FOREWORD

Once upon a time in a parking lot at Universal Studios in Hollywood, California sat a small trailer — the kind of seedy temporary office space that elementary schools use when they are out of classroom space. Hans Bacher sat at a drafting table deep inside, bathed in cigarette smoke and Magic Marker fumes strong enough to kill a lesser man. He was working to flesh out the bones of a film called Who Framed Robert Rabbi. People like Bob Zemeckis, Chuck Jones, Steven Spielberg, and Richard Williams would make the trip back to the trailers to smell the markers and see what Hans and others (like the great storyman Joe Ranft) had come up with for Roger, Jessica, and Baby Herman.

Hans was always the kind of artist I wanted to get in early in pre-production. You could build an entire film on the shoulders of his inspiring visual development work Ask anybody who has worked with him and they'll use the same ten words to describe his genius: hardest working, opinionated, brilliant, opinionated, the most knowledgeable, and opinionated. He is also opinionated. Don't misunderstand. You really really want his opinion.

Years after Who Framed Roger Rabbi. I was driving down a dirt road in France's Loire Valley with Hans as my navigator. We were scouting locations for Beauty and the Beas., driving fast, stopping for beer, taking pictures, and earning how to curse in German. His work on Beauty and the Beas. set an unforgettable epic style for the film. His attention to detail and research is both expansive and surgically focused. He has every book, every photo, every graphic novel, every film on every topic, and if he doesn't, he knows who has it or how to get it within 24 hours.

He has helped set the style for so many memorable animated films from The Lion Kin. to his exquisite production design on Mulan. For years he has shared his encyclopedic knowledge of animation and filmmaking with his students and collaborators behind the doors of the universities and film studios that were lucky enough to get him. Now for the first time in this book, you can take a peek into the mind of this amazing designer and my good friend Hans Bacher.

Enjoy.

Don Hahn

Producer

Beauty and the Beast

The Lion King