caricatures 1

the following caricatures were created by NICOLAS MARLET as far as I remember in 1992, at that time STEPHEN SPIELBERG’S animation studio in london ( acton ) – AMBLIMATION – was still busy with the feature film WE’RE BACK. you could hear many different languages, a lot of young animators from all over the world, but mainly europe, were working there on one huge floor divided into small cubicles. we used to caricature each other, just for fun. and NICOLAS was one of the best artists for sure!

© nicolas marlet

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concept art 1

below some concept art from disney’s MULAN, created by three masters – ALEX NINO, PAUL FELIX and MARCELO VIGNALI.

© disney enterprises, inc

alaska

below my production design for a diagonal pan in BALTO from 1993 ( feltpen and gouache ), followed by the final background painted in oil – could not avoid the reflections in the overlay cels.

© universal pictures / amblin entertainment

the blitz

FRANS MASEREEL, 1889 – 1972, was born in belgium and is probably the greatest woodcut artist of the twentieth century. his work belongs to the EXPRESSIONISTIC style, – THOMAS MANN, EMILE ZOLA and STEFAN ZWEIG were the writers whose novels MASEREEL illustrated. when I worked on the adaptation of the musical CATS as an animated feature film in 1991 I used MASEREEL’S work as look-reference. as well as a lot of art from numerous german expressionistic painters like, KAETHE KOLLWITZ, MAX PECHSTEIN, KARL SCHMIDT-ROTTLUFF and EMIL NOLDE. the story was supposed to take place in london during the second world war, the so called BLITZ ( from blitz-krieg ), so I referred to a lot of historic photographs of the destroyed london from that time.

below are some of my earliest designs for CATS, the ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER musical, produced by STEVEN SPIELBERG in his london AMBLIMATION studio, all ‘painted’ with tipp-ex white correction fluid on black cardboard. I touched up the pretty rough white strokes with black markers. I know, it sounds like a very unusual technique – but woodcut would have been worse.

© masereel / andrew lloyd webber / amblimation / universal pictures

unreal

it is an interesting combination of a filter with a colored multi-layer-mix using a black and white photo from hollywood’s glamourous days.

film noir

watkiss 2

JOHN WATKISS did rough studies like these to plan his big acrylic paintings during the pre-production of disney’s TARZAN.

© disney enterprises, inc / john watkiss

wilhelm m.busch 17

the following pen+ink drawings were created by WILHELM M.BUSCH for the novel collection INGELHILD written by ALFRED LUECK in 1948. when you compare these early published illustrations with the ones BUSCH did later in the sixties you will see a big difference in style. his earlier work looks much more like woodcuts, what he actually studied at the art-academy in berlin. his later work is much lighter, even in the composition of the characters and the choices of backgrounds. but nevertheless his older work is beautiful as well.

© wilhelm m.busch / jung-stilling verlag kreuztal

color study 1151

1987

in june 1987 I flew with HARALD SIEPERMANN to L.A. to do the storyboard for the TOONTOWN-sequence in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. we stayed as far as I remember five weeks, worked in a trailer right behind the AMBLIN ‘WHILE YOU WAIT’ – building on the universal lot, and created probably a thousand or more sketches. the final sequence was about 15 min long, what was with changes cut down to 45 sec in the final film. I remember one of the first assignments we got from DON HAHN, the assoc.producer, was to create a walk of eddie valiant through a part of toontown. we had to come up with all different light situations. harald did the sketch, that I colored from memory below, I painted then in 1987 the whole pan without the character and ILM used the whole set-up to create the light effects and the combination with the actor BOB HOSKINS as a test.

© disney enterprises, inc
© universal pictures / AMBLIN entertainment

moments 17

mirko hanak 4

MIRKO HANAK created these beautiful watercolors in the late sixties for a calendar.

© mirko hanak

may mood