Wednesday, September 13, 2006

...some more history


1989 - the BEAUTY and the BEAST gang in paris after the
loire reference trip

1981 - the animation center of hanna-barbera productions
on cahuenga in L.A.

1989 - after the loire trip in tours waiting for
the train to paris

1981 - elfriede fischinger and some of her treasures, originals
of her husband oscar fischinger's work

1989 - the BEAUTY and the BEAST preproduction group
in burbank, don hahn, patty peraza, daan jippes, jean gilmore, me,
andreas deja, jill and dick purdum, tina price, mel shaw, glen keane

1993 - luc desmarchelier working on a master-background
for BALTO in london's amblimation

the final background

1980 - eric larsen, one of the nicest disney 9 old men, and me
i

Thursday, September 7, 2006

historic duck

maybe some of you have seen that duck. his name is
ALFRED J.KWAK. from 1985 on until 1990 I worked on
comic books, tv-series, merchandise and tons of more
stuff together with HARALD SIEPERMANN and HERMAN
VAN VEEN. herman had written the stories, harald had
invented the characters.




I remember, harald was one of my students in the university
of essen animation class. he showed me one day some sketches
of a duck and some other characters he said belonged to a story.
so, why don't you do a comic strip with them, I asked him. the
sketches were just incredible, pure gold!








harald was not sure where to start with all the technical
things involved. so, I offered to show him how one page
could look like. his pencil sketches traced, done in nice
black ink, colored with the technique of those days -
my beloved MAGIC MARKERS. and I added some
disney influenced backgrounds.
he loved the test page and from then on I finished the pages of
all our comic books that way, we never questioned how it had
started. and I developed a passion for that little character and
his adventures. I think in 1990 we got awarded with the
GERMAN GOLDEN CAMERA AWARD. the best thing about that
was to sit with Claus Maria Brandauer and some other german
prize winning actors and listen to their funny stories until late at
that gala-night.




it was stressful and fun, the good old days...
but what was more important than these books, plushs and
tv-shows, we both developed our taste for feature films.
how to develop stories and how to visualize the characters
a