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alex nino 8

and more of ALEX NINO’S amazing inspirational art for disney’s MULAN

© disney enterprises, inc

500 posts

if I had decided to do a book, with 500 chapters it would be a pretty thick one, probably with more than 1.000 pages. and it would be so expensive with all the color images that nobody could afford it. so far this blog has over one million visitors, between 2.000 and 8.000 a day. and from about 120 countries all around the globe. I will do my best to make the next 500 chapters as interesting as the past ones, please leave your comments what you think.
I will be in hong kong for a few days, back on may 27.

fool

THE FOOL OF THE WORLD AND THE FLYING SHIP is a puppet-animation film from 1990, a COSGROVE HALL production, great britain. the russian muenchhausen-like fairytale has terrific animation, the puppets and the environment are beautifully designed. mark hall and brian cosgrove formed their animation company in 1976 in manchester. their most successful films are DANGER MOUSE, THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS, PETER AND THE WOLF, – all in puppet animation as well as traditional animation.

© cosgrove hall

2005

five years ago I recreated the first pan background, a complicated several level pan from disney’s 1945 animated feature film THE THREE CABALLEROS. during these five years the collection of recreated animation treasures has grown to about 800 backgrounds.

© disney enterprises, inc

humid

wolf erlbruch 2

WOLF ERLBRUCH has illustrated numerous children books, most of them published by PETER HAMMER VERLAG wuppertal. below are some pages form these treasures, as well as some calendar-sheets with his characters.

© wolf erlbruch / peter hammer verlag

chinese red

give aways 1

when you work in a bigger studio there are always GIVE-AWAYS. usually as a nice gesture before a new film is released, connected to a christmas-party or because some little money is left from the yearly budget. it can be a jacket or t-shirt with the logo of the production you work on, a watch or throw-away-camera with the company logo and all different other small stuff like pins, ballpoint pens and notepads. once in a while some of the stuff becomes a collector’s item depending on the success rate of the final film. below are some of the give-aways I designed for DISNEY and a few from my collection over the years.

© disney enterprises, inc
© amblin / UNIVERSAL pictures
© harlekijn, van veen, siepermann, bacher

wilhelm m.busch 9

DER VERZAUBERTE WANDERER ( the enchanted wanderer, 1873 ) written by NIOKOLAI LJESKOW, was illustrated by WILHELM M.BUSCH in 1957 for the DEUTSCHE HAUSBUECHEREI edition. I selected some of the illustrations.

© wilhelm m.busch / deutsche hausbuecherei publ. hamburg

magical

digitally corrected color xerox. I did the stylistic design for disney’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST in 1989. the original disappeared like over fifty others during the production of the film.

© disney enterprises, inc

kingdom 2

in the early days of production disney’s ROGER ALLERS directed inka-version of THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES was titled – KINGDOM OF THE SUN. after major story problems MARK DINDALL took over and the piece was called THE EMPEROR’S NEW GROOVE, what doesn’t mean the story improved. unfortunately the beautiful preproduction artwork done by PAUL FELIX, COLIN STIMPSON and JOHN WATKISS is not reflected in the final 2000 released film. below some more of JOHN WATKISS huge acrylic-paintings.

© disney enterprises, inc / john watkiss

a girl worth fighting for

in disney’s 1998 MULAN we had a song A GIRL WORTH FIGHTING FOR before the big hun attack. it was planned as a fun, relaxing moment before the horror started. the soldiers are crossing the country at that point and we showed some of the beauty of china in several wide shots. the song was supposed to fit into this very ‘chinese’ moment and I did some stylized sketches of the characters in the song, done with a chinese brush and elements of chinese calligraphy. earlier in the film I had sketched another song sequence with mushu, a kind of ‘pink elephant parade’ with chinese dragons, where mushu goes through 70 years of modern art painting. that didn’t happen, so I was curious if the calligraphy sequence would be approved. it was, with some stylistic changes, but it still looks pretty close to what I had in mind as you can see below. the animation was done by AARON BLAISE and BROOSE JOHNSON.

© disney enterprises, inc

scrapbook

the disney 1948 combined live action/animation film SO DEAR TO MY HEART seems to be pretty unknown, especially outside of the united states. UB IWERKS was responsible for special photographic processes, HAMILTON LUSKE directed the cartoon sequences. storyboard treatment by – MARC DAVIS, KEN ANDERSON, BILL PEET. art directors – JOHN HENCH, MARY BLAIR, DICK KELSEY and layout – KEN O’CONNOR, HUGH HENNESY, DON GRIFFITH, THOR PUTNAM. backgrounds – ART RILEY, RALPH HULETT, JIM TROUT, DICK ANTHONY, BRICE MACK, RAY HUFFINE and animation – ERIC LARSON, JOHN LOUNSBERY, HAL KING, MILT KAHL, LES CLARK, DON LUSK, MARVIN WOODWARD. effects animation – GEORGE ROWLEY, JOSHUA MEADOR, DAN McMANUS. following are some screen captures of the animated sequences.

© disney enterprises, inc

incredible!

this is really amazing. 1.000.000 views! thank you all for visiting me. from everywhere around the globe, even from countries I had no idea they exist. it is good to know there is so much interest for this beautiful artform – animation, and whatever is connected to it. I find out something new every day and will never stop learning. there is so much out there to explore and it makes me feel good that I am not alone on these trips.

september 2008 I started this blog with ‘wordpress’ after some bad experience with nearly a dozen of other blogs and a different server. this new ‘book’ has so far 486 chapters. I must admit that the missing list of content in ‘wordpress’ makes it difficult to look through older posts. of course you can search for chapters, but then you should know the chapter’s title. to make that a bit easier for you I have compiled all 486 post-titles. you find them below. whatever you think might be interesting, find it by typing the title into ‘search’. hope you enjoy looking through my book, the older chapters and the new ones to come.

wolf erlbruch 1

WOLF ERLBRUCH, born 1949 in wuppertal, germany, studied graphic design at the FOLKWANG-SCHOOL in essen. that’s where our paths crossed. we both studied with the same teacher – PROFESSOR REKER, both from 1969 until 1974. and we worked both for the same advertising agencies in duesseldorf. his storyboards were better than the final live-action commercial, some became collector’s items. whatever he touched turned special, like the SAMSON-tobacco illustrations. after the advertising experience he started to illustrate for magazines like STERN and ESQUIRE. there as well he developed all different looks, tested different techniques and styles. in 1985 he was asked by the wuppertal publisher PETER HAMMER to illustrate his first children book. many more followed. wolf has won numerous awards for his very unusual styled children books. at the same time he became a professor for children book illustration at the duesseldorf art academy, some years later he took that position at the university in his hometown of wuppertal. the characters he creates are so different from everything you have ever seen, there is no disney- or other influence visible. his technique is ‘old-fashioned’ and very unique too. he uses ‘real’ cardboard and crayons, the textures in his illustrations are cut-outs from wrapping paper or other unusual sources. I am surprised that there are no animated films with his stunning animal characters and stories. following is some of wolf erlbruch’s work that I collected over the past 30 years. there will be more …

© wolf erlbruch / gruner & jahr publ./ peter hammer publ.

park concert

the recreated long diagonal pan below is from the short CASEY AT THE BAT, part of disney’s august 1946 MAKE MINE MUSIC-compilation.

© disney enterprises, inc

lost treasures

a while ago I started with the layouts of another book project, LOST TREASURES. below you can see the first 54 pages ( as double-pages ). the plan was to showcase all my recreated backgrounds from the ‘golden years’ of traditional animation, and from all the major feature films and shorts from that time. I am not sure if it ever will be finished, but it is fun to plan the whole thing.

© disney enterprises, inc / WB / MGM / paramount / UPA / john hubley

alex nino 7

some more designs from the MASTER, ALEX NINO. they were done during preproduction of disney’s MULAN around 1995/1996. alex told us in one of his lectures here in the philippines, when he was a boy, about ten, twelve years old, his parents did not have enough money to buy him paper and pencils. so he went to the beach, not too far away from where he grew up, and practiced his drawing skills, drawing with a wooden stick in the wet sand.

© disney enterprises, inc / alex nino

may mood