I thought I'd acknowledge Donald Duck's 78th anniversary by posting some of the Disney merchandise that I had a hand in helping to create a few years back. Though most of my Disney work was in the form of traditional cartoon illustration, there were also many figural projects that required a series of rotational drawings in order to help the sculptor visualize it in three dimensions before going to work on it.
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| MMC Donald Duck Rotations |
This piece was to celebrate The Mickey Mouse Club TV show from the 1950s, and I did rotations for both this Donald with the gong and a Mickey figure in bandleader costume, as the two were featured in the opening titles of that show.
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| Mickey Mouse Club Donald Duck Figurine |
I was quite happy with the way this figurine turned out, and the pic above was taken of the actual piece that I'd bought at The Disney Store at the time it was made available for purchase. I only wish I'd bought the one of Mickey as well!
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| Snow Globes Rotations |
This was a commemorative snow globe that was created for the 65th Anniversary of Donald Duck in 1999, called "Donald Duck - 65 Feisty Years". I remember doing a lot of art for that merchandising programme featuring the duck in his various incarnations through the years.
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| Donald Duck Snow Globes Figurine |
I must admit I was a bit disappointed in the sculpture of the large Donald Duck figure in the armchair, as I felt the face wasn't quite right and overall he looked a bit thick and lumpy. Still, it was likely due to the constraints of the mould-making process.
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| Three Caballeros Rotations |
This was a fun project to work on, as the original concepts for these Big Figurines of
The Three Caballeros were by the exceptionally talented Disney artists,
Kevin Kidney and Jody Daily, and their poses were so expressive to translate into dimensional drawings.
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| Three Caballeros Big Figurines |
Here's a pic of the finished sculpted figurines that I've borrowed from Kevin's site. As you can see, the poses were modified a bit from my drawings - Panchito's hands not on his hips with eyes straight ahead, and José's beak is closed, but otherwise are quite faithful to the way I'd drawn the rotations.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed seeing the process behind creating these sculpted figurines of Donald Duck. I have other examples of my rotation drawings of various Disney characters that I'll continue to post from time to time.
Wonderful stuff, The Caballeros figurines are the best!
ReplyDeleteGreat three-dimensional drawings and the toys turned out really cute too. Great job!
ReplyDeleteWonderful post. Happy 78th, Donald! :F
ReplyDeleteRock on, Pete!
ReplyDeletePete, your work is beyond exceptional. I wish we could work together again on something. Your turns for the Caballeros were some of our favorites, of course. I recall we directed the sculptor working on Jose Carioca to close the beak after several attempts to sculpt the open beak just looked awkward to us. In the end, we were happy with how they turned out.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, when we first met (in, like, 1989?), we were at the German restaurant in EPCOT and you asked me who my favorite Disney character was. I replied Joe Carioca. You then proceeded to draw (and ink!) a perfect likeness of him - without any visual reference on hand! I still have the drawing to this day, and it's one of my favorite possessions.