The Chad Frye - Illustration GuyHoo boy! I hear it is super hot all over the United States this week! How are YOU beating the heat?
How about those of you who live around the world? Are you experiencing a heat wave? Here in Los Angeles, we have had a pretty mild summer so far. I’ve LOVED it! In past years, we have had many days in the 100s (Fahrenheit) by this time, but not so this year.
So, stay cool, hydrate, and eat lots of ice cream!
Toy Story 4 opened in theaters last weekend. The Toy Story gang and I go way back together – back to the first movie in 1995. I was a young illustrator who was not that long out of university when I got to illustrate a couple of Toy Story books that came out in conjunction with the movie. They were coloring/activity books, but were a blast to work on.
I was given lots of blurry still images from the movie, and then had to reinterpret them into drawings that kids could color. I really had no idea what the movie was truly about, nor what the significance was of all the characters, but hey howdy hey, it turned into a juggernaut of a hit, and I became a fan along with everyone else.
Despite the date you see by my signature, the drawing above was published in 1995. All three characters have a part in the new movie which I was fortunate to see back on June 12. Toy Story 4 is funny, heart warming, and made me wish I had some tissues towards the end.
This last pic is from maybe 2007 and 100 lbs ago when I was working for Disney Television Animation, and treated my folks to a trip to Disneyworld in Florida where we got to hang with the gang from Toy Story 2. My only experience with that second film was getting to spend a day on the scoring stage with Randy Newman, but that’s another story for another time. Hard to believe this all started 24 years ago!
I’m sharing with you today, some actual animation character design work I created a while back. Thought it might be interesting to give you a little taste of the process.
The assignment in this case was to create a little brother character for an already designed big sister. The only stipulation is that he needed to be wearing a hoodie, jeans, and sneakers, and the script called for him to be mischievous. Hoo boy, what a task it turned out to be! You see before you about 20 or so exploratory sketches, but I did about 60 different versions in all.
The client just couldn’t decide which way he wanted to go. Every time I presented a few versions, there would be comments and suggestions on how to change it whether it was the weight of the kid, his hair – whatever! Two other designers eventually got involved, too, and they experienced the same indecision from the client. It was certainly frustrating, because we wanted to please the client.
Eventually a design was chosen (one conceived by one of my colleagues), and then I created the turns (that’s the view of the character from all sides), and continued with some personality sketches, mouth charts, etc. I never would have thought a little boy would have been my toughest character design assignment, but it was.
So there you have it – some of the glitz and glamour of being an artist for hire.
When I was a kid, I LOVED playing soccer. I played in a league in our town, and really enjoyed the game. My love for the game changed when I aged up into the next group, and found myself to be one of the youngest players in that level, and I was paired with a team that had a few bullies on it.
My own teammates soured me on the whole sport, when during practice, I had kicked the ball in a scrimmage setting, and it hit one of these bullies in the face. After practice that day, I got the stuffing knocked out of me as I was trying to unlock my bike from the bike rack. I didn’t quit the season because I don’t quit my commitments, but after that year, I never played in town leagues again.
I enjoy the nostalgia of having played, and the feeling of exhaustion at the end of a game. It sure was fun. So, I recently had some doodle time, and decided to do a little drawing more in line with what we do in storyboarding for animation – drawings full of action and interesting camera angles!
This pencil drawing stares me in the face every day since it is taped up on the wall in my studio. For some reason, I never thought to post it before. It was done years ago when Arnold Schwarzenegger was the Governator of Cal-ee-fornia as part of the development of an illustration of him that I was working on at the time.
If you’d like to see the full illustration, CLICK HERE.
Today is my last day at Warner Bros. Animation. For the past year, I’ve been proud to be a part of the story team on Green Eggs & Ham that will be unveiled on Netflix sometime in the fall.
It has been a thrill to work on this show, especially since the book of that same title was my favorite Dr. Seuss book when I was growing up. I remember my mother even making for me green eggs and ham for breakfast one day. Ended up that I didn’t like them, Sam I am. My little brain thought the eggs tasted like spinach.
Netflix hasn’t revealed too much about the show, so I’m not at liberty to do any Green Eggs specific art. Since that is the case, it seemed appropriate to commemorate my dear departure from WB in a more Looney Tunes worthy manner – why not go out in style a la What’s Opera Doc?
To paraphrase Bugs in the original cartoon, “Well, what did you expect in animation? A happy ending?”
There’s just something about an alligator that makes me think he can be a dapper waiter, serving up a delectable dish to his deserving customers.
That reminds me, today is Memorial Day here in the States. Anyone planning a BBQ?
When I was a kid, my dad let me read his old comics from the ’50s, and what he collected most was Uncle $crooge comics. Scrooge became my favorite Disney character, so I was influenced at an early age by the work of Carl Barks, creator of the ol’ duck.
This love for Disney comics even led to me writing a Donald Duck story that ended up getting published in Europe and here in the States! (The story was called The Kings of Chaos.)
This inked doodle of ol’ Scrooge McDuck came forth in my sketchbook recently. It’s only surprising that the Disney ducks haven’t shown up there way more often!
