Terravolt Supervogel aka The Big Yellow Fellow

The most popular comic book series in Birdtown... and the most stupid name for a superhero. But the birds love it, I tell you... btw, do you know Floriane "Floony" Marchix's work? Smashing!

Critter-Family Portrait

This is the sujet (put together of pieces mostly dating from 2006 to 2008) for the upcoming exhibition in Linz (Austria), Ars Electronica Centre, February 2010. In this connection, many, many special thanks to the Academia Nemo for their support and for piecing together this large collection. Viva Firenze! :o)

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Btw, before I start working on this kind of "title card" work I often browse through the Movie Title Screenshots Database for inspiration, ideas and things. (screen shot © av-geek.com)

Something Rough

Something pretty, pretty rough...

Apropos rough and drawn (drawn being the operative word), Jerry Beck posted Gene Deitch's keynote-speech-video for the Xiamen Animation Festival here: Gene Deitch: Quo Vadis Animation?

This is btw a sort of manned crittered kite balloon. Some inspiration came from here [>>].

Photo/File: Wikimedia

Here's another piece of inspiration. A painting (this dates from 1913) by one of my favourite artists, the Austrian painter Jos Danilowatz ("Motor in der Karikatur", ROB Verlag Wien, 1925).

Photo: Satzinger & Hardenberg Archive

Jake's Inktober; Cat

Update: Now, you can pre-order Jake's Inktober Book... yummy!

Image © by Jake Parker

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Cat

Alrighty, here's my preceding "Cat" post: We teamed up with Olympic champion Fritz Strobl and Red Bull design mastermind Rob Rottensteiner to create the "Fritz the Fritz" character. I for one was hired on for art direction/bgs/titles and character design, Rob for story development and for his skills in coolness :) After some editing on the colour design and stuff we're quite happy with the outcome and the project's progress. I'll keep you updated...

BG colours: I felt quite inspired by an opening pan of the 1940 Warner Bros. short film Bedtime For Sniffles [»]. A short while ago, Hans Bacher posted two wonderfully recreated bg pieces of it over here [»].

Duck

In some ways, this "bird" looks a lot like my younger brother Val. Well, to be exact, sometimes he has the same facial expression...

Harpoon

Back to the pencil 'n paper stuff: This is a very, very rough concept sketch...

Travelling Exhibition: Of Critters, Ducks And Dragons

Update (SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11): John posted here the finished sculpt of the birdish dragon thing. I really like how John and Fausto added a little of their own flavour. I did btw this very character - I'm talking of the drawn one - for a children's book which supports a non-smoking campaign. That book should be published next month or so...

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Alright, and here's the originally post about the exhibition things:

I will post the dates, venue and things as soon as I get the details. Cheers to the great people of the Accademia Nemo for the generous support!

This nice piece was sculpted by the fab Paolo Chiari, btw.

Photos: Maryam Laura Moazedi

A Bird, Again

Warm up sketch...

Btw, I'm following Jake's Inktober... it's a blast! You should do the same ;)

JD and Fausto

LA based 3D artists JD Imhof and Fausto Tejeda have chosen one of my birdish critters to work on. I'm actually quite curious about the result.

Birds And Pencils

This is one of the many, many birdish critters who set off into the "Birds & Pencils" book. This is BTW the piece I tried to finish live at my Pixel 4.0 workshop - but my laptop wasn't that cooperative that day, so I finished it back home. Voila, another piece done entirely digitally (Photoshop CS4/Wacom):

Update: Jake liked the colour scheme of this piece. Here's the colour palette I used, strongly inspired by the KTM Racing colours:

Images ©2009 by Satzinger & Hardenberg and Soleil Prod. World rights reserved.

Alright, and here are some impressions of the Pixel 4.0 weekend. The Austrian Academy of Sciences is quite a place, isn't it... (Photos © Kris Staber/PIXEL. A.r.r.)

Pixel 4.0, Vienna

Finally, we arrived at the Pixel... the weather is really great and I'm looking forward to hosting the character design workshop. Cheers from Vienna.

Critters In Progress

This is how I usually go about it... roughs, colours and stuff.

Image: Wikimedia

Bearish Bird

Or it's a birdish bear, it's a critter with a pecker? Anyway, it's a candidate for inclusion in "Birds & Pencils"!

Colour palette

Photo: Wikimedia

Images ©2009 by Satzinger & Hardenberg and Soleil Prod. World rights reserved.

Sorry for being away for a while! Big thanks to everyone who's viewed and commented on my sketches and things!

Mon-Day

I wish you a wonderful week. BTW, I dedicate this piece to Andrey, who I missed this time due to not making it to London. It's such a shame... the same goes for Uli, a real pity.

The Duckman's Birds And Pencils

©2009 by Satzinger & Hardenberg and Soleil Prod. World rights reserved.

Before Toby Skybuckle will finally cranked out, Crisse and I will start with an artbook filled with nearly every duck or birdish critter I did in the past years. This is a speed thumbnail sketch for the book cover. I'll keep you posted about the date of publication and stuff...
I can't thank you all enough for stopping by this little blog so often. Again, sorry for being a little inactive with answering comments and things. I promise to try to be better at replying!

Pixel 4.0, Vienna

Later this year, Maryam Laura Moazedi and I will head back to Austria to give a lecture/workshop on stereotypes in character design and developmental techniques at this year's Pixel 4.0 Symposium in Vienna. I'll post more information on this, soon. BTW, it's maybe nice to know that - related to the digital orientation of the symposium - this very special "Fiaker-StarDuck" and his draught critter are done entirely digitally from start to finish, even the rough pencils and the thumbnail sketch.

Finally, some real Austrian Fiaker coachmen:

Photo/File: Wikipedia

Union Jack

I shifted recently from Austria to the UK...

Fritz: Pirates! (Chili Green)

When I get out of my deadlines I'll post the rough sketches of this... BTW, I didn't make it to San Diego, so, how was it this year?

By the by, have you seen the Alice In Wonderland trailer already? The new flic looks drop-dead beautiful... and scarry, too.

What I've forgotten to mention is that Nemoland chief of staff Francesco Malin did this wonderful piece for me. Thank YOU!

Tweeter (ol' warhorse chicken)

*Todfeind: German word for deadly foe

Sorry again for the lack of updates, replies and answers. I'm terribly busy at work in parallel with preparing things for a longer work related stay (and holidays) abroad... happy holidays to everyone!

Unquestionably this very critter is inspired by Warner Bros' Tweety... and a little bit by my Latin teacher back in school.

Monsters In The Ski Run

An old team is joining forces, once again... FRITZ!

Photo/File: Wikipedia

Red Pencils; Rough Piece of Duck

Update: Here are some older pieces... I really enjoy colouring with red. (Btw, one of my all-time favorite cartoon characters and all-time favorite inspirations is Chuck Jones' Gossamer)

Apropos old, I just made a nice find on a forgotten SD card. The photo shows our hotel room in Montevideo, last year. I worked there on one of those tiny hotel coffee tables and had a terrific view on the Rambla/riverside. The original sketch, here in the foreground, was part of the "Of Critters, Ducks And Dragons" exhibition in Florence, no Luca?

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This is just a very fast and rough piece of duck. Sorry for the lack of updates and replies. Right now, it's just because I've not enough time... I wish you a nice weekend!

Happy Independence Day, btw... :)

Photo/File: Wikipedia

Childwood: Mary L. Tale; Uli Meyer On His Day With Ronald Searle

Update: Fellow director and animator Uli Meyer is doing a series of posts on his day with Ronald Searle. Image © Uli Meyer

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Original entry from Wednesday: Some weeks ago, I was working on a soft redesign of the Mary L. Tale character (aka Timba Tale) out of our Childwood project... her hair turned btw from red to green due to some story changes.

BTW, here's a recent pic of my fellow 2D animation class... lots of talent here:

Nemoland Critter

This is a sort of Steampunk-Psychoanalytic interpretation of my lecture work at the Nemoland event 2009.

Teaching Animation Design Or...

...what I think animation design is. This is btw a fast sample design (bg and character) I did today for the course I run here in Salzburg.

Warm-Up Sketch; Captain Christmas 2.0

Update (FRIDAY, June 5, 2009): Besides the Toby Skybuckle and StarDucks tasks I'm playing with a re-design of our Captain Christmas character for some action figure plans we're discussing here. Motto: The decent chap-hero becomes an almost invincible superhero. "Almost" being the operative word.

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Original entry from Wednesday: Starting with tomorrow, I'm officially back to work at my (more and more digitally) drawing desk after this very time in Florence.

Spider Man's Drawing Request And A Look Back On Nemoland 2009

Today, I do a double-post or a two parts entry of sorts.

Part one: Fellow colleague and good friend Francisco Herrera (Spider Man, Superman) asked me do a very own pin-up drawing on one of his characters for his next book. And here's the fruit, the ACME Wondermotorbra 3000D-T (coming with a built-in tea cooking feature):

I really do like space around the characters, much space. The original background I painted was that size:

The roughs, finally:

Part two: A look back on Nemoland 2009 in pictures

This is the Nemoland Award 2009 statue I got from the Accedemia Nemo, wonderfully rendered by the fabulous Paolo Chiari:

Fellow animator and comic artist Flaviano Armentaro and me in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Sala Luca Giordano. Fab' place, absolutely. This was, btw, the very place where they gave me the dragon statue:

Nemoland family portrait 2009. From right: Super duper director and animator Alex Orrelle (Finding Nemo, Incredibles), me, Sire Giuliano Cenci (Grisu, Calimero), Paolo Chiari (master of trolls and dwarfs) and Luca Chiarotti (Accademia Nemo).

Photos: Maryam Laura Moazedi

Some pics from the exhibition in the Gipsoteca Fiorentina will follow. I'm still stunned by the appeal and the impact of this very spot. It was indeed a magic place to let my ducks 'n' critters out...