coyotes

before the short PECOS BILL in disney’s 1948 MELODY TIME starts, there is some inbetween panning over the nightly desert with a country music piece ‘blue shadows’. I am not a big fan of that kind of music, but the backgrounds, all in several multiplane layers, are nice. unfortunately for the DVD filmtransfer they used a very experienced specialist who screwed everything up. the whole part is too dark and again very talented color-corrected. the multi-layered pan itself was pretty complicated to recreate, in some areas I even had to re-paint some bits and pieces, but the wrong colors and the dark transfer made it worse. it really was some w o r k ! I know, it doesn’t show.

© disney enterprises, inc

corto

HUGO PRATT, 1927 – 1995, is one of my favorite italian comic strip artists next to SERGIO TOPPI who will be in one of the next chapters. PRATT lived a pretty adventurous life all over europe, afrika and southern america, as you can read in his biography. a lot of his experiences and adventures went into his comic strips, CORTO MALTESE probably best known. I love his rough brush strokes and very reduced drawing style.

© hugo pratt

HAPPY NEW YEAR…

© bilderfabrik

spring again

another beautiful pan form disney’s BAMBI. it is a pan from the left to the right. as you can see in the first image, the basic direction lines in the BG-elements start to bend slowly into the moving direction. if the trees or the grass were straight or bent in the opposite direction, a ‘staggering’ effect could occur during the pan. the faster the pan, the more the angle of the elements in the BG has to bend towards a horizontal curved/straight line. whenever you look at a pan BG now you should be aware of these rules, the most beautiful forest paintings were not done accidentally, every little detail is there for a reason.

© disney enterprises, inc

woodcut

LUDWIG RICHTER, 1803 – 1884, is probably one of the most popular and charming german artists of the 19. century. he created thousands of drawings to be published by transfering them into woodcuts. DRESDEN, where richter lived, was next to berlin and munic the center of german woodcut-art. mostly english artists, like THOMAS BEWICK and JOHN ALLANSON, living and working there in dresden, where leading in that diffficult craft. early richter delivered his drawings to a publisher who had them cut into wood by the specialized artists. later richter did his drawings directly on the wood, to make it easier for the woodcut artist. that way numerous books could be published, with fairy tales, folk songs, anthologies and reading books. richter was also a very talented painter, I showed in an earlier post some of his work.
his drawings/woodcuts are so rich in detail of the world of his time, the typical southern- and east-german landscape, the rural architecture and plants, that it was always for me some good inspiration for film-designs of stories from that time.

© ludwig richter

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

sixties

years ago richard williams gave me a collection of animated commercials from the sixties, all animated by ART BABBITT for JOHN HUBLEY. I love the animation, the character design and different styles. here are some scenes…