Minnie Liberty Oil Painting

 

Oil on canvas.

Squirrel!

This was for our head of IT as a thank you to some folks who worked some big project. I love Dug from UP. He reminds me of my own Golden Retriever Toby.

Handy Manuel

I floated this product concept in my first week at TDS...but Handy Manny was already on the decline from a toy sales perspective so there was no appetite to spend the money on the tooling to make this happen.

Pixie Paint

This was a little experiment I did over the weekend using oil color on a coated cardboard surface that I have only used for pastels in the past. I like the vibrancy that you can get with it and I wanted to explore the transparency of Tink's wings. It's always a challenge to paint something like this without any reference, so one has to guess about the hues, values and lightplay...it was fun though.

Neato Keane

What's that Ariel sketch all about you ask? Oh nothing, just a little something that GLEN KEANE drew for me when he was visiting TDS a couple of weeks ago! That's right, the one and only GK.

He is such an amazing guy...very humble and gracious. Glen is a true gentleman and an inspiring story teller in conversation as well as with a pencil. He gave us some awesome insights to what it was like to work with several of the Nine Old Men. For instance, he told us that Ollie Johnson once told him not to animate what the character is doing, but to animate what the character is thinking.

When he came by, the sketches below were hanging in my cubicle. I did them a couple of years ago while sitting in Jury Duty. He told me he really liked them and said they reminded him of Ariel. As I recall, I actually did have her in mind, but I was just trying to draw a contemporary young girl with no reference in front of me at the time.

He spent a couple of hours with us creative types at TDS and was very generous in doing unbelievable drawings for us of several of his creations such as Ariel, Tarzan and Beast.
I informed him that besides both being incredibly handsome brutes, we have something else in common...we both have the same gardener! Salustrio has been doing both of our yards for 15 years...I think Glen's yard may be a little bigger than mine....just a guess.

Immortalized

Bryan Mon is one of these genius types that can draw like a mad man and work out some hairy trigonometry problem at the same time. He is truly talented. We worked together back at Disney Consumer Products in the nineties as well as at Cartoon Network more recently. He has been working on a fantastic comic book called "Unstoppable Tuff-Girl" for awhile and now the first issue is in print.

I have been honored to be caricatured as a conniving boardwalk magician named "Volaire"
and my partner in crime is none other than my lovely wife "Ana Cara." (Kara)

Bryan and I haven't seen each other in about three years, so he
drew me as he remembers me, with longer...ahem...blonder....hair and much more than I actually currently possess. Kara pretty much still looks the way he drew her.
Thanks Bryan!

Heart Times

These were done for a Valentine's Day program this past year. I wanted to go for a funky retro look so I wasn't going for completely "on model" character art here. I came up with the super sappy editorial for each one myself. I was hoping that actual cards would be made but alas....

                                        

Some of this work was never used as far as I know. A few items were made from the Mickey and Minnie piece below.

John Huston

I did this in 1987. I didn't even know who famed Director John Huston was at the time, but I loved the wrinkles in his face and had to fulfill some pointless, self-abusive desire to draw in graphite at 20"x24"

I looked for the source image online to see if his nose was actually that asymmetrical and screwed up. I couldn't find it but based on other reference, it clearly wasn't....sorry John. RIP.

Croc Breath

This was a piece I did back in school. I just found it in the garage and added a little editorial.
It was done with Prismacolor Pencils on Color-Aid paper which was a favorite technique I employed for awhile in the days before Photoshop existed. The paper has a bit of a "tooth" and the pencils just take very nicely to that surface. I clearly didn't have the patience to do a better job on the label at the time.

Cold Water

I did these as an exploration for some women's adult trend items we were conceptualizing at TDS. Unfortunately, they didn't fly with the merchants... I dunno, I think they're decent....oh well. They were digitally executed in Painter 12 which now has some pretty convincing watercolor brushes.

A Pooh in the Darkness

This was derived from a sculpture I did a few years ago. It looks pretty moody for a silly ol' bear.

Snow Globe

One from the archives....
This was one view of a control drawing for a snowglobe I designed for The Disney Store back in the 90's.
 I have the actual piece in a box somewhere in my garage. It came out really nice but it ended up weighing like 32lbs.

Some Mean Calamari

Mickey Stars & Stripes 9" NYC Exclusive Vinylmation

Despite all of the bickering over the raising of the nation's debt ceiling. Aside from the political posturing and podium pounding....somewhere in this great, bountiful land of ours....Liberty....sniff....still reigns.....and it's right here, on this 9" Vinylmation available only at Disney's Times Square Store!

Yo! Taxi!

This is a sweet pic my friend and co-worker Enrique Pita took of my 3" Times Square Exclusive Vinylmation while he was in NYC last week. I think it's a rather nice little image. I airbrushed in the headlights...I wish they actually had LED's in them....that would be sick (as the kids say)

Exclusive Disney Store Vinylmation Robots Coming Next Week!

 

....did a little "commercial" this morning.

Sketch

This started out as a little spontaneous doodle on Sketchbook Pro that I tried to turn into a drawing....and ruined it.

What the Helvetica?

A few months back I watched this documentary on Netflix called "Helvetica."
That's right. Who woulda thunk that an entire full length doc on a font
would be riveting entertainment?
I was so inpired that I designed this Mickey Mouse with nothing but Helvetica characters.

Oh D-dd-ddd-dear!

This is a hand painted Vinylmation figure I did for a fine lady in our HR Dept. I wanted to do something a little bit unexpected when I was told her favorite character was Piglet. So I turned the form upside down to get a totally different expression. In this exercise, I learned what atrocious hand skills I have and was reminded that there is no [command z] on a real paintbrush.

GooGoo

Themed soft crib toy concepts from a few years back...

Another one from the Archives

I can't remember what this was for. I'm thinking it was a coin bank maybe....possibly a shampoo bottle.... I dunno. Neither would have worked practically based on the proportions and undercuts here. Nevertheless, I actually always enjoyed doing 3D turns like this. It was always a mental challenge to think around the form and describe something that doesn't exist (except in your head) in as much detail as possible.

Snow White's hood

This was an illustration that was commissioned when we were developing assets for The Princess Toddler Dolls at DCP Toys a few years back.. We wanted to describe the kind of world that a young Snow White would have lived in if we had seen her at that age. I did the layout and if I recall, we had Al White Studio's (no relation to Snow White) do the painting. The castle in the distance represents her destiny as a Princess.

Muttles

This was an idea for an anthropomorphic, character based metal detector. The idea was to get little kids interested in something that we currently only see old men in sandals and black dress socks engaging in. When I was a kid, I had a metal detector & I loved that thing! When you don't have a dime, it's an epic event when you find one. With silver at $36/oz. and gold at $1400/oz. this puppy could quickly pay for itself.
The concept went nowhere of course, but I still think it's a good idea...any entrepreneurs out there?

Sign of the Pooh

I designed this sign a few years ago for a Winnie the Pooh attraction in WDW, Orlando. Disneyland eventually built the same ride out here as well.

Why I oughta.....

This was a piece done in Prismacolor pencil on olive Color-aid paper many moons ago when I had patience and before the internet when our collective attention span could endure sitting at one task for dozens of hours on end. Let's face it, we all have ADD now thanks to technology. It takes 30 seconds to cook a hot dog in the microwave and at 18 seconds I'm tapping my foot in anticipation....oh, the human condition. Gotta run!

Dread Snorkenveasil

This is a word cloud image based on a poem I wrote about an imaginary critter called a Snorkenveasil.

Here's the text I put in the generator:
 

As I walked down the path in the half light of dawn

Something lay still on the curb by my lawn

As I stealthily stepped in range of my find

It looked like a Snorkenveasil (of the carnivorous kind!)

I crept ever closer to the motionless beast

It was a rare sight on which my eyes did now feast

I had read of such things in school by the ream

But to see one up close I never would dream….

Oh a Flarn, a Bolopsnick, a Gnorf or a Driss-

But a Snorkenveasil-Wow! Imagine my bliss!

It’s form long and dewy and sadly deceased

As I stared at its features my interest increased

The snout was long & pointy and quilled…

A definite advantage in sniffing its kill

The oblong eyes on the side of its head spoke of

Peripheral vision; he was a predator to dread

A bullwhip-like tail and such razor sharp claws

If it were living would give a man pause

I thought to myself, “what a trophy to show!

I must have it stuffed or on my floor as a throw…

….but now here I lay flesh torn to shreds

for I never knew Snorkenveasils play dead!

Fraggle Rock

I wasn't really a Fraggle Rock watcher in the 80's but apparently there was a fairly significant following at the time. I did these a couple of years ago for Jim Henson Co. in addition to a style guide and tried to capture that period with these simple T-shirt concepts. They wanted an eco-friendly twist on a few of them...

FT&PD

The image above is for an internal global contest of sorts at the Disney Store that was to focus on Tinker Bell. I only had a couple of hours before the deadline to get something in and this was my offering. Amazingly, somebody suggested that her Magic wand, no doubt still billowing after some amazing feat, was too reminiscent of a cigarette...thus it won't end up on any product. Phooey! I refuse to change it. Political correctness be damned.

Bust

I was trolling some art sites awhile ago and was inspired by some great caricatures by Jason Seiler so I thought I'd practice with Zbrush and see if I could try to knock one out. I still don't have the skills to do a finished, totally realistic sculpt, but it was a fun 3 hour exercise.

Donald's Little Gift

I did this for our in store Christmas Campaign this past Holiday. I did a bunch more along these lines that ended up on mugs and ornaments and such...but this piece still kind of tickles me.

All Aboard the Dinosaur Train!

My wife Kara & I did a couple of Style Guides for Jim Henson a couple of years ago before I re-joined Disney. This is a small sampling of it. The art you see here was executed in Adobe Illustrator......yep...that's what I said.....Illustrator.
I had to get really familiar with the gradient mesh tool! It was a fun project and I think the show is still doing pretty well for Henson on PBS. Why wouldn't it? Dinosaurs and trains? All they need to add are some race cars and spaceships with heavily armed trash talking mutant alien zombies and Ba-Boom! Boy Heaven!

Here is a painting of Malcolm Muggeridge who, in addition to being an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist...was just a really interesting guy. I have a few of his books and find his insights pretty profound and witty.
This was done for a great site that Steven Gettis founded called "heyoscarwilde" where he has compiled some unbelievable art from some pretty heavy weight folks in the art world. It's all inspired by literary figures, characters, authors, etc.
I'm honored (and puzzled) that Steven kept on encouraging me to contribute....tenacious fellow that he is!

Ruff Sketch

This is my dog, Toby. He is a good boy. He likes squeak toys and crackers.
He needs a bath right now. He is a good boy.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force-7 DVD Cover

I did this last year while still freelancing.
Yep. Those Adult Swim boys on Williams Street are nutty.... The slipcover is an earlier version that I liked better than the one that finally went to print. This is Carl's belly and intestines. The stains on the shirt were specifically to be from buffalo wing sauce. The idea is that you slide his guts out from the slipcover that represents his exterior. The box was fun to do but....just once.