Category: Character Designs

…From the Flat File: 2001 – Captain Traffic

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date February 18, 2011

A couple of weeks ago I was in some slow traffic on my way to work, when I was startled to see one of my creations giving me the thumbs up on the side of a mini-van that came up alongside of me. It was as if he was saying, “Good job on your driving, Citizen!” I had heard of the Captain Traffic van before, and yet had never seen it for myself. There he was promoting safe driving on a van that was passing me on the right.

Captain Traffic giving his thumbs up approval of my driving while on the 101 freeway in Los Angeles.

Back in 2001, I was working at Walt Disney Feature Animation. One of my friends there, Brett Drogmund, was leaving to form his own company that included a fully legal online traffic school here in California. He and his business partner wanted to have a character that would be the ambassador for the business. Together we created Captain Traffic, and not long afterwards, ComedyTrafficSchool.com was born.

I was fairly new to using Photoshop as an art tool at that time. The Captain was inked by hand, and colored in Photoshop. I was beginning to teach Photoshop to the other artists at Disney by day, and by night I was working on lots of Captain Traffic drawings and other cartoons that you can see on their website only if you are a bad driver and have paid for the course (which is only $13.95 these days!).

Here’s the full drawing of what appears on the side of the ComedyTrafficSchool.com mini van.

If you’d like to see another piece starring Captain Traffic, there’s one on my website that was conceived to be like a comic book cover for Brett’s other website, TrafficSchoolUSA.com where the good Capt. also appears. You can see it by CLICKING HERE!

And if you are on Facebook, Captain Traffic now has his very own fan page which you can see by CLICKING HERE!

So, if you happen to be driving down a freeway in Southern California and you come across Captain Traffic, don’t be startled and swerve into your fellow commuters. But if you do, quickly jot down the phone number from the side of that van. You’re going to need it.

Tuesdays with “TIM”

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date February 8, 2011

Last Tuesday I unveiled to you the news about a short animated film I am art directing and co-producing (with my friend Brian Joseph Ochab) called TIM. If you missed that post, you can CLICK HERE to get caught up. The short summary is that it is a parody of Tim Burton’s early stop-motion animated short Vincent in which a little boy named Vincent Malloy tries to emulate his hero, master of the macabre Vincent Price. In TIM, the young Timothy Todd wishes to be just like Tim Burton.

Today’s Tuesdays with TIM features a piece of visual development art I created of the star of my film, Timothy Todd, dressed as his hero, Tim Burton. I believe this is the first version of him in color, and he continues to go through changes as we proceed with developing the film. I painted him with watercolors, and a touch of colored pencil. And no, the website address isn’t on the actual art. We just want folks to be aware of where they can go for more information about the film. (If you click right on the image, it will take you there.)

The other news since last week is that we now have a special fan page on Facebook for TIM, and it is growing strong! In just a week’s time, almost 1000 of you have “Liked” us! If you would like to get a steady stream of updates on TIM, come join the fan page! Click on www.facebook.com/Timthemovie and you’ll go right there!

And lastly, in order for us to see this film to completion, we need YOUR help! Come check us out on Kickstarter.com to see what kind of neat goodies we are offering you in thanks for your financial support. You can see our Kickstarter promo movie featuring our narrator Christopher Lee by CLICKING HERE!

Come back next Tuesday when I plan to show you more goodies!

Art: Colored Pencil Art: Watercolor Caricature Character Designs Development Art Illustrations TIM the Movie

Justin Beaver

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date February 3, 2011

I know the title is corny, but it made you look, didn’t it? I suppose the only thing this critter has in common with his namesake is the feathered fur, which, by the way was completely drawn on a Wacom Cintiq tablet – my first decent digital drawing posted here on the blog!

* No wood (pencil) was harmed in the creation of this drawing, though I can’t say as much for the tree he took that branch from.

For those of you not in the know, a Cintiq is pressure sensitive computer screen on which you can draw with an inkless pen called a “stylus”. Press lightly, your line is thin. Push harder, the line gets thicker. Pretty neat stuff that has been sweeping through the artistic community within the past two years even though these tablets have been around for close to ten years now.

Back when I worked at Disney Feature Animation, Wacom loaned the studio one of their first generation Cintiq tablets. It was housed in my office where many of the artists could come down and give it a try. Most hated it back then, but technology has a way of improving, and some of those guys now not only use one at work, but they’ve bought them for use at home, too.

I’ve been using one at work for a few months now, and had a few minutes of my own time yesterday to play around with doing something more than storyboards on it. Hope you like the results!

Animals Art: Drawings Art: Photoshop Character Designs Development Art Random Doodles Sketchbook

Gnomeo & Juliet 5

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date January 21, 2011

Well, here is the last of my 2002 audition pieces to work on Disney’s Gnomeo & Juliet (opening on February 11). Not having seen it myself, I can’t vouch for its content. With all the years it has been in development, one would hope that it is every bit as fun as they are leading you to believe with the advertising. After all, it MUST be good because it had 9 writers – 10 if you count William Shakespeare. (cough cough)

I am glad that it is completely animated though. Early on there was talk of having the gnomes be realistic and set in a live-action world. If they had gone that route, kids would likely run crying in fear of any actual garden gnomes they would encounter in the future. I might even have reacted that way.

At any rate, here is my final submission for your perusal. It’s a watercolored piece inspired by the first drawing I posted on Monday. I expanded that idea of the “bent over” lawn ornaments to epic proportions by making a Braveheart gag out of it.

Nothing puts a cold fear into the hearts of the opposition like teddy bear underwear.

Thanks for checking out my Gnomeo & Juliet inspired art this week. While these proposed pieces didn’t land me a job on the film back then, they were fun to come up with. And I’ve managed to work on a few fun things since then in the world of animation.

Art: Watercolor Character Designs Development Art Disney Illustrations

Gnomeo & Juliet 4

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date January 20, 2011

When I lived in Greenville, South Carolina back in the mid-1990s, this one house near downtown was just COVERED in lawn ornaments. In particular, they had soooo many whirly-gig type devices that made their whole property look as though it was in constant motion. You know what I mean, right? They had anything that had a moving part when the wind blew. That was in my mind when I drew this next piece for submission to the Gnomeo & Juliet team back in 2002.

I thought of a wooden duck that had propellers for wings like you see on those whirly-gigs. If the Montagues and Capulets were in full blown fighting mode, why not have an air force of gnomes riding on the backs of these devices? If the wind was low, they could attempt to keep themselves afloat by blowing on the propellers!

Gnomeo & Juliet

Come back again tomorrow for a final look at my 2002 Gnomeo & Juliet development art submissions!

Animals Art: Photoshop Character Designs Development Art Disney Illustrations

Gnomeo & Juliet 3

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date January 19, 2011

For those of you just joining the blog this week, I have been showing you some art each day that I submitted to Disney back in 2002 in an attempt to get on Gnomeo & Juliet as a development artist. I had been working for the Feature Animation division for five years at that point as an in-house instructor of creative computer programs. My background had been as a children’s book illustrator prior to working for them, so I was itchy to get involved once again in creating art.

Today I share with you TWO gag pieces that were more verbal in nature than the others. The first was a quickie just to get out a little Fantasia joke…

Sometimes lawns have ceramic mushrooms decorating them as well. Fantasia’s Hop-Low character makes a cameo in this “Made In China” joke.

….and the second piece plays on the fact that these gnomes are also breakable with Grandpa referencing some dog attack from his past…

Talk about a trick knee!

Just in case you can’t read it, the girl is saying, “Mommy! Mommy! We can hear the ocean in Grandpa’s knee!” Grandpa adds, “That there is from the Great Canine Calamity of ’39.”

Come back again tomorrow to see another Gnomeo piece!

Art: Photoshop Cartoons Character Designs Development Art Disney

Gnomeo & Juliet 2

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date January 18, 2011

I mentioned yesterday that the upcoming Disney release of Gnomeo & Juliet was ultimately created up in Canada and was NOT the product of Disney Feature Animation down here in Burbank, CA. I was never privy to the big business branches of the studio, nor was I really all that interested in those decisions. I was just the little guy trying to scratch my name in the tree trunk.

I would imagine that part of the reason Gnomeo moved out of house was due in part to the fact that it was being developed right at the time that the studio was laying off half of its workers that was documented so well in the film Dream On Silly Dreamer. That’s about the time I was laid off, too. Not long after, Disney’s corporate management was having its own disagreements with Pixar, and had started to develop a version of Toy Story 3 apart from Pixar in the building where they had been developing Gnomeo. Those were dark days indeed.

In honor of those dark days, here’s a bleak piece I submitted back then. Somehow the thought that the deep feelings a ceramic gnome would have in losing a dear friend (that just so happened to be a ceramic lawn deer) made me laugh. Twisted? Perhaps.

Whether you are on the side of the Montagues or Capulets, you can’t help but shed a tear at the agony of this scene.

Come back again tomorrow to see TWO more Gnomeo inspired gag drawings from my archives!

Animals Art: Inking Art: Photoshop Character Designs Development Art Disney Illustrations

Gnomeo & Juliet 1

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date January 17, 2011

Back in 2002, Disney Animation Studios began to develop a film about lawn ornaments based on William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet called Gnomeo & Juliet. It only had a few people doing some visual development and storyboards as they tried to explore this idea that I heard had been brought to Disney by Elton “Lion King” John.

Gnomeo seemed to be one of those pictures that was a little under the radar with not many in the studio showing interest in working on it yet. I saw it as a possibility for a lot of comedy which was right up my alley! Maybe it would be a way for a young eager Disney employee to get his foot in the door of actual production work. So, with the encouragement of the acting producer in those early days, I started submitting some gag drawings hoping to get on the film.

The idea of lawn ornaments from rival yards in a feud with each other just rang a bell in my head for some reason. I knew yards that had been chock full of ridiculous sculptures and whirly-bobs. So much humor could be derived from the drama of warring “families” combined with the crazy decorative contraptions coming to life.

With Gnomeo & Juliet opening Friday, February 11, I thought I’d share a few of my 2002 gag proposals with you that still make me smile. I’ll post something new each day this week up to Friday. I never did get invited to work on the film, but then again, Disney didn’t actually end up making it in-house either. It was shelved for a few years, then resurrected up in a studio in Canada.

This is the first of many pieces I submitted (created with pencil and Photoshop). It was also the first piece of art I did that was hung on a development board in the hallways of Disney. That alone was unbelievably encouraging.

Remember those lawn ornaments that looked like a girl bending over? Thought it was ripe for comedy with these nervous garden gnomes.

**Come back again tomorrow to see another of my Gnomeo & Juliet submissions!**

Art: Photoshop Character Designs Development Art Disney Illustrations