Hans Bacher's Talk(Production Design) & Workshop

Over the past few months, to sum up, my brother and I are now in the second semester of our 2nd Year in college, some preetty interesting stuffs has happened a lot lately. Fortunately, I had the drive to write some good stuff that happened lately.

    On occassions, our college (The One Academy,TOA) hold talks/lectures by people whom are mostly artist/creative people from the industry such as animation, advertising and etc for the students to ask questions and listen to the experiences from these MASTERS. To us, is like them(TOA) giving us a lucky pot of gold for freeeee, when you take it in a good way! :D (side note: They (TOA) also doing this so to get more recognition, I could tell...well, it is killing two birds with one stone, am I right? 

The Illustration Dept invited a speaker to give a talk on Style dev & production design for two consecutive days in that week, specifically for us Illustration majoring students.

That Thursday morning, Hans Bacher's talk was all that of a delight, giving much insights on how he works and deal things in the industry.He has been a production designer, contributing many designs for many of the Disney films and other projects for around 40 years. It was interesting to the fact that he was one of those who worked on Disney's Mulan. Being the production designer, he tells of his tremendous outlook on the aspects of the film art direction, wanting it to be the way he visualizes it and sometimes arguing with the director just to get it right.

When he presented with simple and easy design, many executives don't agree on just because they think it's better to be more complicated so to make the audiences believe that disney is not cheap. But Peter Schineider trusted Hans' vision and went for it.

Remember that battle scene where the THOUSANDS of Huns suddenly emerges from the snowy mountains facing puny Mulan's squad, yup that scene gave me the goosebumps.He's the one that designed the scene. It really invokes my inner feels about that moment, I just don't know, must be some magic spell they inserted into the film...mmm...

Truth speaking, he actually joined the production team later after the first development on Mulan was scrapped. But well, at least we got this version of Mulan and I enjoyed it, thanks to his part of the contribution to the film. Next is Disney's The Lion King. 

Now, I wouldn't want to leave out the legendary of all traditional animated film of all years to come. Here is his story: Initially, Hans was involved in the first development of The Lion King, but things didn't work out, so he left. While he went somewhere to do other work...a new director, Rob Minkoff, came in to take charge of the revamping the story. He dug up in the archives of the previous production to learn back what they did, he saw an artwork of a orange and reddish "iconic" scene of a rising sun on the horizon in the Africa Plains. He used many shelved artworks of Hans Bacher and put them in the trailer and the opening of the film. Hans Bacher didn't have a clue until he watched the trailer.

There's many things he shared many things including working with Glen Keane, Andreas Deja and other veteran artist in Disney.That being said, Andreas Deja was one of his student before he went to Disney to work.

There's many projects he was involved in but I'm scared if I continue typing, it'll be overwhelming for the readers to digest everything. #stomachache. I'll briefly mention what did he involved in:

1987-1991 Production Design for Disney’s ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’, ‘Beauty and the Beast’, ‘Aladdin’ and ‘The Lion King’.

1998-2003 Design development for various Disney CG- and traditional animation projects, ‘Lilo and Stitch’, ‘Little Match-Girl’, ‘Brother Bear’, 'Wild Life’, ‘I Am’, ‘My Peoples’, ‘Snow Queen’, ‘Fraidy Cat’, ‘Beauty and the Beast Live Action’ ( most of them shelved )

On the following day, a few of my classmates and I skipped class to attend the workshop at our college's Audio Visual Hall(AVH) in the morning. He showed slideshows of many artistic styles of different artists from the past. Learning from there, he hardly talked about how to develop your style because it wasn't about 'how to...' but rather learning and understanding the idea and approach behind the styles of these artists, making the scene or artwork visually indulging/ pleasure for people who sees it and also thus also creating an identity for yourself. So in the end, everyone get his autograph and some stayed behind for the 2nd session in the afternoon.
He's a kind and great man, if you see him on the road or anywhere(I think now he would be in Singapore), be sure to talk to him because he's loves sharing his experience!

Oh be cautious, because he's an old timer, so if you are getting in his way or against him, he will screw you upside down, left & right, front & back,diagonally & adjacently, doesn't matter whether you're the director, executives,...you name it! This man got guts! 




Okay...so, is this good enough?...No? Alright....




Maybe what if all this might be a mock-up story I just made up? So to better prove this post's authenticity, here's the photos of that day: (you can check more of it over HERE.)


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Oh, and I recommend checking out his Blog(wordpress), it's very interesting and talks about his perspectives on art and all sorts. Enjoy!

More Proof: Here's a picture of his signature on my sketchbook. Darn, he signed it upside down!


Signing out!
-Luke (Saturday)