MECKI ( The Rise )

Believe it or not, Adolf Hitler was a great fan of animation and he adored Mickey Mouse and Disney in generall. Of course he also saw the tremendous propaganda-potential of animation and he, or rather his propaganda-minister Goebbels, comissionend several animated projects and founded or sponsored quite a few animation studios in Berlin and Munich, mostly put together with animators "recruited" in Eastern Europe. None of these movies were ever finished, but quite a few sequences survived, mostly from Fischer-Koesen studios, who made excellent use of "3D" backgrounds. Amazing stuff.
Anyway, amongst these studios was also the puppet-animationstudio run byy the Brothers Diehl. They did some wonderfukl versions of "Sleeping Beauty" and "Puss In Boots" for example, but their most successful picture was a short with "The Hedgehog And The Hare", which is the European version of "The Tortoise And The Hare".Star of this picture was the little hedgehog-character, who, by no coincidence whatsoever and as a potential German Mickey , was called Mecki.




Mecki was quite successfull as a merchandisingcharacter as well and sold pretty well on postcards for example.
The studio didn't survive the end of the war, but Mecki somehow did and in the 50's the TV-Guide "HörZu" bought the rights to the character for their magazine.
They published some really, really wonderful comicstrips with Mecki over the years, as well as some equally brilliant picture books.

Mecki was drawn at that time by two artists who worked independently in shifts, Prof Petersen and Reinhold Escher, their work clearly influenced by Feininger. Both guys were rather ashamed and embarrassed to make a living with comicstrips and rather would have been known for their landscapes and portraits.Nevertheless, they did a wonderful job.



Recently, when I met the granddaughter of Mr.Escher, I learned that Mrs. Escher, his wife, was writing the stories, but was never credited for it. I grew up on their stories and I remember my grandfather reading the stories to me.They kind of introduced me to comicstrips , before Uderzo, Barks and Herge took over.

Here are some examples of their wonderful work.

Ein Nashorn.

MORE SCHROTT

Matt asked about the German version of "The Pledge":

The Script ( It happenend in broad daylight) was written by Swiss playwrite Friederich Dürrenmatt in the 60's. The movie was a German/Swiss coproduction. When the producers changed the dark ending into a Happy End for the inspector, Dürrenmatt was very upset and rewrote it as the novel "The Pledge", following his motto : A story isn't over, until it has taken the worst possible turn. The Nicholson-movie is based on the novel.
Nevertheless Gerd Fröbe ( Goldfinger ) gives the performance of his lifetime as the tormented pedophile Schrott ( Junk ).

10 years ago ...

EVEN MORE PHI...









In case you wish to know about Phi, ( Composition is just one it's aspects , as those of you know , who read the Da Vinci Code)...check this out :http://goldennumber.net/index.htm

MORE PHI

Couldn't stop playing with the grid.
Here are some more examples:

PHI


Not too long ago I was asked to put together a styleguide on CharacterDesign for a production that I was working for. After having had a look at their boards, I felt oblieged to also say a few words about composition, especially concerning cinemascope. I picked up a few DVDs to explain about Phi and the Golden Rule, and -tell you what, even though I was prepared , I was amazed by the precision of the camerawork of the masters.

OK, I expected to find the door in the Golden Section, but I got goosebumps when I saw , that the bedposts where carefully composed as well, and so was Elaine's picture in the background.
As a matter of fact, you can stop The Graduate anywhere you like, and you'll be able to do the same thing. I admire this sincerity about work.



I am always thrilled , when I see, that someone has been actually thinking about, what he is doing.

Very funny : Check it out !

http://www.ps260.com/molly/SHINING%20FINAL.mov

BILBO BAGGINS ...

....only three feet tall,
Bilbo Baggins,
bravest little hobbit of 'em all

TREASURE PLANET 7

JIM HAWKENS

And finally some sketches of an ill-tempered Jim. He was a lot younger in my version of the script, than in the final movie, maybe 13 or 14, and he wasn't a surfer, either.
There's tons more of stuff, I barely scratches the surface of whats in my archives, but frankly I'm kinda scared of digging in there, just posted what's on my harddrive.



Btw, its great to be mentionend so prominently on CARTOONBREW , I'm very proud and happy about that, it's a great site, hi Amid , hope you're doing fine !

Recidivist said he finds it funny , that even Wyeth's Silver looks a lot like Harry Andrews,- I find it even scarier that Wyeth's Fletcher Christian looks a lot like Marlon Brando ....

Schrott aka Gert Fröbe

I mentionend this in one of the threads and Limbolo aka Neill Ross asked for it, so here it is, a quick sketch of Gert Fröbe as the pedophile killer Schrott in the 60's German/Swiss version of "The Pledge".
Check it out, it's a great movie.

TREASURE PLANET 6 1/2

EVEN MORE SILVER

...that's probably why my sketches don't bare any resemblance to him.

TREASURE PLANET 6

MORE SILVER

Yesterday I mentionend that Ron and John suggested "The Duke" as a rolemodel for Silver. That was fine, but for me he's the archetypal American, and I have a hard time seeing him as an english seaman. Uli Meyer suggested Anthony Hopkins for his movie, but for me this guy above , whom I like so much that I don't know his name, would be the perfect Silver.

TREASURE PLANET 5

SILVER

I always find it very helpfull when designing a character to spend some thoughts concerning which social class the character belongs to . A good cast has characters from all three classes to play against each other with their different approaches to life. ( Look at the Lord Of The Rings for example with it's workingclass Hobbits, the intellectual wizards and aristrocratic elfes ).
The same thing is true for Treasure Island: workingclass pirates, the middleclass Hawkens-family and the the captain and the upperclass Squire Trelawney and Doctor Livsey. Things like that are very interesting when you look for example at the ways the different members of these classes kill. The Pirates do it "hands on", the upper class in more sophisticated ways.
Anyway , Silver clearly is the most sophisticated amongst the pirates, he doesn't act his class. A potential aristrocrat amongst workingclass pirates.



The directors mentionend John Wayne as a reference, which I found very helpfull at the time. Below you see an illustration from Master Wyeth, whose illustrations served as a reference for the whole movie.



Silver, being a pirate, disguised as an inn-keeper, half alien, half pirate, was a bit too much to design in one go, something was always right, other things were always wrong, so I decided to design one thing at a time. I neglected the cyborg-part in the drawings you see here, to concentrate at the warm and fatherlike , yet evil pirate. Pure evil hidden in normality, profanity. Being German,I didn't have to dig very deep for reference for that, when I was a kid, you always had to be prepared more often than not , to discover that the elderly gentlemen next door was an ex-nazi.



Before I could really finish the design, Glen Keane took over and did his wonderful job.

TREASURE PLANET 4

Amelia

If there's one thing I wanted to avoid on this picture and it's animal/aliens, it was ending up with humans with animal heads. Funny enough, it's exactly what happend most of the time.
Also in this case with Amelia, the captain. I tried many ways to incorporate the catlike attitude , I looked at egyptian art and lots of other things but eventually she turned out to have a cat's head on a human body.

TREASURE PLANET 3

MR.ARROWS

Mr. Arrows is a mineral-lifeform, a stone. I was hoping to come up with something really special. I didn't want to do just a human with a skin-problem, to avoid the human form as much as possible. The problem with a stone is , as soon as you move it, bent it, squash it, stretch it, it looses it's "stoneyness" and becomes soft. I thought , maybe it should stay firm and float , or stand in the corner on the bridge, like a real stone, his voice coming from a chasm in his "face",if it had any, why not.
What would you do, with a talking stone, if you had one ?







He could also have had a robot-arm or walking device,that would help him to move, but that was too close to Silver and his cyborg-arm.

Anyway , there's always that one drawing , that you do to illustrate, what you don't want, and in Arrow's case, it was "The Thing". I wanted to avoid that solution by all means, unfortunetly it was what Ron and John liked the most, so there you are, a stonething in a uniform....

TREASURE PLANET 2

ISRAEL HANDS

Israel Hands is the most brutal of the pirates.
I wanted him to be a cockroach, with all his knifes and daggers being part of his actual anatomy, like the clamps ob a lobster.
This is the only drawing left of my designs, I was way behind, had to send the stuff over in a hurry and with Fedex knocking at the door, I only had the time to copy my favorite one on the faxmachine. Here it is...

TREASURE PLANET 1

Billy Bones

Silver is a gentleman-pirate. A working-class , down-to earth, next door friendly neighbour buccaneer, whom you wouldn't suspect to be the worst pirate that ever sailed the seven seas. In fact, Jim chooses him as his surrogate father. In contrast to that I wanted BILLY BONES to be the pirate's pirate, he should look like your typical Hollywood pirate, cliche, romantic , smelling of salt, tar, rum and adventure.