Enchanted

Just picked up the rumor that Andreas Deja will be animating Susan Sarandon's evil queen character on "Enchanted".
Great, a while ago I was doing a bit of PreVis for that project .

Lurchi -more childhood memories

When I was a kid in Germany you would get these comicbooks free at the checkout of the Salamander-shoestore.
They were beautiful watercolors done by the then nameless artist Heinz Schubel.
These strips have influenced me so much and come to think of it , the world of Kwak is still a bit of an afterglow of these strips and their universe.











My very own, 40 year old copy.You will recognize the silhouette of one of Walt's seven dwarfes, that I put on top of it at one time, and then, years later, removed it again.....



This adventure has been removed, because it's so totally un-pc, its a pure joy ....it's of course, still in my copy.

I recently heard rumors about a Lurchi-movie being in the works. Heaven forbid, keep your dirty, greedy hands off him !!!

Ambra

...and finally my daughter started her own blog, too.

Can you spot the difference ?

Five points each ....

Ones the original concept, the other the tamer version thats gonna be printed....

Final final TARZAN post

Animator Ozgül Gürbüz just sent me these lovely pics of her in her Jane-Halloween-costume.
Ozgül is studying animation at Anadolu University in Eskisehir, Turkey. I will give a talk there in May.
Since Ozgül's short has won 1rst prize at the Hamburg Animation Awards, we've become very good friends. I will let you know, when you can watch the short online on her website.

Memorieeeeeeeeeeeeeeees...

I just got this from an online antiquariat. Believe it or not, this was the one and only book on Disney and animation that I could get in Hattingen's public library . I rented it several times. There was nothing else to read (on animation) until I bought that Christopher Finch book from my first self-earned money (in Bert Sälzer's local adverticing agency), when I was like 17/18. A year or two later "The Illusion Of Life" came out...it's funny to look at it again after so many years.

Uli Meyer is back !

...and blogging at
http//umbackagain.blogspot.com


...by the way, I found this picture on
Greenbriarpictureshow.blogspot.com
a site you should definatly check out, if you're interested in vintage moviestills.

The drawing that started everything and what happens when youre cartoon-character takes on a life of his own ...

This must be one of the first drawings of the until-then faceless stagecharacter, that Hans Bacher and I did. I think we even did it on cel on a painted background to give it that "animation-feel". It must have been around 1985 or so. The first comicstrips came shortly after that.


This is , what happens , when people you never met dress up as your character. It must be from one of those stageshows that theatercompanies are still performing of the first story that Herman ever wrote for Kwak.



You know you made it rrrrrrrrrealllllllly big, when some weird guy in Finland does a "Alfred Jodocus F***-Remix " and puts it on the web. Click the headline above and listen to it, if you dare.



Oh yes, and we eventually also made it into wikipedia.....



As you can see, Herman's vision of an upcoming themepark is very precise already, won't be too long till the gates open finally...


Until then, go and listen to the original stageshow on Itunes...that should keep you busy for a while.



Or, even better, pick up one of the upcoming DVDs with the TV-series, the first six DVDs will be out in Germany and Holland at Easter, pretty soon that is....

>>>63 ways to improve the movies<<< in Britain's "total film" magazine

#31: In-jokes and cute cultural nods to be brutally culled from animated screenplays.

Hear, hear, I say.

Tyrus Wong

You've probably read this on CartoonBrew before, but I'll say it again:
Make sure to check out the post about Tyrus Wong, the ingenious artdirector of Bambi and many, many other things under the above link.

Final TARZAN post

Just to complete the Tarzan-posts, I'll send you home with some misc-characters of the film. I kept getting "shopping-lists" like "We need three hippos, four chameleons, one marabu and a couple of termites". That kinda thing. I remember doing hundreds of drawings of apes and all kinds of animals, even of those that you won't find in Africa. I remember walking past a comparative- sizes-line-up of misc. apes that stretched through the whole lenght of the hallway in the feature-animation-building.


Lord Greystoke, Tarzan's father, based on Glen Kean's design of Tarzan.



I'd have loved to do the ship's crew, as well, but they wouldn't let me do it for reasons, that I will not go into. Anyway, I didn't get any further than this little watercolor for the captain of the ship.



We had three reaccuring apes that accompanied Tarzan through the different ages, we called them Larry, Curley and Moe.
Lets say, below, this is Moe, -I don't really remember-, growing up alongside Tarzan.













When we started with the project, we had the idea to turn the usual principle around and associsate the "good ones", the apes, with dark and curvy elements, and the humany with light and straight lines.
SABOR was to be the only character that would fall out of this principle, he was supposed to come from the very dark, you were never supposed to see him entirely.
The directors had planned to do his fur in CG, very much alike to the "deep canvas" process and the jungle, but that didn't wor out and eventually Sabor was done the traditionall way.





Toukans, you'll only find them in South America.







It didn't get any smaller than this, I also did a cheaper version with just 4 legs.



One of those lists I talked about.

That's about it, really, hope you enjoyed it.
And my belated thanks and apologies for all those I didn't mention.
Now off you go and enjoy the oscars, Cheers, H.

CAT

I love it, check it out, click the headline ----> Those guys from the German Film School...

Prinz Vladimir

For my German visitors :
Here's a little article about the upcoming Prince Vladimir movie.
Click on the headline and enjoy .
( Maybe I'll tell you about my trip to Russia and too much vodka, some day ...)



In the meantime, check out ANDREI's breathtaking blog, he is one of the movie's creators.
( As if you didn't know )

Link on the right---->

Extras

Every now and then there's something on the telly that's worth watching, innit ?

(Provided you got a DVD player ...)



Oh, and don't forget to click the headline to check out Ricky Gervais' Website, it's great....obviously.
See how he goes to NY for charity or how he gets an autograph from Matt Groening.

Surprised

I was shown the first layouts of comics based on the first 52 TV-episodes of Alfred J. Kwak, sort of Photo-novels. Looks very promising and I was very surprised by the quality in a good way.
For more information, check out my Alfred J. Kwak- Blog on the right.

Wow !

2809 visitors in one night !!!
Thank you readers and Amid and his Cartoonbrew !

TV-doodle

Did some doodling in front of the TV the other night...these pretzels are making me thirsty.