pure beauty 8

© disney enterprise, inc © paramount © zagreb studio © fischerkoesen
© edelmann © WB © UPI © richard williams © jan lenica © toccafundo

jiri trnka 6

a beautiful JIRI TRNKA double page illustration from the book ‘boehmische sagen’.

© jiri trnka

jiri trnka 5

JIRI TRNKA, the czech master of puppet-animation and children book illustration, created the artwork below. these beautiful colored pen and ink drawings are my favorite of his children book work. the book was published 1982 as LA CHAUMIERE EN PAIN D’EPICE by artia publishing prague and gruend publishing paris. ISBN 2-7000-1420-0

© jiri trnka

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© jiri trnka

jiri trnka 3

PARSIVAL – LOHENGRIN, written by GERHART HAUPTMANN was newly published in 1963 by the german ULLSTEIN verlag with illustrations JIRI TRNKA. they look like woodcuts, but TRNKA used a very oldfashioned positive/negative technique. I learned that unusual technique in school, – you have to scratch the white lines out of a painted black surface applied over a special prepared white first layer. in case you plan your illustration well you can place negative looking elements next to positive pen and ink drawn areas. today in photoshop it is less spectacular and much faster.

© jiri trnka / ullstein publishing

bajaja

these are the final screen captures of JIRI TRNKA’S 1950 puppet animation film PRINCE BAJAJA

© LUTKOVI film praha + jiri trnka

sunday inspiration

heinrich kley

heinz edelmann

moebius

alice+martin provensen

ronald searle

jiri trnka

mort drucker

eyvind earle

wolf erlbruch

john bauer

© heinrich kley, heinz edelmann, moebius, a+m provensen, ronald searle, jiri trnka, mort drucker, eyvind earle, wolf erlbruch, john bauer

more jiri trnka

you might have noticed that JIRI TRNKA is one of my favorite artists. a while ago I posted some of his puppet animation artwork and a few children book illustrations. here is some more, a lot of his earlier work…

© jiri trnka

more puppets

I found some production photos from JIRI TRNKA’S animation feature film production A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM and some better quality production stills. there is an additional production photo of BAJAJA.

© KRATKY film, JIRI TRNKA

some favorites

the artwork below was created by some of my favorite artists. PER AHLIN is a swedish artist and animation director. one of his films, a mixed live action/animation film, is DUNDERKLUMPEN, sweden 1974. HEINZ EDELMANN, a german illustrator and designer, is probably best known for his production design for THE YELLOW SUBMARINE, great britain 1968. THE BOY AND THE MAGIC is a children book illustrated by the english artist GERARD HOFFNUNG, 1925 – 1959. he became famous with his HOFFNUNG’S SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, later animated by HALAS & BATCHELOR. another scandinavian master-illustrator was KAY NIELSEN, denmark 1886 – 1957. he only worked for about a year at disney until 1940. but his work influenced the look of THE NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN in FANTASIA. his many children book illustrations are masterpieces, next to EDMUND DULAC, ARTHUR RACKHAM and GUSTAF TENGGREN he is one of the greats in book illustration. another giant was JIRI TRNKA, 1912 – 1969, the czech illustrator, animator and puppet animation director. A MIDSUMMERNIGHTS DREAM and PRINCE BAJAJA are some of his most famous films. not too much is known about german illustrator DIETER LANGE. he worked for the magazine STERN and the children magazine STERNCHEN since the mid fifties. I collected probably all his illustrations and treasure that rare collection. the last artist is swedish GUSTAF TENGGREN, 1896 – 1970. he as well worked for a short time at disney, 1936 – 1940, and styled SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, PINOCCHIO and several SILLY SYMPHONIES.

© per ahlin, heinz edelmann+WDR, gerard hoffnung, kay nielsen, jiri trnka, dieter lange+STERN, gustaf tenggren

inspired

on my lecture trips over here in asia I have a chance to meet and talk to a lot of students. what you wanna know of course is, what inspires them, who are their favorite artists. maybe there is someone
they admire and want to do something similar in their future. what is kind of depressing that I very rare get a clear answer. only very few have a raw model they wanna follow. even worse, only a few are even informed about successful artists in the animation field. the most I hear is – we love anime. well… I don’t know what is going wrong, do I meet the wrong people? I would expect with all the information you can get through the internet there is a bit more enthusiasm.
following I have collected some designs of the artists who inspired me when I was a student. ‘giants’ like EYVIND EARLE, KEN ANDERSON, WALT PEREGOY, JOHN HUBLEY, a lot of artists from ZAGREB FILM STUDIO, JIRI TRNKA, TERRY GILLIAM + MONTHY PYTHON, comic strip legends like ANDREE FRANQUIN, MORT DRUCKER, ALBERT UDERZO and HUGO PRATT, – and a german comic series MECKY.

© disney enterprises, inc, HUBLEY, ZAGREB FILM, JIRI TRNKA, TERRY GILLIAM, ANDREE FRANQUIN, MORT DRUCKER, ALBERT UDERZO, HUGO PRATT, SPRINGER-HOER ZU