Category: Character Designs

Have you ever wondered what a chorus line of singing and dancing hamsters would look like? No? I never did either, but this Zhu Zhu Pets animation project gave me the opportunity to contemplate such life-altering matters.

During the production of The Quest for Zhu, little Pipsqueak is magically whisked away to the Zhu Village where she is greeted not by the Lollipop Guild, but rather by a whole community of exuberant little hamsters. I was actually a part of storyboarding that sequence set to a song that we lovingly called “Hey Hamster Homies,” but later was changed to “Celebration” by Mr. Cool and his delightful Gang.

As the hamster dance is such a memorable moment in the movie, it needed to be represented during the end credits. Thus the drawing below was born. Of course, in the movie this piece is in full color thanks to the talents of my buddy Tom Cain who digitally watercolored it, but you’ll have to check out the movie to see that version.

Thanks for following along with these Zhu Zhu Pets illustrations this week. On Monday I shall be unleashing the beasts for my third annual Monster Month which will continue throughout the month of October!

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).

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!)

Come back again tomorrow for yet another one of my drawings created for the end credits sequence of The Quest for Zhu!

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.

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!