I like a lot the humor and the style of the old Italian spaghetti westerns. Developing this character I was thinking of Terence Hill in the movie "They Call Me Trinity". Some of my colleagues at the studio (Munich Animation) liked the idea and helped me to developed it. Claudio Acciari did some nice color sketches and Andrea Blasich did some interesting location development.
We had this board here in the studio that was left blank for I don't know how long. So, one day I did a little pig on the corner of it. The next day Andrea did a little pig and the day after Jakob did one too. After three weeks the board was full of pigs. We took this picture and then we realized that in the middle of all these pigs there was a bar tender. Now the question here is: who is the artist behind the mysterious bar tender? The Three Pigs are (from left to right): me, Andrea Simonti and Jakob Jensen.
In 1999 Munich Animation was looking for a tv series idea. I pitched "Blue the Shaolin Dragon" together with other two ideas that I developed with the help of my brother, Sauro.
These are the first drawings that I did for the character of Till from "Till Eulenspiegel". They liked the one on the right but they wanted him less skinnier.
Andrea Simonti (a colleague of mine here in Dreamworks) told me that the design of this characters shows a strong Don Bluth influence. What do you think?
Back in Munich I was use to visit the Glyptothek in Konigsplatz. They have a huge collection of Greek Vases. The design of some of them was a real inspiration for me.
I helped to design the Shark in "Help I'm a Fish". The animated movie was produced by Munich Animation/A-film. I suggested that it could be white and fortunately Stefan Fjeldmark and Michael Hegner (the directors) liked it.