A little explanation: “Snowballs” was the original working title for “Balto“.
These two keys show the interior of a gold dredging machine in Nome, Alaska.
The quality isn’t great because they are from colour copies, but the vision is spot on.
Click ‘em to enlarge ‘em folks!
Workshop interior.
Gold dredger interior.
Production designer Hans Bacher turned out hundreds of these small magic marker masterpieces at amazing speed.
I certainly learned a lot about the importance of tonal values from studying these keys.
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6 Comments
Brilliant work!:o)
When I was a the zenith of my animation career and at full throttle, dragging my undercarriage through tree tops, snagging telephone wires and knocking off chimneys and television aerials before crashing in flames, I worked on a project during which we studied Balto religiously. What marvellous backgrounds, including yours, Michael. Of course, we all knew of, and had great respect for H.Bacher, and were also aware of his contribution to the project. Super film, will have to watch it again some day. Thanks for posting this stuff
I’m glad you enjoyed the post, Clive.
I was coincidentally just in the process of assembling a post about you and your watercolours. One of the main threads will be to examine the way that you are breaking away from the filmic language that you have dealt with so fulsomely over the years, and contrast that with the subjects you are now painting.
I’m a bit slow to post articles, mainly because I get distracted by all the byways that come to light during the research process, but be assured that there is a piece about you in the pipeline….
Holy Cow, Michael, I’d better get off my duff and get painting.
Easy now, Clive! It’s already difficult enough to choose from so many great pictures.
Don’t make my task harder, please!
Good ol’ days Mike!
Hope all is fine in the UK