style 12.1

the following designs show a wide variety of styles. when it comes to the final look of a film the style should not be overwhelming, it should always be based on the needs of the story. and characters and environment should work together, the worst is if a character looks like an overlay. simplified characters need simplified backgrounds, in case you want to work with more realistic designs for both, don’t overload the backgrounds with unnecessary detail – make your character ‘read’. in some of the following posts I talk more about how to develop a new style.

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lost and found 7

© disney enterprises, inc

lost and found 6

lost and found 5

tin soldier

in summer 1994 I started to work at disney, after several years freelancing, with a seven-year contract. my first assignment was the style development and visual research on 5 projects – all at once! HERCULES, TIN SOLDIER and BEETHOVEN’S FIFTH ( both FANTASIA 2000 ), DINOSAUR ( first CG prod.) and FAMULAN. I don’t know what the reason was for that ‘overload’, it was a challenge. I started to work on the single projects one every week, using the weekend as kind of a mental break. but it didn’t really work that way, because the production schedule didn’t follow my schedule. the result though were dozens of color sketches and the complete color-script for HERCULES, until GERALD SCARFE took over in autumn 1994. TIN SOlDIER was first planned as traditional animation, they changed it then into a CG piece, horrible in my opinion. and BEETHOVEN’S FIFTH turned out a bad experience, because I could not work with the director. DINOSAUR was a lot of fun, because it was a new world, they invited specialists, who taught us about the look of dinosaurs and the environment of that time. and then of course FAMULAN, what became MULAN. based on my early designs BARRY COOK, the first director on the project, asked me beginning of december 1994, if I wanted to take the job as production designer.
below you see some of the designs I did for TIN SOLDIER. I had to restaure some of them, the color xerox quality in the nineties was bad.

© disney enterprises, inc

posters 3

a few blank posters for animation lecture announcements in my school.

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more prisma

for the PRISMA filtertests below I used a few classical paintings. the specific setting I used changes the look completely and creates in a way a new piece of art…