sneak preview

these are some more double pages from my book
D R E A M W O R L D S. it is about production design
in animation. so far I have finished about 150 pages,
text, pictures and final printready layout. the
final version will be around 220 pages.
if all goes well it will be on the shelves
christmas...

five more

nothing ever changes, - or does it?

as some of you probably know - versailles did not have
any toilet! what?! - I am not kidding. such a huge castle,
and no toilet. well, king louis XIV ( 14. ) of france, le
roi-soleil - the sun king, had versailles built. he had his
big parties there and meetings with the senior vice-
presidents, his courtisanes and some other influental
clientele. during the meetings, parties and other pretty
important gatherings it would have been deadly for the
participants to leave for a pee or else. for that reason
there was straw on the floor in every room, women were
wearing these very wide rokoko dresses that
made it easy to hide doings beneath. men just releived
themselves wherever they were standing. it must have
been a pretty strong smell. no wonder the french
invented the perfume. people were so dirty, no toilet -
no shower, that they developed skin diseases. well even
for that some smart guys had a solution, the powdered
faces and beauty marks ( where the heavy damaged skin
areas were ). in case the hair had suffered, you had to wear
a wig. the wig fashion was born.

I recommend DANGEROUS LIAISONS, a phantastic movie
that takes place during that period of time.
it must have been some disgusting fun.
hans christian andersen got the idea and wrote THE
EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES. I am sure you know the
story.

all that went through my mind when I had to attend
presentations in the disney studio, especially in the later
years during the reign of king thomas the shoemaker.
there were toilets in the studio and nobody was wearing
wigs or too much aftershave. but there were similarities!
tom had a theatre background. maybe that's why he always
showed up with this incredible big entourage
of bla-bla's, vice presidents, under-senior vice and
under-presidents. and all of them were so important.
they stood around and were nodding all the time.
and together they screwed up one project after another.
tom was an amazing actor. he was a one-man show. the
entourage was the stage like in the classic greek theatre.
it was better than letterman. I even told him once.
he had to be admired for that.
le studio, c'est moi!

all that is history already. there is new hope.
and things are changing!
such a shame that so much energy and money has been spent
over the years to keep that 'theatre' alive...

more from the book

this is another planned double page.
sorry when I am not posting more often,
that book is a lot of work..

that made my day

I just read that DISNEY's 'GNOMEO and JULIET'
is finally cancelled. apparently a PIXAR executive
asked in a meeting about it 'why are we making it?'
and after a long silence 'well, then not.'
in summer 2001 some morons in the studio asked
me to work on this piece of..
I asked the same question and pointed out
serious problems with a guy named shakesp..something.
they told me it was a phantastic story about love
in the garden gnome community.
can you imagine, they spent money on t h a t
within the last 5 years. hopefully the pixar
judges find the guys responsible for that.
what a nice day!

good old days

on harald siepermann's blog I saw a reproduction
of one of the first ALFRED J.KWAK drawings.
here is that same pose drawn some time later
for one of herman van veen's music collections 



in 1989 I worked at disney together with DAAN JIPPES
on the preproduction of BEAUTY and the BEAST. because
I had to finish a lot more illustrations for harald's
and my own ALFRED J.KWAK series, I asked daan to help
me out. and he did. he drew and inked 6 covers,
I forgot for what. and I colored them.

alfred fighting against the environmental stupidity.
I think that became a poster, sometime in 1986

in 1990 we, that is harald siepermann, herman van veen
and me, got the GERMAN GOLDEN CAMERA award for the creation
of the comic strip and tv-series ALFRED J.KWAK. for that
occasion and some publicity we did this one...


we had lots of ideas, alfred in all different roles. here
as the little red ridin' kwak. unfortunately we never 
realised all these plans

next book

the publisher wants to have the 'production design'
book on the market before christmas this year.
and I wanted to retire, enjoy the good life at the
beach and - no stress!
but I enjoy the work ...
so, there will be only posts once in a while,
sorry about that -

a tribute 1

some months ago I remembered in my first blog -
the-a-files - one of the disney legends JOE GRANT.
I was very fortunate to have met some other 
legendary animation artists throughout the last
25 years, like WALTER LANTZ in 1986. that was
during the academy-screening of FREDERIC BACK's
L'HOMME QUI PLANTAIT DES ARBRES - the man who
planted trees. walter lantz was already in his
nineties then 

and GRIM NATWICK, one of the all time legends. 
I only met him for a few seconds to congratulate
him to his 100.birthday at the big birthday party
in 1990. he died a few days later. during the late
eighties he was invited by richard williams to
london to help him on his 'thief' and to give
some lectures to his animators in london... 

like ART BABBIT, who lectured for some time in london
in dick's studio and animated a bigger part of the 'thief'.
I met him in los angeles in 1979, where he was working
at quartet films on a scene for dick's film. 

WALT STANCHFIELD I mentioned a while ago. during the
production of ROGER RABBIT in london walt organised the 
drawing classes. his poses were way more interesting
than the ones of the professional models. I liked his
classes so much that I attended them every week later
in 1989 and 1990 during BEAUTY + BEAST and ALADDIN in
L.A. his handouts were priceless and I collected all 
of them. they are bound in 2 big books and a treasure
in my library.

unfortunately I never had a chance to meet one of my
big idols - JOHN HUBLEY. but in 1984 during the L.A.
olympics and the animation olympic festival I had a
chance to meet his widow FAITH HUBLEY. she continued
his work after his death and produced some beautyful
short films of her own. we spent some time in malibu
at the home of FINI and BILL LITTLEJOHN. too bad that
I did not want to look like a fan. I should have asked
more about their beautyful movies, my favourites -
MOONBIRD, ADVENTURES OF AN*, WINDY DAY, COCKABOODY...

ERIC LARSEN. that is a longer story!
I was teaching animation at the university of essen
in germany from 1975 until 1990, part time. one of
my first students was ANDREAS DEJA, you might know
him and his incredible animation of disney characters
like jaffar, scar, gaston, lilo...
andreas was even more disney crazy than me when I met 
him in 1974. he had written to the disney studio and 
eric larsen, at that time responsible for the
training of the young animators in the studio had
answered him. I could not believe his luck! then
eric wrote to andreas he would be on a ship-cruise and
for a day in hamburg. that was august 1978. of 
course andreas, my wife and I drove to hamburg.
and we met eric larsen on the ship!
the result was, eric invited us to visit him in
the disney studio in burbank. what we did the
following year. and only another year later in 1980
andreas was hired, some weeks after he finished his
studies at the university. last year he celebrated his 
25 anniversary at the studio. whenever my wife and I 
were in L.A. we spent time with eric, one of the 
nicest men, with so many stories from the past..

and FRIZ FRELENG in 1990, a legend from the WB cartoony
era. I will continue and dig through my 1000s of
photos and post some more memories..

latest..

here is some of the stuff I am working
on in the moment -

B R U S H - B O O K

it is official now -
on feb.25 my brush-book will be
published in japan.

I showed some of the book pages earlier on
my mad-t-party blog. most of my artwork you have
seen so far has been done or refined with a lot
of the brushes being published in this book and
on the included DVD.
I am very happy that it finally worked with
a great publisher.

here are the details for whoever is interested -

publisher - Borndigital, Inc.
1-8-8 Kandaogawa-cho, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo, Japan 101-0052
http://www.borndigital.co.jp/

hans bacher - designed brushes for photoshop
ISBN-4-86246-002-X
224 pages, text in japanese + english
37 color pages - artwork + tutorials
DVD incl.with about 7.000 brushes
Price - J.Yen 6,800

Sale start - February 25, 2006
Amazon - March 15, 2006 (to be confirmed)
this amazon means amazon.co.jp,
will announce later when it will be available
at the other international amazons