Jane

Jane was a tough one. All we knew at the beginning was, that we didn't wanted to do just another one of those Disney-high-school-chicks, like Arielle, a kind of behavoiur and speech that is, forgive me, very American. But we had no clear idea, what to replace it with, only thing we knew was : She should be very british. Kevin Lima had the rough suggestion to look at Julia Ormand in "Sabrina" as a guideline, but just for the character, not for the design.



My first step into the character, designwise, came from a nice, little movie, called "Picnic at Hanging Rock" by Peter Weir. I had always loved the contrast of these young girls in their white dresses and the hot, glowing sun. It immedeatly came to my mind, when I started with Jane. So, I used that as a door and I began with my sketches.







Jane's dress reminded me of Sluefoot Sue and that fantastic Milt Kahl -walk in "Pecoos Bill"
We wanted her dress, as she herself too, to adept very quickly to the jungle. Less and less Victorian, or is it Edwardian, in a short time.





Some very early sketches....



A big step forward occured, when a young and until then unknown actress appeared on the screen, Gwyneth Paltrow, in "Emma". Not only was the setting the correct one, but also the character was kind of spot on, at least, for the stage, that we were in.





Some sketches inspired by Gwyneth...
The directors liked the turned up nose very much and also the overbite. That was considered something new and refreshing.



Minnie Driver, - I had the pleasure to give her a studio-tour- , added a completly new attitude to Jane. She was very helpful and brought a lot of character to the ..... ahm, character. Just imagine an american actress doing a cockney impression instead,that would have been horrible !!!!



But the real breakthrough came with Jane Goodall and a lecture she was giving at the studio about her apes and their family life. What a charming, interesting, warm person. Not at all like in that Simpson-episode !!!! From that moment on, it was clear, that Jane had to be based on her, a young Jane Goodall, my God, even the name was right.







So I got myself a lot of National Geographic tapes and magazines and tried to find a mix of what we had till then and young Miss Goodall...









Kent Melton's fantastic Maquette. Can't praise him enough .



Heres the nose again.
Some pictures from the final film.

Belicta

Today I would like to raise your attention for this lovely, young, gifted, up and coming illustrator, who coincedently also happens to be my wife. Belicta.
Above you see a few samples of packeging-designs she did for an Austrian fair trade company.
She just opend her own blog, which she will update frequently, she promised.
Just click the headline and the link will take you there.
Enjoy

Cheaper by the Dozen

The last bunch of the DVD Covers, should be 17 altogether , now...

Simplicity !

Just in case you haven't done so already, please make sure to read this most interesting and true comment on story and simplicity on Jenny's blog. Just click on the headline and off you go !

....better ?

More Jippes...WORLD EXCLUSIVE !!!

...well, apart from Holland, which almost doesn't count, really.





Our friend Wout ( check out his blog under http://woutsplaatjes.blogspot.com ) and Gerben Valkema, who works with Daan, spoke to the master himself, and after some negotiations Daan gave us permission to show two non-sequential bits from his Havank-strip in this very blog. The strip is currently published, weekly I assume, in Holland's "Algemeen Dagblad" and is an hommage to an older Dutch strip, as far as I understand. Daan is worried about showing the strip on the blog might get him into trouble with future publishers, which I absolutly understand. Our thanks to Daan to grant us this little sneekpreview are accordingly high, ...no joking, three cheers for the master!!!

So you have to subscribe to the newspaper or wait till the strip is eventually published as an album, before you can see the rest of it.

I'm always amazed by Daan's talent to get into any style he wants to, really superb work, chapeau, Daan !!!!!!
And thanks again, hope to see you sometime again, H

Also many thanks to Daan's agent. For more information about Havank, please check out his website
http://www.comichouse.nl

Daan Jippes

This little piece is all I could find of the new strip that Daan Jippes apparently is drawing for the Algemeen Dagblad in Holland. If anybody knows more, please share it with us !( Wout, I'm counting on you !)

Btw, Rune, that was an insult from Brazil, I can tell a fake !

More insults from Denmark !!!!

Now they're going up against the French !!!!!
Who'll be next ????????

Serious, this looks like a nice fun- piece of good old 2d-euromation,...I made that last one up myself.

Egg

Moving on with the DVD-covers, 12 to go...

Schon gehört ?

CG !!!
Just follow the link above....

Yzma

I innocently leave my desk for 2 weeks, only to come back to find the animationworld completely turned upside down. Interesting and most promising times indeed, another proof for that old dutch proverb, that Herman uses sometimes : "You never know, how the cow is going to catch the rabbit."

Anyway, I'm back and after two weeks of teaching and a couple o' days of "wasting time" with my newly downloaded GoogleEarth it's time to do some blogging again.
While I was working on "Tarzan", Andreas Deja was busy with the first test-animation of the Yzma-character, from the upcoming " Kingdom of the Sun" as it was called at that time. Andreas asked me, if I was interested in doing a couple of sketches of Yzma, that would go away from Cruella, just to do something else, a kind of a second opinion.
Cruella , as we all know, has got very prominent pointed shoulders and hipbones, so I started with some sketches, basing Yzma on a simple brushstroke, neglecting the shoulders and hip completly.



Yzma was based of course on Eartha Kitt, who did her voice, but also was reminescent of the singer Yma Sumac, who actually had been at the Disney-Studio before, because one of her songs was considered for Fantasia, as far as I know.
Very strange, haunting music.
Below are some sketches, mostly face-studies. Mind you, that this was a state of the project, where the story was much more epic and Yzma a much more evil character, not as O.T.T. silly and comic as we came to know her.



















At the same time I had developed a reputation in the studio, based on the work I had done on the gorillas, that I was able to get character into a lot of look-alike animals. At that time, the script talked about seven llamas, so I , together with animator Ellen Woodbury, ( Hope I spelled her name right ) worked on some llama-sketches.We even went to a countryfair in Pomona to do some life-drawing.
We had found a solution with the different teams, that allowed me to work for "Kingdom" in the morning and in the afternoons I was still working on Tarzan.





And here are some sketches and a bit of animation by Andreas :







As we all know, that approach was eventually cancelled for storyproblems and Andreas moved on to Florida to work on Lilo and Stitch.
All in all for me this little intermezzo lasted no longer than a month or so, back in 1997....

Off to Berlin

I'm off to Berlin, teaching.
I will be back on Friday . I got a lot of questions from you, portfolios, movieclips, etc. It'll take time, but I'll answer each and everyone, so don't worry . But for the moment, have a nice week, discussing the Pixar-deal. ...
H

Le Shop

Now you can own this cute, vicious little rabbit of mine as a mug, clock, t-shirt, tank-top, everything you always wanted to own, but were afraid to ask for. What will they think off next ??? Thanks to Goro, for helping me setting this up .
Harald, the greedy bastard...

The Cast

Maquette

Another one of those beautiful maquettes from Gallery Fi Donc.

I'm telling you for the last time ....

Click the link, if interested

Winnie

Can't tell you, how much fun it is, to do this little, cheerfull, unpretencious characters.....

K.Rokodil

...a.k.a. Baron Coordt du Crocque au Vin. He thought his name no longer fitted, after he became Burgermaster of Poldertown and changed it, to impress his new friends.

A bold Hippopotamus was standing one day
On the banks of the cool Shalimar.
He gazed at the bottom as it peacefully lay
By the light of the evening star...

Alfred J. Kwak Webcast

Now you can watch a different episode of Kwak every week as a webcast at Herman van Veen's website. Enjoy it, while it's still free, H

I am the Walrus

King Franz Ferdinand I

.....wishing you a royal weekend.

The first drawings of the new year...

I always saw Prof. Paljass as a caricature of Peter Ustinov. We even asked him to do the voice but he declined , saying he would only do maincharacters.
The German name "von Unternull" ( below zero) is a reference to Wernher von Braun, the German rocket-engineer , who started out building rockets for the nazis and later brought Apollo 11 to the moon. ( Hence yesterday's little poem by Tom Lehrer). His character first appeared, in "Onder Water" a theatershow, written by Herman, which we later rewrote to " Vissen in trouble water /Fish and Ships". In this show he still had a German accent and an assitent, a penguin by the name of Fahrenheit. So is there a dark spot in Paljass' history ? I love to think so....
Eventually Herman did the voice himself in the TV-Series, which put his voice under a lot of stress, and I remember him saying, he would never do dubbing again.
The Professor's mentor by the way, is the legendary scientist and genius, worldexplorer and organist Prof. Prokudatis Krakedatus, whose diary is still in the professor's safekeeping. I wrote a lot of that backhistory down for volume 4 of the comicbooks, which I never finished....too much work with the TV-series...Maybe some day we'll find the time and right place.