The Chad Frye - Illustration GuyEvery group has them – that eager beaver newbie who is so anxious for a taste of belonging that they just cannot contain their excitement no matter how austere the cause. Sadly, monsters are not exempt from having a rookie.
Prior to this year’s Monster Month, I shared with you some of the art I created as a character designer for the new Zhu Zhu Pets movie, The Quest for Zhu, that came out on DVD last week. The drawings showed lots of cute little hamsters with their big eyes and button noses. What I didn’t tell you was that the movie also contains a few monsters, the most villainous of them all being the evil Mazhula!
Mazhula has a head inspired by a cobra, body of an alligator, and the personality of a jar of mayonnaise that has turned. My colleague Stephen Silver conceived her basic look, and I began to define her behavior and personality with the following drawings….
While the above were character study sketches, towards the end of production I did one more detailed drawing of the evil Mazhula that can be seen during the end credits of the Zhu Zhu Pets movie. Mazhula has this ability to shoot electric fireballs from the palms of her hands, but when she does so, she depletes her own power. To recharge, she plugs her tail into a spittoon-looking device that is an electrical outlet for reptiles of her caliber. The following drawing is based on a moment in the movie that was storyboarded by my friend Mike Kunkel (known for his comic book a few years ago called Herobear and the Kid).
He can’t help it that he was born this way. He’s really an alien with a heart of gold, but no one will really give him much of a chance. All this guy really wants is to make it big on the music scene. You should hear him sing an old fashioned love song, coming down in three-part harmony!
Back in 2004 I was contemplating getting into using the watercolor medium. For many years I created illustrations with colored pencil and gouache, an opaque water based paint. Watercolor paint started catching my eye to the point of inspiring me to give it a try. But what would be a worthy image on which to test this new medium? The first piece to drip out of my brush involved an alligator and a bunny rabbit, but then….. MONSTERS!
In the classic Frankenstein movie with Boris Karloff, there is a moment when this big lumbering beast comes across a little girl. As an audience, you know what this behemoth is capable of, and the little girl who is none the wiser just sees a potential playmate. What if some monsters got snagged into playtime with a fearless little girl who just would not let them go? Instead, she is the monster, and they are the victims. With that backstory in mind, I created this piece which turned out to be the launch of my interest in fun monster art:
Some of you may have seen the above painting on my website, but what you have NOT seen before are some of the preliminary sketches from my sketchbook that were drawn in the quest for just the right combination of monsters to be tormented by this situation. An illustration doesn’t just fall into place with the first critters that come to mind. Below are a few beasties that didn’t make the cut:
The six fellas above were just a few of the dozen and a half heads that came out of my pencil. Three faces were needed, and three faces were found, but not all in a row. Scattered amongst the many pages of exploratory monster drawings were the three you see below – the three that made it into the final painting:
This is my third annual offering of a piece of monster art every week day throughout the month of October. Some creatures will manifest themselves as watercolor paintings, some as inked drawings, digital art, pencil drawings, and even sketches direct from the pages of my sketchbook.
Word must have gotten out, because this past year I actually had a few commissioned monster assignments come across my desk, so I’ll be sharing some of those monsters with a purpose as well.
As has become tradition the past couple of years, the first monster drawing of the month was inspired by my mirror. In year one I was Frankenstein’s monster, and year two I was the Wolfman. So, with zombies being the most media savvy beasts these days, Monster Month will be kicked off with the Chad Frye Zombie! When creating my art, I’m usually most conscientious about the composition, but this time, I had to keep in mind the decomposition. (Can I have a rimshot, Smitty?)
Well, there you have it. And to think I did have braces when I was a teenager. Zombie life can be so unforgiving, especially on my skin. Sooo hard to keep those pores open.
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.
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).
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!)
