The Chad Frye - Illustration GuyThis is a recently created drawing that will be sold by auction at a benefit on March 29 for the Epilepsy Foundation Washington! It’s always a treat to get to draw these fellas after having spent two television seasons with them a while back on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
If you are in the Seattle area, info about the benefit can be found here: https://epilepsynw.ejoinme.org/%20LTF2019
Last year over on my Instagram page, I posted a photo of a couple of shelves in my kitchen of a variety of novelty coffee mugs, and it got a pretty good response. In taking stock, I realized that there are at least 70 mugs spread all over my home.
This isn’t an intentional collection, mind you. We all get a few mugs here and there, but the collection really started growing back during my college days when I began receiving cartoon mugs as gifts from my parents. I was into cartoon household goods like cookie jars, vases, and kitchen utensils, so my mother kept an eye out for unusual mugs when she went shopping.
When I entered the animation business, mugs became gifts for being on crews and for working at studios. As I would travel, sometimes mugs were purchased at tourist attractions, too. The collection just sort of grew, not once ever thinking that I was a mug collector. Guess what? Unwittingly, I kind of became one!
So, realizing that there are so many mugs all over the place here, and since my Instagram followers thought they were neat, it was decided to post a photo of a different mug each Monday over on Instagram. I call it MUG MONDAY.
Feel free to come follow me on Instagram where I’m known as ChadFrye_IllustrationGuy. (Click on that last sentence to be transported directly to the page!) I also post a lot of art over there, as well as photos related to my industry, so come join the fun!
Two weeks ago I shared with you a few drawings I did for a Wreck-It Ralph children’s book published six years ago when the first movie came out. Care to see a few more?
After I posted the previous drawings, an artist friend asked me if I hand-inked these or if I used a vector program like Adobe Illustrator. The answer is that they were hand-inked, but not with ink. I drew them by hand in Photoshop. So, no vector tools were used. They were drawn on a Wacom Cintiq monitor that allows me to draw with a stylus directly onto the screen. The monitor is pressure-sensitive, so if I push harder, the lines get thicker just as if I was inking traditionally with a paint brush (which is my preferred method of inking traditionally).
So, take that information as you will. Otherwise, just enjoy the drawings!
It’s hard to believe, but the first Wreck-It Ralph movie came out six years ago, and now today the sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet comes out. I had a chance to see it two weeks ago at the Walt Disney Studio, and I have to say that it was really a terrific sequel.
So, in honor of the sequel coming out this week, I thought it was high time that I shared some Wreck-It Ralph art that I drew way back before the first movie ever came out. Disney Publishing had another illustrator working on a Ralph book that followed in the footsteps of the old Where’s Waldo? books. Each spread was VERY busy so that kids would have to look for little things in the artwork. Having done such books like that myself at the beginning of my career, I did not envy the amount of work that illustrator had to put into the drawings.
One thing that ended up being tough for the illustrator was nailing the exact likeness of some of the characters. I’ve been there. Twenty four years ago I had been doing Disney books, and having trouble with likenesses, mostly due to a lack of reference material sent to me by the publishers. Seeking such images on the internet wasn’t yet a thing, so Disney would send me corrected drawings by some anonymous artist who had access to perfect reference.
Well, whatever the reason, this other artist was needing some adjustments on the characters, so Disney Publishing hired me to do drawing corrections like I used to receive. I became the anonymous artist.
So, the following are some of the drawings I did for that Seek and Find book:
Well, the mouse turns a ripe old 90 today. All those years of doing his own stunts, pratfalls, and ghost hunting have taken their toll on the germaphobe (he ALWAYS wears gloves, but refuses to wear shirts – weird). All of that actually made him retire about 25 years ago. Most people don’t realize that ever since, there have been a series of stand-ins for Mickey, while he just stays in his trailer signing 8x10s for anyone who will take one while wondering where his yellow dog has gone to. (Dog years were NOT kind to Pluto. The original Pluto died back in 1951.)
By the way, today also happens to be the big 9-0 for his gal pal Minnie, and his nemesis, Pete. Both co-starred with Mickey in that first cartoon to hit theaters.
So, happy birthday you ol’ long-in-the-ear one! Hope you enjoy gumming your cake today as you celebrate your birth in Steamboat Willie. It was an honor to be a small part of your legacy when I worked on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse for a few years.
A little birdie told me that tomorrow will be the 90th birthday of a certain little mouse. Aw, who am I kidding – the Walt Disney Company has been screaming loud and far that Mickey Mouse is old. What they aren’t saying is that Minnie Mouse is just as old, since she also appeared in Steamboat Willie, but maybe that’s because it is impolite to point out a lady’s age.
I just so happened to have drawn this picture of the two almost-ninety-year-olds just this week. For their age, clearly they’ve had some work done. The drawing, however, is for a little girl who is sick in the hospital who said her favorite cartoon characters are Mickey and Minnie. Since I only mailed it out two days ago, she hasn’t received it yet, but just in case she reads my blog, I’ve redacted her name so she can still be surprised.
Come back tomorrow. I may just show what a real 90 year old mouse might look like.
Two of the summer’s hottest films are Pixar’s The Incredibles 2 and Universal’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Both serve up thrills, chills, laughs and excitement. They also both serve up amazing soundtracks written by the same composer – Michael Giacchino!
Incredibles 2 has a boffo score that jumps and jives with the best energetically melodic groovy jazz, while Jurassic World 2 soars with classic intrigue and adventure in the vein of the musical path first blazed by the legendary John Williams, while taking us to new places of big teeth and terror.
So, what if for their next sequels, both movies were combined? What would THAT soundtrack sound like?!
