Disney Toys

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A few months ago I was hired by Peter Green Design to develop some toy ideas to pitch to Disney. I was given a list of possible toys based on three Disney properties (Little Einsteins, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and My Friends Tigger & Pooh) and asked to do a rough concept sketch for each. A few were chosen to be considered as official Disney toys, and I was asked to do cleaned-up color versions of those roughs.

From there they went on to Disney. I’m told there’s a chance a few of them may actually make it into the production pipeline. With any luck, we may see something in stores by Christmas.

Either way, it was great fun to finally work with some Disney properties. Designing toys, I found out, is almost as fun as playing with them.

Long Overdue Art Update

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I’ve been super-duper-crazy busy lately with freelance work. I’ve had several large projects on my plate for a while now, and the deadlines are all converging within the next two weeks. With freelancing everything seems to happen at once. Illustrator Tom Richmond put it well on his blog:

“Part of the problem with freelancing is that you never know when the next phone call will be your last for a while. As a result, you tend to take on more work than is good for you, for fear of a possible dry spell just around the corner.”

I’m getting better at dealing with it though. In the last couple of weeks I’ve actually turned down a couple of projects, something I very rarely do.

Here’s a few of the many balls I have in the air…

First, some spot illustrations for a children’s book I am doing for Living Waters Publications:



Some character design concepts for a bumbling pig character:

Turn-around drawings for a rubber pig promotional toy:

Some character design concepts of a smart cow for a dairy company:

And finally, some character designs for the re-design of a hardware store mascot:

In addition, I’ve got three other projects in the works. Two are still in the very early stages and the third has a Non-Disclosure Agreement attached, so I can’t show you anything….yet.