ARD 1 – 1984

talking about the ‘good old days’ a short time ago I realized it is already 30 years ago that I worked on the the ARD 1 ( the german 1.tv-station ) logo-design. cg in those days was nearly unknown in germany. during my frequent visits in L.A. I had seen a lot of the development in computer generated images and I was fascinated by it ( that should change over the years! ). so I introduced the idea of a cg-logo to the german television guys and the ARD 1 logo became the first cg-logo in germany, and probably the first one produced at such high costs. below are my early designs, a rough story board and some very precise keyframes for the production at CRANSTON CSURI in columbus.

© ARD 1

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sketches from a shelved CG-animated short I AM, I was developing in 2001 at disney together with UMESH SHUKLA. It was supposed to be about birds, a journey through abstract art of the last century.

© © disney enterprises, inc

1984

already 25 years ago! incredible. beginning of 1984, the GEORGE ORWELL year, I had been one of the designers of the new logo for the first german tv-station, ARD 1. the general opening logos and titles for all different program sections were done in CG, at that time a very time consuming and extremely expensive adventure. I was several times in COLUMBUS, ohio, where the CRANSTON-SCURI computer animation production was located, on the campus of the ohio state university. the founder and head of the school and COMPUTER GRAPHICS RESEARCH GROUP was prof. CHARLES SCURI, considered the pioneer of computer art. I was supposed to supervise the production of the first animated logos for the german tv-station, since I had done all the storyboards. following are two of many boards from that year, and 2 pictures from cranston-csuri.

© ARD

scrooge

looking at the trailer of the new disney/zemeckis production A CHRISTMAS CAROL I was reminded of the character scrooge in a book that came on the market in 1979 – ‘a christmas carol’ with puppet characters and scenery created by PETER FLUCK and ROGER LAW, the same artists who did the puppet versions of famous polititians and other celebrities in their tv-series SPITTING IMAGE. the famous english advertising photographer JOHN LAWRENCE JONES created the amazing photographs of the CHARLES DICKENS christmas-world. in case someone is interested – ISBN 3-88420-008-9, penguin books london.

© peter fluck / roger law / john lawrence jones
© penguin books
© disney enterprises, inc / bob zemeckis + image movers

historic CG

in the upper groupshot you see the very small visual development team that worked in 1989 on disney’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. the picture below shows jean gilmore, mel shaw, daan jippes and don hahn discussing some designs during the same time.
CG in those ‘ancient’ days was in the very beginning. disney had done some scenes in OLIVER AND COMPANY and THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE in CG, tina price and randy cartright had worked on that. but in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST don hahn, the producer, wanted to go a step further – add textures to the CG-environment and make it look more realistic. in the final version of the film the ballroom sequence is done that way. that came much later. in the beginning a longer scene was planned that showed a pretty complex cameramove starting with beauty entering her room in the castle, following her sitting on the bed and then moving behind her towards the mirror, where she looks at herself and the whole room mirrored in it. the whole camera move was done in wireframe, I remember it looked very impressive. then andreas deja animated the keyposes of beauty for the whole move. I wonder if some of that stuff is left somewhere.
they gave me three key-frames of the camera move, I choose two and painted them with felt pen and gouache. unfortunately the originals have ‘disappeared’, so what you see here are some bad quality xerox copies. the next planned step was to hire someone with a lot of patience and some great painting skills to paint every single surface flat following my color-designs. I remember, that was where the experiment stopped. it might have been a bit too work-intense and costly. times have changed – today it would be a fun job for a weekend.