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I found some more designs ALEX NINO created in 1995/1996 during pre-production on disney’s MULAN.

© walt disney enterprises, inc / alex nino

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another one of ALEX NINO’S masterful pre-visualizations of the hun attack in disney’s MULAN

© disney enterprises / alex nino

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ALEX NINO created the following illustrations for the comic novel …JUST PASSING BY! in 1999. in my opinion it is the best work I ever saw from him. he allowed me to xerox the oversized originals before they went into printing and the text bubbles were added. unbelievable artwork, all drawn with a simple pen, hardly with any corrections on the total of twenty pages. the masterpiece was published in july 1999 in FRANK FRAZETTA FANTASY ILLUSTRATED, vol.1, number 7.

© alex nino / quantum cat entertainment

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early in 1999, while ALEX NINO and I were still working at disney, he came to my office to show me a whole pile of new comic pages he had done. the black/white pages were oversized, bigger than A3, and – stunning! alex was euphoric, ‘I am back!’ he had made a new deal with a comic publishing house and hoped for a whole series of publications. the pen+ink drawings were the best I had seen for many years and reminded me somehow of the masters of the barock and rokoko sculptures. like usual he could not explain how he had done them, I could not even imagine how that complex work of composition, exquisite character drawings and textures had been created. of course without any rough sketching and planning, like I had seen him working on MULAN. anyway – following is the cover of the magazine where his story appeared together with several others, released in july 1999. alex had allowed me to xerox his original drawings, I post a few of them and 2 double pages of the printed version, with the added text-blocks.

© alex nino / quantum cat entertainment publ.

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some more of ALEX NINO’S inspirational artwork for disney’s MULAN.

© disney enterprises, inc / alex nino

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

© disney enterprises, inc

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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

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accidentally I found a lot more copies of inspirational designs ALEX NINO did during the preproduction time of disney’s MULAN around 1995/1996. so, here is the first part.

© disney enterprises, inc / alex nino

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some more of ALEX NINO’S designs during the visual development of disney’s MULAN.

© disney enterprises, inc

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here are some more inspirational designs ALEX NINO did during prproduction on disney’s MULAN.

© disney enterprises, inc

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some more of ALEX NINO’S designs for disney’s MULAN

© disney enterprises, inc

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here is more of ALEX NINO’S designs for disney’s MULAN.

© disney enterprises, inc

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ALEX NINO, born 1940 in tarlac, philippines, is probably one of the most important comic strip artists of the last thirty years. in his very own style he created numerous comics for DC COMICS, MARVEL COMICS, WARREN PUBLISHING and HEAVY METAL, recently DARK HORSE and BIG ENTERTAINMENT. you can find his complete bio here.
I met alex when I worked on the production design for disney’s MULAN, about 1996. he became a visual development artist at disney for a few years and contributed some incredible designs, influencing the look of MULAN quite a bit. I had a chance to see him work, without any sketch – straight out of his unlimited imagination. quite depressing to see the most beautiful drawings being created effortless by a master. we became good friends, and now, that I live in his native country, the philippines, we met again after a few years. together we gonna give a lecture/talk on feb. 17 in the ST.BENILDE SCHOOL OF DESIGN AND ARTS here in manila.
in the wikipedia-bio about alex they forgot to mention his MULAN work, so – ‘to prove it’, here is some of his work on the film…

© disney enterprises, inc

as of feb.18 – here is a very nice article about this event at st.benilde school of design and arts…

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today some more composition ideas from major comic strip artists – moebius, jim holdaway, dino battaglia, hugo pratt, alex nino, john watkiss, sergio toppi, al williamson, alberto brecchia, john burns

© moebius, jim holdaway, dino battaglia, hugo pratt, alex nino, john watkiss, sergio toppi, al williamson, alberto brecchia, john burns

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as far as I remember it was sometime in 1995 during the preproduction of MULAN when my producer at disney PAM COATS asked for my advice about possible illustrators or comic-strip artists who might be willing to work with us for a short time. the more diverse in style, the better. the first name that came to my mind was REGIS LOISEL, next to MOEBIUS one of the most influental french comic-strip artists. after his stunning four volume series LA QUETE DE L’OISEAU DU TEMPS he had started his version of PETER PAN that promised to be even better. I admired the worlds he created, beautifully designed environments as well as very unusual character-design. and – what I liked the most – he was as much away from disney as you could imagine! that’s why I did not really believe he would say yes. finally I talked to him on the phone, he tried to speak a bit english and I tried to remember all my half-forgotten french. somehow it was a good conversation because he agreed to come to L.A. for two weeks to work with us.

these two weeks I will not forget, we spent a lot of time together. next to working with him in my office I showed him L.A. and some of the neighborhood. and we had great dinners and a lot of wine. my french improved and REGIS even learned to comunicate with the other artists in english. he was the nicest guy and what an artist! anyway – we stayed in touch for a while afterwards until he moved to canada and I left disney. his series PETER PAN became a six volume MASTERPIECE. as soon as he had finished a new book he sent me a copy together with a beautiful sketch, treasures in my collection. recently I found copies of the MULAN-designs he had done during the two weeks he stayed with us and I am planning to post some of them. in a way his designs are very similar to ALEX NINO’S work, but he added a lot more story in his sketches, came up with great gags and ideas I wish we had included in our film.

© disney enterprises, inc / regis loisel

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

© disney enterprises, inc

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as you might know, I live now for the last seven years in manila, philippines. it is a very poor country that is struck by disasters regularly, like the major typhoons and the floodings last year, as well as the recent threat of an erupting volcano. nevertheless filippinos are very creative people, some very well known singers like LEA SALONGA are from here, one of the most famous comic strip artist ALEX NINO grew up here, and a very well known painter lives here and is still creating his beautiful art at over eighty years of age – MAURO ‘MALANG’ SANTOS was born 1928 in santa cruz, manila. he studied fine arts at the university of the philippines and at the otis art institute in L.A. 1947 he started to work as a layout artist at a daily manila newspaper, where he created the first english daily comic strip. he published over the following years several comic strip series. together with six artist friends he set up the first art gallery in manila in 1965. continous exhibitions of his paintings followed in manila and all over the philippines, as well as in london, rome, N.Y., san franzisco, hong kong and bahrain. his paintings are colorful and feature simplified forms, often portraying women in traditional dress with fruits in baskets. I love his work, it is a lot like this very colorful country with its spanish tradition mixed with the asian culture. following are some selected pieces of his art.

© malang

weekend inspiration

folon

ziraldo pinto’s ‘guernica’

loran speck

horst haitzinger

alex nino

daan jippes

heinz edelmann

peter de seve

robert bateman

© ziraldo pinto / folon / loran speck / horst haitzinger / alex nino /
© disney enterprises, inc/daan jippes
© heinz edelmann / peter de seve / robert bateman

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richard vanderwende

chen yi cheng

nicolas marlet

sai ping lok after an alex nino drawing

daan jippes

ric sluiter

robh ruppel

colin stimpson

buck lewis

john watkiss

paul felix

harald siepermann

© disney enterprises, inc
© universal/amblin
© van veen/siepermann/bacher

4 masters

during the production of disney’s MULAN I had the once in a lifetime chance to work with incredible artists. I want to show more of their work in the future. here now is ALEX NINO, a philippino comicstrip artist who is still the biggest idol for the young generation over here. alex worked for probably over 40 years in the US comic strip scene, for marvel and most of the other big publishers. I saw his first work first when I was still in gymnasium. well, alex did tons of designs for mulan, usually one a day. every single one a jewel!
SAI PING LOK is from china, a painter very well known in the fine artist scene in the US. he translated black/white sketches done by the numerous visual development artists as well as from story into little color keys, suggested different color moods. he added the ‘chinese touch’ to our drawings, amazing color sense.
the third rough sketch is by PAUL FELIX who became production designer on LILO AND STITCH after he finished hundreds of designs for TARZAN. one of the best drawing artists I have ever met! and later paul started to paint, first on EMPEROR’S NEW GROVE, then I remember unbelieveable paintings done in painter for SNOW QUEEN, unfortunately shelved. and lately he worked on the old version of BOLT.
last but not least there is a good friend, RIC SLUITER, art director on MULAN. a dutch/canadian icehockey- player/painter. amazing talent and a lot of patience. way more than I have. we went through the good and bad times of the production together. ric art-directed and developed the watercolor style for LILO AND STITCH after our chinese adventure. the good old days…

© disney enterprises, inc