Monday, October 31, 2005

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Attack Of The Clones



This individual stuff is pure horse shit.
The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real characterdesign under fire than they know about f***!"

General Patton's speech, adressing his VisDev Dept, July 1942, Battle of El Alamein

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

More Early Tarzan Sketches











Our biggest problem was, that we had a lot of gorillas with distinctive characters, but very little differences visually to tell them apart. They all look pretty much the same, have the same size, the same color etc.
So we started with this springboard above, giving clear silhouettes to our main gorillas Kerchak, Kala and Terk. Just for us and just as a start.

Tarzan

Almost exactly 10 years ago my job on Mulan was as good as finished and I was merely waiting for my flight home, when we saw a chinese movie for reference, a very brutal, gorey movie with lots of blood, beheadings and sewered arms and stuff, everything a good movie should have in other words. Just for fun and to kill the time till lunchbreak I made a few over-the-top-sketches to get it out of my system. And also just for fun, I boarded them.



Chris Buck and Kevin Lima, the directors of Tarzan , saw these scribbles and saw something in them, as they later told me, that they were looking for in the gorillas, which had to be designed.
They called me into their office and i think we were the first three pople, to wiork on the project. They just had obtainend the rights from the Burroughs-family and still didn't really know, what to do with the story. So basically, what they did was giving me the novel, telling me to doodle away and explore as many directions as I could think of, concentrating on the gorillas.

I went back to Germany with that brief, doing exactly that : sketching away , doing a lot of quick drawings, exploring the characters and their possibilities.









My Other Blog



Just wanted to make sure, that you're also reading my other blog. Have a look. H.

Alfredjkwak.blogspot.com

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

The Thief And The Cobbler



Just found this cool "Thief And The Cobbler"-site and thought, I'd share it with you.

http://www.geocities.com/eddie_bowers/

Monday, October 24, 2005



What can I say ? A Panda-bear.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Friday, October 21, 2005



Yesterday's Rhino

Thursday, October 20, 2005





I've been thinking about a Pied Piper story...

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Tuesday, October 18, 2005




One or two years ago the boxing Klitschko-Brothers, Vladimir and Vitali ( You might have seen Vladimir in "Ocean's Eleven" ) contacted me, because they were thinking about doing an animated series, starring their animated alter-egos. We developed a premise "I spy"-style and I also did some first designs. It never got off the ground, but it was quite a lot of fun with these guys, who were actually very nice.



Their manager never dared to show them the design of the mother. Honestly.






The project is still available, so if you're interested ....

Monday, October 17, 2005

If you want to see ANDREAS DEJA in the German Late Show...




and see him drawing the host as Jaffar live on your screens, you gotta click here

http://tvtotal.prosieben.de/spielothek/verlosung/andreas_deja.html

and click again on "Schaut Euch hier das Video dazu an."
For the few of you, who don't speak German, Andreas confirms that he is working on a short of his own.

Viel Spaß !

Sunday, October 16, 2005



Amidst the ruins of Berlin,
things are in bloom as they have never been.

http://www.pictoplasma.com/motion/


In Hamburg's dialekt a seehorse is a Ringelnatz .


How to get rich in six easy steps.
Another one of those "Financial Times"-Illus.

Friday, October 14, 2005

There's an interview with yours truly and many others at

http://characterdesign.blogspot.com/

Enjoy ...


I LOVE IT !

...and why am I so damn sure, that HANS will like it , too?


http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/FCCSong.mp3


"The Watchcollector"
Illustrration for "The Financial Times".

Thursday, October 13, 2005




...and they have daughters...


Punks get old , too.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

NICK KNATTERTON

In 2000 the Animation studio TFC in Hamburg, which had been incredibly successfull with the "Werner"-Films, was thinking about making a movie starring one of Germany's first Comicstrip-Characters "Nick Knatteron", a spoof on superdetektiv-comicbook-heros like Sherlock Holmes or Dick Tracy .Very funny, but incredibly outdated.



I was talking to Michael Schaak on a planeride and he casually asked me, what I would do with the subject and how I would give it a makeover: At that time "Austin Powers" was very big and the studio was thinking about a similar approach, timewarping Knatterton from the 50's into the present. I strongly objected, because I felt that especially the 50's, particularly the 50's in Germany, would make a great backdrop for he story visually and storywise. I was fantazising about using the designlanguage of that time, long thin lines and kidneyformed shapes, as a blueprint for the whole movie including it's characters. Also the color-palette of that time, lots of pastelle, seemed promising to me.

I must have made an impression, because next day, Schaak called, offering me the VisDev, Story and even the director's chair. I asked , if I remember correctly , for half a year of development- time for the movie, something that had never been done at the TFC before.





I worked with MANU ARENAS and JOSE MARTINEZ , two incredibly giftet artists from Belgium, on the design and with CHRISTIAN SCHNALKE on the story.



With all modesty, we put together some amazing stuff and had lots of fun, until finally the project was cancelled. Nevertheless, I will post lots of our artwork here in the coming months for you to enjoy.

Monday, October 10, 2005

SAD NEWS

I just heard that Aardman Animation in Bristol burned down completly and "everything" was lost. What a shame and desaster.
Poor guys.

Khali's Revenge



Not too long ago I portraied her as the gruesome goddess Khali in one of the Mecki-Comics, now Angela Merkel is taking revenge and apparently coming back at us in the form of Germany's first female chancellor, or should I say : chancellorette ?

Sunday, October 09, 2005



And now for something completly different...

Friday, October 07, 2005

Burps and Farts



...or , as Mr. John Cleese said :"We have to entertain 14-year-olds, who have no taste, no sense of humor and no life-expierience."

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Mecki ( The Decline)

Poor Mecki didn't survive the 70's, and apart from some illfatet attemps to bring him back, he had gone to comicstripheroheaven.

A couple of years back an aspiring young editor decided to bring him back into the TV-Guide in an updated, more trendy version. He asked me, if I would be interested. Well, would I ??????

They didn't pay much, but I felt, I just had to do it. It started as a column in the style of " ASK MECKI ",where they would make up questions from readers and kids for Mecki to answer, then they decided that that wasn't trendy and modern enough , so they had Mecki make cynical remarks about whatever was happening at that time in politics or entertainment, when they found out, that they were somehow always a week behind and their comments were yesterday's snow.

But the responses from readers and fans were good, so they decided to do a whole adventure, oldfashionend style, for the same money, of course. I allowed myself to 2 days for story and artwork, I liked the challange. I quickly got better and faster and because we got successful, the editor was fired and Mecki went with him.
Here are some sketches from my attemps to walk in the footsteps of giants.




Günther Jauch, the German host of " Who wants to be a millionaire ?" Mecki wasted his telephone -joker by ordering a pizza.



Mecki was giving a housewarmingparty and invited the stars of German comicstrip-history as guests.



We got into a big adventure, Indianstyle.