As anyone with real hamster pets knows, you HAVE to have that network of little plastic tubes as a part of the habitat for the hamsters to run around in. Well, in the new Zhu Zhu Pets movie The Quest for Zhu, those tubes serve as their public transportation system. Kind of a pink highway in the sky!
This is the fourth out of five illustrations I’m sharing with you this week created for the end credits of the new Zhu Zhu Pets movie. The Tube Depot is the hub for all those sky tubes smack dab in the heart of the Zhu village. Our heroes begin their quest right here at the urging of the skunk, Stinker (seen below).
This is about all you will see of this illustration during the end credits of “The Quest for Zhu”, but if you click on the art now, you can see that I originally planned for it to include our four heroes as well!
I really loved the look of the Zhu village, and was able to incorporate more of it in the drawing I’ll be sharing with you tomorrow!
Here is yet another pencil drawing that I did for the series of end credit images that can be seen in the new Zhu Zhu Pets movie, The Quest for Zhu, that was released yesterday. (By the way, if you happen to misplace your Zhu, before heading out into a carrot forest or a creepy jungle, start your quest by checking the cushions of your couch, or maybe the back of the dryer where that other sock is.)
I actually was pretty excited to draw a bit of the jungle foliage for this picture. I believe it was two of our layout wizards Wallace Williamson and Chris Aguirre who designed the jungle scenery in the movie, so I had some of their work in front of me as I set about creating a corner vignette. I loved all the strange leaves and plant life they came up with – kind of reminded me of the creativity of the wacky plant life in a section of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. It would have been fun to have had the time to handle the painting duties myself, but that job fell to my buddy Tom Cain.
By placing our four main heroes in the opposite corner from the vegetation, it left a big space in between the art for a few credit names. When the drawing was just about done, a request came down the line to add smoke wafting up from the campfire. I would rather have seen that smoke just painted in faintly so it wouldn’t collide with the text. That space really needed to remain open for the lettering. The director agreed that it needed more open space, so when you see this art in the final film, you’ll notice that all the jungle growth was edited out. Sigh. Such is life on a production.
So, I’m happy to share with you today this drawing that I loved with the jungle, the mighty jungle, completely intact. The hamsters can sleep tonight. (Feel free to click on the art to see it larger!)
Remember those times when you were camping together with your friends, and you all gathered around the campfire to roast carrots? Good times.
Today is the day! The Zhu Zhu Pets movie, The Quest for Zhu, is now available for purchase! Just think of it, your kids can enjoy the fun of hamsters while you will never have to deal with any of the smell!
ANYWAY, back to sharing some art with you. Today’s art created for the end credits sequence focuses on a moment of excitement from the film when a rope bridge breaks. Why anyone crosses those things in movies is beyond me. If any of those characters had ever seen a rope bridge in a movie themselves, they would know it is going to break. But I digress….
The rope bridge breaks with Mr. Squiggles, Pipsqueak, Chunk (who does NOT do the Truffle Shuffle), and Num Nums hanging on for dear life. (Click on image to see it larger!)
By the way, I keep sharing THIS LINK with you that sends you to Amazon where you can order the movie. This particular edition comes with two little toys of the characters that are based on some of my early character drawings that I shared with you a few weeks back (click here to see those drawings again).
The first Zhu Zhu Pets animated movie (The Quest for Zhu) comes out tomorrow on DVD, so I thought I’d post something from the movie each day until Friday. If you haven’t been following my blog as of late, I worked primarily as a character designer on the film last year, and even spent some time with the storyboards.
As things were wrapping up on the movie, my director, Bob Doucette, approached me about utilizing my illustration skills to create some drawings to be seen on screen during the end credits. He wanted some key moments from the movie illustrated in a watercolor vignette style with room for some of the primary credits to be seen next to the art.
I spent some time laying out images for a widescreen format with room for a name or two on the “cards” as they are called. The idea was that my pencil drawings would be digitally inserted onto old parchment paper, and my pal Tom Cain would paint them in Photoshop to replicate a watercolor look. With that in mind, I drew the illustrations by hand with a black Prismacolor pencil on large 24×18 inch pads of Strathmore watercolor paper. That particular paper has a real bumpy texture to it, which would only enhance the organic feel the art needed to have.
The Zhu Zhus have to travel through a giant carrot forest during their quest for Zhu. Num Nums has a thing for carrots, and is happy to munch away! (Click on image to see it larger!)
So, this week I will be sharing with you 5 out of the 9 or 10 pieces I drew for the end credits. To see how they looked after Tom got through with them, you’ll have to pick up a copy of the DVD!
Earlier this week I shared with you some character drawings of a leopard drawn in the design process of the upcoming Zhu Zhu Pets movie, The Quest for Zhu. While those beasties snarl and growl in the jungle portion of the story, they crouch and cower at the will of another character – Mangawanga.
This is a drawing from my sheet of expressions that help the CG folks know how much pliability there is to the character’s face. Plus, it’s delightfully disgusting.
Mangawanga is our king of the jungle. He grunts, slobbers, and yells his way through the vines and branches while keeping his eye on Jane – er, Pipsqueak that is. So, since you already met the Leopard Zhus, I thought you should see some drawings that explored the primal Mangawanga.
Looks like Pipsqueak is Mangawanga’s carry-on baggage for this flight.
Here’s Mangawanga looking all tough and menacing in his spotted jungle skirt.
It was fun to do this development drawing, then several months later I actually got to storyboard it! This moment is staged slightly differently in the final movie. Let’s just say it involved more saliva, and it may come towards you. I hope you’ve had your shots.
I worked on Disney’s Tarzan, so it was a little hard to shake the image of a jungle tree surfer, though I think Mangawanga sticks to vine swinging in “The Quest for Zhu.”
This last drawing is a little extra special. It was just one of my early drawings meant to explore character personalities during the development of who these characters were. Late in the production, my director decided he wanted some illustrative images based on moments from the movie to decorate the end title sequence. He had one of the painters on our show work this up as a test image. She painted it in a semi-watercolor style and put it on a parchment paper background. Everyone seemed to like it, so this very drawing will be seen at the end of the movie, along with an additional 9 or 10 drawings he had me work up that were painted by my buddy Tom Cain. Come back next week where I’ll show you five more of those special end credit illustrations!
Feel free to click on this image to see a larger scolding!
When we set out to design characters for the Zhu Zhu Pets movie, The Quest for Zhu (coming to DVD on September 27th), we were told that all the Zhuniverse characters except the villain had to be based on the basic hamster design. So, that meant we ended up having a hamster based sasquatch, zebras, saber-tooth tigers, a skunk, and even leopards.
We had been drawing all these hamsters walking around on two legs and basically behaving like humans, but the Leopard Zhus had to behave like the jungle cat it was supposed to be. So, it was my job to come up with a few action poses of the Leopard Zhus for the model sheets. Here’s a few that popped out of my pencil. Enjoy!
As one of the character designers for the upcoming Zhu Zhu Pets movie, The Quest for Zhu, I had to get a lot of personality into my drawings so that the many storyboard artists and animators could more accurately work together to make these characters come to life as individuals. Most of the time my drawings remained completely behind-the-scenes and were only seen within the studio. This time things were different.
My director, Bob Doucette, asked for a series of photo booth style drawings of our one human character, Katie, and her pet hamster Pipsqueak that would be used directly on screen in the movie. As you know if you have spent any time at all in a photo booth, it is nigh impossible to not act a little goofy once that camera starts-a-clickin’! So, I set out to create a set of cute and goofy images as Katie and Pipsqueak would likely have done.
Say “CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE!”
I will say that I had a little help with the above. In order to draw Katie juuuuust right for a few of those poses, I recruited some folks in the studio to pose for me. The bottom two crazy faces were expertly supplied to me by our wonderful production assistant Steffi Larson. Steffi dove right in without hesitation making the best crazy faces I had ever seen while my camera clicked away. If her face had frozen in any of the contorted poses she provided, I would never have been able to forgive myself.
For the image second from the top, I had a different model. Tom Cain, a bald buddy with a decidedly different physique than that of a 12-year-old girl, was helpful in posing with that outstretched hand. Inspiration comes from the places you sometimes least expect it! I’m glad Tom could help in that way, because you see, he was the next artist to have a go at these drawings. Tom is a painter on this movie painting all the characters and props so that the foreign studio knows exactly how to create everything in a CG (computer graphics) world.
Below are Tom Cain’s paintings of my drawings. Since these are going right into the movie, Tom’s goal was to make the drawings look as if they were photographs of the CG characters, even though they are really just two-dimensional paintings. Tom is an amazing artist, and I’ll likely be showing you some more of his paintings of my drawings in future posts. (Try not to think of that outstretched-hand Katie as a self-portrait by Tom.)
Drawings by Chad Frye, paintings by Tom Cain! This past year you may have noticed Disney characters in ads for D23 in the margins of your Facebook page and on the D23 website – Tom painted those, too!
If you’d like another sneak peek at the animation from the movie, and get to see Katie and Pipsqueak in action, here is a music video that will be seen at the end of Zhu Zhu Pets: The Quest for Zhu when the movie comes out on DVD September 27 (CLICK HERE to order it on Amazon.com).
A few days ago I shared with you a few sketches I did last weekend of several composers I had the privilege of seeing at a panel discussion about their line of work. Their line of work helps put me in the frame of mind to do MY line of work (which is drawing if you didn’t already know), so why not do some doodles of these musical artists the only way I know how – in CARICATURE!
I stress the word “caricature” because with my last posting, there seemed to be some who missed the fact that I’m a CARTOONIST when responding to my art. I don’t do flattering portraits. My hand can only draw how I really see the world, so be afraid – be very afraid.
Seriously though, I have the utmost respect for my subjects. I LOVE their music, and really appreciated their insights brought forth by moderator Daniel Schweiger last Sunday afternoon.
So, I present to you today images from my sketchbook of David Newman (Hoffa, The Affair of the Necklace, The Spirit), Nicholas Pike (Parasomnia, Return To Me, Star Kid), Lee Holdridge (The Tuskegee Airmen, Splash, Secret of Nimh 2), and Ken Thorne (Superman II & III, Lassiter, Help!). Enjoy!
David Newman composes wonderful music for many comedies including quite a few of Eddie Murphy’s movies, but some of my favorites have been for dramas like “Hoffa” or the Oscar nominated “Anastasia” or for action-adventure like “The Phantom” or “The Spirit”.
The first CD I ever picked up by Nicholas Pike was his score to “Return to Me”, a movie starring Minnie Driver. That great CD also introduced me to the musical stylings of funnyman Jackie Gleason who conducted really great (forgive the term) “elevator music” that I just love.
While Lee Holdridge has composed many great scores for movies and television, he also was good friends with John Denver and had arranged many songs for the Country Boy.
At 87, Ken Thorne was the eldest of the composers on the panel, and also was the only one with an Oscar which he won in 1967 for his work on the movie “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum.”
Thanks again to the great Peter Hackman for getting film music fans together for such a great event! Looking forward to next year’s!!
