW, RED and BLUE, maybe a rule coming from the technicolor process. but it alawys works. you find this rule applied in most of the BG’s at that time. of course nobody painted with the pure colors, they were desaturated, but you can feel them. anyway – below you find a very simpified breakdown of that background.

© disney enterprises, inc

lobby cards 4

© disney enterprises, inc

lobby cards 2

© disney enterprises, inc

mel shaw ( 1914 – 2012 )

MEL SHAW, one of the last DISNEY-LEGENDS, has passed away at the age of 97.

the picture shows him working on BEAUTY AND THE BEAST in london, september 1989.

more information here
and here

lobby cards 1

A LONG TIME AGO, when disney films were only re-released every 7 to 8 years, when these films were not out on DVD because there was no DVD, when you could not see the latest film-trailers on youtube and when publications about film in general were rare, there were at least window displays in front of the movie theatres ( the days before they were hidden in shopping malls ). in these small windows the latest films were announced with a big poster as well as a selection of 10 to 20 high-glossy photographs with images from the film. the size of the pictures was about A4 in a very good quality. in some cases they were originally in black/white and had been colored by hand in horrible colors – as you can see below. in case you knew the theatre owner you could get some of those pictures, much later a big swapping market developped and the value of those old lobby-cards, as they were called, increased. I have quite a big collection, most of them are from the 70s and 80s, and will post them once in a while.

© disney enterprises, inc

speed paintings

from one of my favorite disney shorts – THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE, 1934

© disney enterprises, inc

beauty

the reason why I recreated this stunning background from disney’s SLEEPING BEAUTY was pure curiosity, I hope the original is still in the disney archives ARL. it is a long and complicated combined pan with a camera-turn, must have been pretty long in three multiplane layers in original, I guess in 2 pieces, where the cut edges could have been covered by the foreground foliage. I explain some of the details in the first image. the tilted angle is the result of the camera turn – I started with the recreation in the normal horizontal position of the first frame, the second image shows the whole BG in a better readable angle. see the beauty of this piece of art yourself, the first reaction might be – incredible, all the detail! yes, but it doesn’t look overloaded like so many backgrounds today and the characters read perfectly clear, because the color range and the values are very close. amazing as well the composition – the cathedral-like trees that create the ‘background’ with the more irregular and curvy tree-shapes in the foreground. the foliage adds the playful rococo detail in front of everything. it is all controlled and looks so light.

© disney enterprises, inc

mel shaw

MEL SHAW, born december 19, 1914, in brooklyn moved to L.A. in 1928. after an art education at the otis art institute he joined the HARMAN-ISING studios as an animator, character designer, story man and director. during that time he had a chance to work with ORSON WELLES storyboarding a live action/animation version of THE LITTLE PRINCE. WALT DISNEY hired mel personally after he saw him play in a polo match. before WWII interrupted mel’s career he worked on FANTASIA, BAMBI and WIND IN THE WILLOWS. after the war he started the ALLEN-SHAW productions together with former MGM animator BOB ALLEN, where he created toys and architectural masterplans like century city in california, as well as the illustrations for the first BAMBI children book for disney. mel told me the story where he was involved in the ( stone by stone ) move of the 1831 built LONDON BRIDGE from london to LAKE HAVASU CITY, ARIZONA, in 1968. the bridge was dismantled, every stone numbered and then shipped and trucked via long beach to arizona. what a project! in 1974 mel shaw returned to the disney studios where he helped the new artists on productions like RESCUERS, FOX AND THE HOUND, GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and THE LION KING. I met mel during our pre-production work for BEAUTY AND THE BEAST in london in the fall of 1989 and had a chance to witness ( and videotape ) his incredible charcoal technique and the birth of dozens of beautiful paintings.

© disney enterprises, inc / mel shaw

mulan historic 1

as comparison here are some kind of ‘historic’ designs I did for disney’s MULAN in october 1995. starting with the very first rough black/white sketch, about postcard size, and together with my own logo for the fim, at that time after ‘the legend of fa-mulan’ as a working title ‘the legend of mulan’. the dragon survived in the final logo. then a step inbetween, a marker sketch, about 6 x 10 cm. and the final 12 field acrylic painting on cardboard. the last design in this post is the very first planned cover of the ART OF MULAN book by jeff kurtti. I like the final cover with the original powerful poster much better.

© disney enterprises, inc

snow white BG’s 3

a few more recreated backgrounds from disney’s SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS…

© disney enterprises, inc