AFRICA

My adventure in Africa started in 1991, and the fairytale of Bambi in Africa was called at that time King of the Jungle. Had I known…

The first script pages I got were not very promising. Well, that had happened before. It makes it hard to start to work on a fresh project when nothing in the written version appeals to you. I was working from Germany. Nobody at Disney really believed in the project, so there was no budget to fly me to LA. That was very unusual as it had never happened before. George Scribner was the first director; later Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff took over. George wanted a very realistic look. He asked me to come up with visualizations of effects such as lens flare, out of focus to the extreme and more. The more crazy weather situations I could come up with, the better. As far as I remember I was one of the very first artists to work on that movie. It was not fun at all, because I was by myself and could not discuss the movie with the others involved. That’s why I followed a call from Amblimation in London to work on Cats later that year.

Several years later I got connected again with the “King.” It was short that time — overnight. That’s how much time I had to come up with the logo for the Broadway show.

I had no idea how that would work on a theatre stage. When I finally saw the show at the New York premiere I was speechless. I liked the movie a lot, but the stage version is my favorite. Julie Taymor, the designer and director, is a genius. Everything worked with the music and I still get goose bumps!