Happy Birthday Harald Siepermann!!
Today on June 10, Harald Siepermann would have turned 62. For many years Harald Siepermann was one of the leading people in the field of Character Design. Sadly Harald passed away in 2013, at the young age of 50. Thoughts today go out to Harald’s family and friends.
On this day, February 16, Harald Siepermann passed away at the young age of 50. It has been 11 years now without Harald’s incredible talent and it remains a true loss for the world of animation. Today thoughts go out to Harald’s family and friends.
The picture is from early 1989. Harald Siepermann and Hans Bacher had just wrapped up the character designs for the television series Alfred J. Kwak. Then it was time to create all the illustrations for the merchandise, because within a few months the first episode was ready to air in Japan.
Happy Birthday Harald Siepermann!!
Today Harald Siepermann would have turned 61. Sadly Harald passed away way too young, at the age of 50, and his talent remains a big loss to the animation industry. Thoughts go out today to Harald’s family and friends.
Today, February 16, is the day that Harald Siepermann passed away. It’s been 10 years now without Harald, and it remains a tragic to lose such a kind man and incredibly talented character designer at such a young age.
Thoughts go out to Harald’s family and friends who miss their father, husband, brother, uncle, friend, and even grandfather now, as Harald’s daughter became a mother herself on June 16, 2022, from a daughter Ava Liona.
Below are more designs by Harald Siepermann for the character Chilkoot, the father of Kenai and Sitka, from Walt Disney’s Brother Bear. These are part of his first series of designs for the character in 1999. After that the production went on hold for an extensive rewrite session.
Although Chilkoot was eventually dropped from the movie, the character would survive this rewrite session, and in 2000 Harald would work again on the character. So, later more of Chilkoot by Harald Siepermann.
When Harald Siepermann worked on Walt Disney’s Brother Bear, the story was quite different. While the final movie revolved around the three brothers Sitka, Denahi, and Kenai, an earlier version of the story focused on the brothers Sitka and Kenai, and their father Chilkoot. And it was Chilkoot who gets killed due to Kenai’s negligence. “In the early version of the script, Kenai’s father, Chilkoot, would be the one who got killed instead of his brother, by Kenai’s fault of course,” commented Harald Siepermann. “But they finally realized that that was too close to The Lion King, so eventually Chilkoot had to go and was replaced by Denahi.” Although the story changed frequently during Harald’s involvement on Brother Bear, this drastic change only came after Harald wrapped up his work on the project, and therefore never made designs for the character Denahi.
However, Harald did do quite some exploration for Chilkoot, the father of the boys. Below is a selection of Harald Siepermann’s first series of designs:
Happy Birthday Harald!!
Today, June 10, marks the 60th birthday of Harald Siepermann. Sadly Harald passed away at the age of 50, and for 10 years now we’ve missed out on Harald’s creative talent and great characters that remained in his pencil. Thoughts today go out to Harald’s family and friends.
Let’s commemorate how much fantastic artwork Harald created during his life time. Below are a series of designs by Harald Siepermann of his most famous creation, Alfred J. Kwak. These are pencil/ink illustrations and were made for a children book that was published in the Netherlands and Germany in 2004, called Afspraak is Afspraak / Abgemacht ist Abgemacht [freely translated A Deal is A Deal].
In addition to the previous post about Kenai, here is another series of designs by Harald Siepermann, with a little different design. “I wanted Kenai to be in the middle of his puberty, so I tried to give him a girlish attitude as well, long thin limps for example an altogether puppyish feel,” commented Harald Siepermann.
“This is almost the final design of his haircut, but it took me a long time to come up with it and keep it simple,” continued Siepermann. “I wasted a lot of time and pencil milage to come up with something fancy.”
A year later, while the story underwent some rewrites, Harald worked again on Kenai. So more to come.
The earlier version of Brother Bear revolved around the brothers Sitka and Kenai, and their father Chilkoot. Since Harald already made a series of designs for Kenai, he was asked to create a series of designs with situations between Sitka and Kenai.
“The main difference between the two,” commented Siepermann, “is that Kenai is the young, impulsive one, whereas Sitka is the clearer, more serious type, who’s preparing to become chief of the tribe, sooner or later. But all this changed many times during the production, and with every change in story, the characters changed too.” Below are a selection of Harald’s designs of the two brothers:
“This is one of many costume studies,” continued Siepermann. “I was looking for a way to anticipate the transformation into a bear in his costume, so I was going for a way of dressing, where he would just throw over some furs in the morning, that would also correspond with his impatient and impulsive character. I also liked the warpaint in this particular sketch.”
During Harald Siepermann’s involvement on Brother Bear he worker mostly from his home in Germany. But on two occasions he went to the Walt Disney studio in Florida for one week, to work more closely with other team members on Brother Bear. In March 1999, he went for the second time to Florida. And while he continued with designing Loki the Raven, he also made his first designs for the human character Kenai.
During that time of the project, the story revolved around the brother Kenai and Sitka and their father Chilkoot. In this version it was Chilkoot who was killed by the bear due to the negligence of Kenai.
At the end of the week, producer Chuck Williams asked Siepermann if he could continue with designing Kanai when he is back home in Germany. Harald spent quite some weeks on Kenai, and he would quickly start with designs for Sitka and Chilkoot too.
“Here are some early sketches for Kenai’s face,” commented Harald Siepermann. “I wanted to come up with something different from Pocahontas and stay away from Mulan as well, so I was looking at a lot of faces from the South-Sea for reference, even Korea and the Philippines, Eskimo as well.”
Below are some of Harald’s first series of designs:
And here is part of a second series:
