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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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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

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the first pen+ink style sketches for disney’s MULAN and their color versions.

© disney enterprises, inc.

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one of my earliest hun-attack designs, probably from 1995

© disney enterprises, inc

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the REFLECTION-song in disney’s MULAN was much longer in an early version what was storyboarded by DEAN DEBLOIS. the shorter and final version as it is in the film was boarded by CHRIS SANDERS. below are DEAN’S boards.

© disney enterprises, inc

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during the pre-production of disney’s MULAN several amazing artists worked in the visual development team, PAUL FELIX was one of them. he always created the most stunning black+white pencil-‘paintings’, in his own style – very designed and stylized. he did not mind that I added some color to his black+white jewels, following the stylization in his drawings I wanted to test a different look in color as well. paul worked ( and still works ) after MULAN as a production designer at disney and created the most beautiful artwork for several animated feature films.

© disney enterprises, inc

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here is some more visual development artwork for disney’s MULAN. it was done sometime early 1994 before I joined the team

© disney enterprises, inc