talking about dull colors – my ideas about the look of disney’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST were very different when I started to work on it. I had seen AMADEUS and I loved the atmosphere. the idea of a classical story taking place in the late middle ages was exciting! the sources for the original BEAUTY story were in france, some came from england, all around 1650 – 1780. that was the time of THE PLAGUE in europe, the last SMALL ICE-AGE as well. the temperatures were much lower, lots of snow in winter and during the summertime it rained most of the time, what destroyed the harvest. people were dying from hunger, during the plague millions. I thought all that could be an incredible background for the story. and it would have defined the colors! at that time I didn’t know that it was supposed to be a musical, dramatic fun and laughter, – and dull colors were out! plague and rain as well, short – it was supposed to be a DISNEY movie. one day disney might release the one hour version of the film that a few disney artists storyboarded with jill+dick purdom in london in 1989. it was a lighter story than what I was thinking about, but it was way too european for disney. that’s why they trashed it. and who knows, it might not have been that successful.
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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.
wow this almost feels like i am back in school!! thank you so much for sharing these treasures with us! and thank you for having my blog listed on yours as well!
david hong
It’s beautiful, outstanding work…but B & B was set in 18th century France, not in the medieval period; so that might have influenced the change in the art direction.