delay

the unusual delay with my posts doesn’t mean I stopped posting or was running out of ideas. I am recovering from surgery. purely accidental during check-up a malignant tumor stage 1 was found in my right kidney. as if I didn’t have enough rollercoaster rides! 40% of the kidney were removed, no complications. but the recovery takes a long time. one of the causes for this kind of cancer is working with color-solvents. unfortunately I did that for about 25 years, colored all my artwork with benzol based magic-/ AD-/ pantone-markers. what helped me to become successful in my design job nearly killed me. now I hope my computer work is less threatening.

the design above is from disney’s FANTASIA 2000, BEETHOVEN’S FIFTH.

© disney enterprises, inc

MULAN children-book

september 1997, during the last months of the production of disney’s MULAN, I was asked by the N.Y. disney-publisher to illustrate the children-book of MULAN. timewise it was a challenge. to explain my layout ideas I sketched all the planned doublepages, showing an interesting combination of text and illustration. and I developed a style for the pictures that was slightly different than what we did in the film, but still kept the chinese feel. the publisher had very different opinions about the distribution of text on one side and illustration on the other. I suggested that someone else illustrated the book. below are some of the layout pages and a styled double page in color. the technique is a pen and ink drawing, using brown ink, then colored the old traditional way with feltpen and feltpen-airbrush, and a touch of colored pencil and gouache.

© disney enterprises, inc

some more edelmann

© heinz edelmann / WDR / FAZ magazine

trains

on a sunday afternoon in august 1994 I got a call from ANDREAS DEJA, if I wanted to join him for a visit to OLLIE JOHNSTON’S house and a ride on his train. you bet I wanted. I had arrived in L.A. in june and started to work in the disney-studio. andreas picked me up and we drove up in the hills to la canada / flintridge, where ollie and his wife marie lived. several other guests were invited – STEVE FIOTT, who was the editor of the STORYBOARD-magazine, LEON and JACK JANZEN, the editors of the E-TICKET-magazine and ANDY GASKILL, art director of THE LION KING, who lived not too far away. later FRANCK THOMAS, ollie’s good friend and neighbour, joined us as well. ollie’s miniature railway was built through his two acre backyard and around the house. it was slightly smaller than WALT DISNEY’S old CAROLWOOD PACIFIC RAILWAY. ollie and WARD KIMBALL had started walt disney’s interest in miniature trains and had helped him to design and build his miniature railway. ollie had several cars behind the engine, where we could sit, he blew the whistle and was our engineer running the train. I videotaped the whole event and treasure these memories. the pictures were taken by steve fiott and can be seen in storyboard magazine vol.5/nr.5 sept./oct.1994.

from left to right – OLLIE JOHNSTON, ANDY GASKILL, STEVE FIOTT, me, ANDREAS DEJA

pictures © steve fiott

crowns

disney’s THE TRICKS OF OUR TRADE was a DISNEYLAND tv-special, on the air february 13, 1957. WALT DISNEY took the audience behind the scenes at the studio to show how the films were made. the MULTIPLANE CAMERA with the opening of BAMBI was a fascinating part of the show, as well as MILT KAHL, MARC DAVIS, FRANK THOMAS and OLLIE JOHNSTON drawing ballet studies for the DANCE OF THE HOURS in FANTASIA. I guess it was around 1959 when the show was on german television, in black/white of course. I was about ten years old and can still remember the whole event, it was ‘magic’! and it probably laid the path for my future. a bit different though at that time because I was the most excited about the ‘EFFECTS’ chapter, where animators studied erupting lava, smashed glass windows and falling waterdrops. especially these waterdrop-frames like crowns stayed in my memory forever. I had no idea what slow-motion was, later I tried to capture these images with my very first 8mm camera, with 48 frames/sec. and since then I collected pictures of these beautiful captured drops wherever I could find them.

© disney enterprises, inc

wilhelm m.busch 5

in 1966 WILHELM M.BUSCH illustrated a compilation of stories from some of the most famous german writers – GOETHE, DROSTE HUELSHOFF, HEBBEL, KELLER, FONTANE, HAUPTMANN, MANN, RILKE, HESSE, KAFKA, HEINE, GRASS, BRECHT, HOELDERLIN, KLEIST, BRENTANO, STIFTER and more. the title of the 500 pages collection is UNSER GANZES LEBEN – ALL OUR LIFE. following are only a few of the numerous illustrations.

© wilhelm m.busch / paul list verlag, muenchen

b/w 2

© disney enterprises, inc
© bilderfabrik

officer duck

the captured images, recreated pans and layouts are from the ‘golden era of animation’, from disney’s DONALD DUCK short OFFICER DUCK. released october 1939, directed by CLYDE GERONIMI. the layouts are some of the most beautiful I have seen so far.

© disney enterprises, inc

march mood