amblimation balto documentary 1994 part 1

the AMBLIMATION studio in london-acton town, jan.1994, shortly after the disaster earthquake in northridge, L.A.

some impressions of the background department, located separate on the 1.floor, because of the better light conditions,

fun after work in the pub next door. most of us were hanging out there after work several times a week.

studio party after successful work, STEVE HICKNER, producer, giving a speech.

more BALTO BG’s, most of them painted in oil. I never understood, why that was never used in the promotion of the film. at least it was the only film next to BAMBI where the backgrounds were nearly entirely painted in oil.

amblimation 1.1994 balto from hans bacher on Vimeo.

© Amblin / Universal

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verwitterte melodie 1942

I taped this version of VERWITTERTE MELODIE ( weather-beaten melody ) in the late 70s when it was shown in german television and copied it over and over to all the latest tape versions. for me it is a treasure, because not even hans fiescherkoesen’s son had a good copy of his fathers’s film. he told me when I met him sometime in the mid 80s in his bad godesberg melem ( near bonn ) studio. the original negative of this jewel is still probably somewhere in prague, I hope it is stored safe. in an earlier post I have written about this short, produced 1942 in the middle of WW2 in nazi germany. big parts were animated in prague by JIRI BRDECKA, HORST VON MOELLENDORFF received story credit, but it is not clear how much he contributed. the overall direction was in the hands of HANS FISCHERKOESEN. his son told me he could still remember a huge studio space filled with flowers and plants, cut out of thin wood, for the opening circling camera move. GOEBBELS, in charge of propaganda and film in the 3.reich, had ordered that german animation should rival disney. he was especially a big fan of SNOW WHITE and the disney feature was analyzed by all german studios at that time. in a berlin animation studio even a huge multiplane camera was constructed to come up with similar effects disney had done in SNOW WHITE.

Die verwitterte Melodie (1942) Fischerkoesen from hans bacher on Vimeo.

© fischerkoesen film

beauty and the beast documentary 1989 part 1

thank you, patrick and mario, for your help. I think it works now and the result shows in this post.
I chose a 6 1/2 min short compilation from my 5 hour video documentary during the DISNEY BEAUTY AND THE BEAST storyreel development time in london and the research trip to the loire in france. it happened during august 1989 in the PURDUM animation studio in london. you might recognize in the order of appearance – myself, MEL SHAW, JEAN GILMORE, DEREK GOGOL, TOM SITO, GLEN+LINDA+CLAIRE KEANE. at the party – DON HAHN, ANDREAS DEJA, DICK+JILL PURDUM, MEL SHAW and wife FLORENCE. I included a short clip of the finished story-reel in color.

beauty+beast london 1989 A from hans bacher on Vimeo.

© disney enterprises, inc

sailing nr.15

first video test

over the past years a lot of you have asked me to upload some of my ‘hidden historic animation documentaries’. I decided to start with it now. but – I need some advice with the uploading of the videos to WORDPRESS, I am not quite sure if I do it right because even the shortest clip takes forever to upload. so, please let me know if there is someone out there who can advise me.
today I chose a very short clip because of the slow uploading, it was a look-test we did for the shelved disaster experiment, that could have been a masterpiece, WILD LIFE. from 1999 on I worked on it for probably 1 1/2 years. there are more posts on my blog about this unusual disney project, but here now for the first time a short test animation of the heroine KITTY, her crazy dress what took a while to create, and the environment. please keep in mind, this was done during the ‘pioneer’-days in CG, over 15 years ago.
anyway – in case I can finally solve the uploading problem, there will be a lot more – footage from the making of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST ( there is about 9 hours of documentary ), footage during my 4 years in london at AMBLIMATION with documents from WE’RE BACK and BALTO and lots more from my following 10 years at disney, especially documents from MULAN and the production in florida. hope it will work, you might enjoy it…

© disney enterprises, inc

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ori and the blind forest

usually I don’t talk too much about games, because there was nothing exciting happening in the past (except the SONY 2012 game JOURNEY). now MICROSOFT has released a very unusual game – ORI AND THE BLIND FOREST, unusual, because you won’t find futuristic warriors killing hordes of bloodthirsty creatures.
it’s a coming of age story of a child figure’s journey through a fantastic forest, it grows and gets progressively more and more powerful, to fight and overcome obstacles they are in it’s way. when I saw the first introducing trailers I was blown away by the visuals, the artistic painterly quality of the world the MOON STUDIO artists had created. it is a mixture between the jungle world of AVATAR and the BAMBI forest, beautifully and very tasteful painted to the smallest detail. the image compositions are stunning, never overloaded with unnecessary information. like in BAMBI parts of the backgrounds are blurred and give you the idea of depth, everything is built in several layers in traditional 2-D, moving organically and giving you a perfect interpretation of a threedimensional world.
for the first time I can see a future for a different look in animation, where CG is only used where necessary. it gives me hope that ART returns to the screen. funny, that it starts in the game-world. below some screen captures from the game

© microsoft / moon studios

mulan findings 10

that’s how MUSHU looked like around mid 1995. CHEN-YI CHENG came up with that version. as you can see the design is very much influenced by chinese dragon pictures and sculptures, the cartoony touch is missing. disney had given me the opportunity to invite comic strip artists from all over the world, artists who could give us different ideas about the look of the film MULAN. REGIS LOISEL was the first comic strip ‘giant’ I invited. you can see his designs in some of my earlier posts. another artist who joined us for 2 weeks was vietnamese born belgian comic strip artist and painter VINH KHOA. and in summer 1995 my former partner on the ALFRED J.KWAK comic strip and tv-series, HARALD SIEPERMANN, came to L.A. for a few weeks. harald concentrated on MUSHU, and as you can see below, added the missing cartoony touch to the character.

© disney enterprises, inc

…smile

for sale

beauty of art 6