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).
I like drawing bears, and every once in awhile I’ll take up a page or two of my sketchbook to doodle more versions of the fuzzy fellas. I don’t know what it is about them, really. They seem so huggable until you come across one in person, especially if you get between a momma and her young. Come to think of it, momma-in-law bears probably aren’t so great either. It’s not that they maul you with their claws, but the emotional mauling they can inflict will really do a number on your psyche. And they always seem to overstay their welcome.
Fuzzy Wuzzy wuz a bear. Fuzzy Wuzzy wuzn’t intimidating with that name.
If you like these critters, feel free to CLICK HERE to see a previous post from when I went bear happy.
In May of 2010, I began working at an animation studio in Woodland Hills, California called Moonscoop Entertainment. I was one of two character designers hired to help turn the very popular Zhu Zhu Pets toys into living, breathing, and adorable animated characters. My partner in this endeavor was the highly esteemed Stephen Silver who had been developing the characters’ looks with director Bob Doucette. When I joined the team, it was my job to give the hamsters personality and to make them work for a CGI (computer generated imagery) animated film.
Fast forward seventeen months later, and you will be holding the results of our initial efforts in your very own hands. Amazon recently began to pre-sell our first Zhu Zhu Pets movie to be released at the end of September from Universal Studios (CLICK HERE to see it on Amazon). When I saw the video cover that the marketing folks put together, something looked strangely familiar – all the main four character poses were based on some of my early drawings!
The very first Zhu Zhu Pets movie featuring Num Nums, Pipsqueak, Mr. Squiggles and Chunk with the sneaky Stinker poking in from the corner.
I was planning to share with you some of my work for the Zhu Zhu Pets series from time to time, so why not start by showing you the sketches that led to the first video cover!
After Stephen Silver created the initial designs, I took them and drew up lots of action poses. The goal behind these drawings was to really get their personalities across, and to show the range of motion that they should be able to have when they get animated. These types of drawings help the CG artists know how to build the characters, they help the storyboard artists get a handle on how to draw the characters, the animators on how to animate them, and sometimes they help the marketing people promote the film as was the case with these four drawings.
Our story is about the adventures of four hamsters who go on their Quest for Zhu – the title doesn’t lie! There is sweet and dainty Num Nums, the adventurous Pipsqueak, the heroic Mr. Squiggles and laid-back surfing aficionado Chunk. Below are just a few of the many sketches created really early in the process of developing who these characters are. While they were early sketches, somehow these particular four poses struck a chord with others who came after me since they influenced the video cover.
The Quest for Zhu movie is just the first of three DVD films that will be sure to capture the imagination of your little ones. In fact, even now I am at work on more Zhu Zhu cartoons that will eventually make their way to the internet as webisodes. Now and again I’ll share some of my behind-the-scenes work with you from this magical series here on my blog.
Here’s a trailer showing the characters in action….
About a week and a half ago I was finally able to see the very charming new movie Winnie the Pooh created by Disney’s Feature Animation Studio. For the past few decades, new animated Pooh adventures have been ably put together by Disney’s television division, but it did my heart good to see the 100 Acres Wood gang return to the Features division with characters rendered by some of the industry’s top traditional animators such as Andreas Deja, Eric Goldberg, Randy Haycock, Dale Baer, Bruce Smith and Mark Henn.
I once was a part of Disney’s Television Animation group that worked on Pooh’s last outing, the My Friends Tigger & Poohshow that aired on The Disney Channel. Seeing the new film made me wistful for the characters. Pooh & company are such delightful characters to watch, and equally delightful to draw. The whole thing is a warm and fuzzy experience all the way around. Then again, maybe I’m conveniently forgetful of the challenges of working on a television show.
After finishing my work on two and a half seasons of My Friends Tigger & Pooh back in 2008, I just couldn’t stop Poohing. I spent some time doing some little watercolor pieces of the gang, the last one I posted here in April of 2009. So, in honor of the wonderful new film that families of all shapes and sizes will delight in seeing, I am posting this previously unseen watercolor & pencil piece of Winnie the Pooh with his friend Darby.
Darby with her friend Winnie the Pooh
If you or your children ever watched My Friends Tigger & Pooh, you would know that Darby was a little American girl created just for the show that would be there for all the adventures with Pooh and the gang. She was shorter and younger than Christopher Robin, and was likely conceived with the thought that she would be more relatable as an equal to the target audience of 3 to 5 year olds. I grew to really appreciate Darby, and enjoyed drawing her. She had a sweet innocence about her, and a voice to match provided by a very young Chloe Moretz in one of her early jobs.
Well, enjoy this painting of Darby with her silly old bear, and be sure to add the new Winnie the Pooh film (that includes Christopher Robin – not Darby) to your “to do” list.
A few weeks back I learned that my friends Abi and Harrison Craig were going to be leaving Los Angeles with their family and heading to Kentucky. Harrison has accepted a job working on the Ark Encounter, a Bible-based theme park that is currently in the planning stages. It is being put together by Answers in Genesis, the people known for the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.
You may remember Answers in Genesis here on my blog. Last year I told you about an illustration assignment I did for their publication, Answers Magazine(click HERE to see it again). In fact, I believe it was just recently republished in their special 5th anniversary issue.
Well, Harrison wanted a drawing of his family to commemorate this big change in their lives. His kids have only known California, and they are excited about this grand new adventure that they set out on this week. I thought I’d share with you the drawing in it’s three stages: rough sketch, final inked art, and the full-color final piece.
Working from photographs, I worked out the rough drawing with blue pencil on tracing paper. It went through a couple of alterations as per Harrison’s request, then I made a few spacing and size changes with Photoshop on the computer.
Click on image for a slight enlargement.
You may notice some details like Noah’s ark on the pennant since they are going to work on the Ark Encounter. And if you noticed a chicken in the van, that’s because while the Craigs lived here in L.A., they had a chicken coop providing them with plenty of fresh eggs daily. Originally I had thought to add some chickens chasing the van, but then the idea of leaving palms for pines came to me and seemed like a better idea. So, one chicken made it into the van, although I don’t believe the same could be said about the real life chickens. Well, leastwise not sitting next to the bellies of those boys. (cough cough)
The next step was to print the blue lines out on a piece of 14×11 paper, and using a piece of graphite paper (similar to carbon paper but using pencil lead instead) under the print, I traced the drawing down onto a nice clean sheet of Bristol board. It was on this piece of Bristol that I hand-inked the art using a Pentel brush pen (a most excellent tool I don’t know how I ever lived without) and Prismacolor black tech pens.
Click on image for a slight enlargement.
Then, it was time to color. Scanning the art into the computer, the color was added in Photoshop. I chose to keep things fairly flat, only really shading the skin tones of the people. The grass and van have some gradations, but by focusing the shading on the skin tones, it draws attention to the characters rather than to the environment.
Click on image for a slight enlargement.
Well, there you have it. The A to Cs of a cartoony caricature drawing of one swell family.
?…my oh my what a wonderful day! It’s beginning to look a little like one of them zip-ah-dee-doo-dah days! Perhaps I should explain…
Over the past seven weeks, I have mentioned and illustrated several times here on the blog that on May 10, Hotmail had turned it’s back on me. I was locked out of the e-mail account that has kept me in touch with friends, family and business associates for the past thirteen years. The digital wasteland of Hotmail rejection was quiet and lonely – I couldn’t have felt more shunned had I been wearing a big red letter on my clothing.
The reason for the lock-out? I was the victim of a drive-by hacking. Someone had violated the sanctity of my little ol’ e-mail doing who-knows-what in my name. I sat before my screen with grumpy displeasure conjuring up thoughts of random people getting bad knock-knock jokes from me, or perhaps “yo’ momma” insults that would come back to haunt me one day. I could be walking down the street at some point and a stranger would stop me on the sidewalk to say:
“Are you Chad Frye?”
“Why yes, yes I am.”
“Well, YO’ momma is sooo ugly that children shriek when she passes by!”
I would be shocked and appalled at this unnecessary act of verbal abuse from someone I had never met before, only to have the realization a few minutes later that ah yes, this must have been retaliation for something a hacker sent them in my name.
Well, my previous blog posts on this issue were not written in vain. Two weeks ago I received an e-mail from an employee of Microsoft (Hotmail’s owner) who had seen my blog and offered suggestions on how to get back in. He had nothing to do with the Hotmail division, but rather was just being a good Samaritan.
So, I followed his advice which amounted to typing up an inordinate amount of facts about my account to submit to Hotmail, then hitting “send” and going to bed. Waking the following morning and wiping the sleep from my eyes, I sat down at the computer to some stunning news. There on the screen was an e-mail from Hotmail (to an alternate account) stating that I now had permission to re-enter my account!!!
I don’t mind Mr. Bluebird being on my shoulder so long as he doesn’t leave any residue behind.
OH HAPPY DAY!!! The advice had worked and I have since returned to e-mailing everyone willy nilly like a giddy little schoolgirl! From all the e-mails I am now receiving, many people in foreign countries seem to be trying to get a hold of me to give me millions of dollars in transfers and lotteries once I provide them with my bank information. So, not only did I get my e-mail account back, I soon shall be RICH! Win-Win!
