The Chad Frye - Illustration Guy– Joel Osteen (1963 – present)
Lately my sketchbook has been slowly getting some pages filled. I carry it around, and intend to doodle in it more, but sometimes random, spur-of-the-moment drawings just don’t spring forth as often as one might like. This one moved particularly slowly, but maybe because he’s a turtle.
At least he’s a little dapper.
A new Scooby Doo show began airing/streaming a few weeks ago on Boomerang – Scooby Doo and Guess Who? It features the Scooby gang with a celebrity guest or two in each episode.
Why am I mentioning this? Because two years ago, I was invited to help design characters for the very first episode they were making! Warner Bros. released a trailer promoting the series, and the green ball of flaming skulls that’s in the trailer was a “character” I designed for the show. Take a look!
Thought I’d show you my early color concept of the ‘ol screaming skulls, along with my final black and white drawing.
I’m cheering on series producer Chris Bailey & the crew who dutifully worked on the whole season, and hope they have a lot of success with it!
Today there will be a big beach volleyball tournament in Playa del Rey, California called King of the Jungle. I designed the T-shirts for this year’s big event!
One of the organizers of the tournament is a friend of mine, Paul Carrera, who works as an editor in the animation business. He asked me for a black and white design, and let me do whatever I wanted for it.
It was fun just doing a simple action pose of this guy wailing on the volleyball. However, I thought that it might be fun to see this in full color. So, this past week, I decided to add some hue to improve the view!
– Andrew Carnegie (1835 – 1919)
Here in the States, today is our Independence Day! In 1776, our country’s founding father’s sent a little ol’ letter off to our landlord, King George III of England, stating that we didn’t want to pay him rent anymore. Back then they “celebrated” with a war. Today, we celebrate with parades, barbecues, and fireworks with friends and family.
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!
It’s Father’s Day here in the States today. I created this dapper duck and mouse companion a few months ago, and when it was done, it just made me think of my dad. So, I saved it just to post today.
To all those sons out there, give your dad a warm hug today. If you aren’t huggers, give him a hearty handshake. Tell him you appreciate him. Time together is fleeting – just like this duck will eventually fly away from this mouse.