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: 

Happy Birthday, Donald Duck!

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.

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. 

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Disney Turnarounds

A few weeks ago, John Kricfalusi wrote a very helpful post on using simple toys as a drawing aid for learning how to construct a character using basic forms and guidelines for placing surface details. Here is the post showing his example of a Top Cat construction drawing. Although I haven't used that officially as a lesson in my own Character Design class, I have actually given something similar in past years to individual students who are having trouble getting the hang of construction drawing. I'd hand out a sheet showing my sketches of a simple vinyl toy in several different angles. Hopefully, practicing that method of drawing on their own, the students could more quickly get up to speed with the rest of the class.

Interestingly, I have often had the opportunity to do the exact reverse of that process for many jobs in the past. I used to regularly create "Turnaround Drawings" of various Disney characters for the Disney Stores and Catalogue art department. Usually an artist there would provide a rough concept sketch of the character in the desired pose and I would then adapt that sketch into a series of 2 or 3 drawings depicting the character at different angles. These turnarounds would then be sent to the artist who would then sculpt the actual item in clay using the various views as a guide to maintaining the accuracy from all sides. I always enjoyed the challenge of trying to visualize the finished sculpture as I was working out these different views. One really has to "think" in 3 dimensions.



Usually, front and back 3/4 views are the best for showing the most visual information, but sometimes including an extra view or partial view is desirable to fill in some extra info, like the direct front view of Grumpy's head to show how the one eye is shut while the other is stretched wide in his skeptical expression. In addition to these turnarounds, the sculptor would normally receive some animation model sheet drawings that would help him further understand the character's structure. By hunting around a bit on Google, I was able to find this one image of the finished Pinocchio figurine ( a line called "Big Figs" by Disney), though the view is certainly not the best to show off the character well. After I do these things, I'm never really sure if all of them do in fact get produced. Last year, however, I did see several I had worked on when I visited the Disney gallery in Downtown Disney at WDW in Florida. It was neat to see how they'd come out. Usually I feel that the sculptor, with the Disney art department's guidance, does a very nice job in maintaining what I was trying to portray in my turnarounds.


To help understand his profile, Disney had requested a third view of this White Rabbit pose. He was certainly an enjoyable figure to work on, being comprised of very rounded forms. In fact, you can see my construction lines still visible, like the round pear shape body and the small sphere for his cranium. These underlying construction lines would have been drawn in blue pencil in my original drawings, appearing as a light gray in these photocopies.

Incidentally, this post today is in response to a request made several weeks ago by my friend, Alvaro Cervantes. He is a brilliant sculptor himself with many years experience in toy design, both at Disney and other companies. Please check out his work by clicking on the link to his blog provided on the right.