pure beauty 5

© walt disney enterprises, inc © john hubley storyboard © studio zagreb

pure beauty 4

© walt disney enterprises, inc © MGM

pure beauty 3

© walt disney enterprises, inc
© john hubley storyboard © WB
© columbia

pure beauty 2

some more recreated pan backgrounds from the old traditional animation days. all backgrounds were painted in watercolor, dozens of layers, or in the later years in gouache. most BAMBI backgrounds were painted in oil, to create the soft look that TYRUS WONG had created. nearly all of these BG’s were painted in several layers on glass, to create a feel of depth. after the shots were finished, the glass was scraped clean and reused. that’s why nearly all of the BAMBI backgrounds are destroyed. more reason to recreate their beauty.

© walt disney enterprises, inc
© MGM © studio zagreb

pure beauty 1

the beauty of traditional painted backgrounds in traditional animation of the past – a lost art!

most of these pan backgrounds have been recreated, I used DVD’s and BlueRay’s. in many cases the originals are lost.

© walt disney enterprises, inc
© columbia/UPA © john hubley storyboard prod.
© MGM © WB

thirties New York

RUSSELL PATTERSON, 1893 – 1977, became a famous illustrator in the early thirties in NEW YORK, after a less successful start as a cartoonist. these were the good old days when leading graphic artists were as famous as movie stars. patterson illustrated covers and interiors for magazines like LIFE, and later SATURDAY EVENING POST, VOGUE, VANITY FAIR and COSMOPOLITAIN. some years before the GIBSON GIRL had been celebrated, now it was the PATTERSON GIRL. patterson worked as well on BROADWAY as a costume- and scenic-designer. you find more about his work here, here, and here.

© russell patterson

alfred j kwak 1.0

all this original black/white artwork for ALFRED J KWAK was done in 1990 by harald siepermann and myself for merchandise publication, on t-shirts, bedsheets and so on. we had to create hundreds of illustrations within the shortest time. the producer of the tv-series, DENNIS LIVSON, had organised another team of illustrators to help us out. but it ended in a disaster. we didn’t want to drop the quality standard of the artwork below an acceptable level, so we just had to work day and night and do everything ourselves. and all that together with the unfinished third volume of the comic strip series. hectic days! to remind you, in those ancient times everything had to be drawn on paper and then colored with feltpen. photoshop would have made it much easier, but that was not invented yet.

© bilderfabrik
© van veen/siepermann/bacher

watkiss 3

JOHN WATKISS gave me those sketches while he was working on his production paintings for TARZAN around 1997 in the disney studio. whenever we met he explained some of the anatomy in his paintings, very fast in stunning sketches.

© john watkiss

alfred j kwak calendar 1.2

© bilderfabrik
© AJK -van veen/siepermann/bacher

alfred j kwak calendar 1.1

these are designs for a calendar I did in 1991 for the merchandise program that came with the tv-series based on the comic strip series THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF ALFRED J KWAK, that harald siepermann, herman van veen and myself had created. the calendar was never finished, for some personal reasons I stopped working on the project and from then on hardly anything was ever published again. my whole work in germany stopped in 1991, I joined spielberg’s amblimation studio in london and started to work on CATS followed by BALTO, and concentrated from then on solely on animated feature films.

© bilderfabrik
© AJK van veen/siepermann/bacher

vertical

around 2005 I developed some simplified looks and animations for a new market – the cellular phone. the format of the tiny screen at that time was vertical, the resolution miserable and not too much room for a lot of information. if some clear recognizable images had to be developed, they had to follow a new visual language. there were no apps at that time yet, and I had no idea who to contact and what was already in development. so I just played with simplified visuals and did some main title trailers in keyframes. of course it didn’t go anywhere, today the phones are bigger with a crystal clear resolution and the format, vertical or horizontal is irrelevant.

© bilderfabrik

animation world history

GIANNALBERTO BENDAZZI, the most prolific animated film historian, was teaching together with me and ISHU PATEL in singapore, at NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY, school for art, design and media. it was a good time – we were the ‘dinosaurs’ within the big group of professors from all over the world. there were many happy moments with the 3 of us bitching about the old days, oh well!
giannalberto had finished his ‘monster’- animation world history book, that was supposed to be published in 3 volumes, over 1.000 pages in total. FOCAL-press was the publisher. he wanted me to design the cover, of course I was more than happy to do this. what an honor.
the first design with recognizable shadows of the most famous cartoon characters on a prehistoric cave wall was rejected, for copyright reasons. ok.
giannalberto was already depressed. he liked the cover a lot. I gave it another try, you see the design below – on the left! that one was denied again. it was too cartoony – well…
giannalberto gave up. we left it up to the publisher to come up with a better design. and the final already published look is the one on the right below.
I was experiencing these kind of blows a lot during my career, when morons with no taste or connection to the arts take over. today I am just smiling…

© focal press
© bilderfabrik

eleven years

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11 years ago I started this blog, somehow it feels like last week, but so many things have happened in these 11 years – it could be more than 20! at that time I was still in my late fifties, now I am happy that I reached 70. in my new home – asia – I moved around quite a bit, alone 7 years in singapore, now I am back in manila. when I started this blog, for sure I did not imagine to publish within the following 11 years around 1.200 posts. thats quite a volume, around 1.200 pages!
2008 my second book – DREAM WORLDS – had just been published in english, after the japanese first edition, and after my first book ‘designing brushes in photoshop’, only out in japan. in the meantime another 2 books came out. and I am preparing another 2 ( keep your fingers crossed ). like these new books I have a lot more plans, especially to travel more around europe. the next trip is mid october this year, starting in munich, germany. anyway – I am curious what the next years might have prepared for me…

style diversity 1.9

© bilderfabrik
© walt disney enterprises
© amblin/universal pictures
© van veen/siepermann/bacher

style diversity 1.8

© bilderfabrik
© walt disney enterprises

style diversity 1.7

© bilderfabrik
© walt disney enterprises