Monday, September 3, 2012

Disney Big Figurines

Over on the blog by my friend, Kevin Kidney, longtime Disney artist, Kevin has just posted some photos of the "Big Figs" or Big Figurines that were created over the years for the Disney Catalogue and Disney Stores merchandise. Kevin and fellow artist, Jody Daily did the initial concept drawings for the figures, establishing the pose usually based on a specific moment from the film they appeared in. After that, rotation drawings would be created from the concepts in several views in order to visually aid the sculptor who would be crafting the figure dimensionally out of clay. Kevin has kindly pointed out that I did the rotation drawings for a number of them and, if memory serves, I think this is an accurate list of the ones I had a hand in that are pictured in his post:

Jiminy Cricket (in hobo garb)
Mickey Mouse Club Morty (one of Mickey's two nephews, though it could be Ferdy)
Penguin Waiter (from Mary Poppins)
Pluto
Pinocchio and Jiminy
Minnie and Goofy as Disneyland tourists (Did I do Mickey and Donald as well? I can't recall!)
The White Rabbit 
Dumbo and Timothy
The Three Caballeros

I'd previously posted the rotations for Pinocchio and The White Rabbit a few years ago here. More recently I had posted the ones of The Three Caballeros here.

Here are several of the others that I've managed to find among my files of past Disney work: 






7 comments:

DANGERUSS said...

These are very cool!

Unknown said...

Wow!Wonderful artist.The design of drawing is very nice.i like it.This is Awesome! Thank you so much.
Konto walutowe

Snow White Archive said...

A really nice artistic style to them.

Ron said...

Very cool. Thanks for posting these - so inspirational!

Unknown said...

Hey Pete, I'm new to your blog and had time to view some of your previous posts. What I admire about your blog is the way you analyze this generation's excuse for entertainment. I've been visiting Cartoon Brew and John K.'s blog learning as much as I can on animation. But I looking for a solid foundation and I was hoping you could help me.

I wanted to know if its possible for you to upload a course outline or if you have any suggests on where to begin would be excellent. If you like here are some samples of my progress:
(1)http://chucksketchblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/cartoon-college-construction-iii.html
(2)http://chucksketchblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/cartoon-college-head-construction-hands.html

I greatly appreciate your input.

Pete Emslie said...

Hey Charles,
I took a look at your samples of drawings made by studying the Preston Blair book. That's certainly a valid way to learn and improve - I did the same thing back when I was about 11 years old! I used to copy the construction drawings of the bulldog, then started to create new poses for him using that construction method. Before long I was using the process to create and pose my own cartoon figures. Fact is, even at Sheridan College, where I now teach Character Design, we still stress the same time-honoured methods that Preston Blair described in his book.

Construction is a great thing to learn, but it's only half of the equation. What you need to add to the mix is "Gesture", whereby you're starting out trying to feel the motion in the character and what they're thinking and feeling, before developing your drawing further through construction. I've done several posts already on gesture, but maybe I'll add some more info soon, based on what I teach at the college.

Unknown said...

Thank you, Pete

I look forward to seeing what you have.