Last year I was hired by one of my regular clients, DecoPac Inc., to help with a Minnie Mouse toy concept for Disney. It takes a long time for a toy to do from original concept to final product so I'm just now able to reveal it. The client showed me some misc. graphics provided by Disney including some "Dress Shop"...
One of my regular clients is a toy company called DecoPac. Among other things they design many of the fancy birthday cakes you see in grocery store bakeries. They also create various toys and novelties to put on top of the cakes, often tying in with licensed characters and brands. Last year they commissioned me to develop some concepts...
Dan Haskett is an animation veteran and one of the top character designers in the business. He’s contributed to classic feature films including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, The Prince of Egypt, Mulan, and Toy Story. Dan helped translate Matt Groening’s early sketches for The Simpsons into the look we know today and was rewarded with an Emmy for his work. He’s also worked on numerous commercials and created animated bits for Sesame Street.
I first met Dan Haskett at the Motion '08 animation conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he gave a fascinating presentation on designing ethnic characters (read my blog post about it here). After his presentation he was kind enough to review my portfolio. The following year I was invited back to the Motion conference as a speaker where I again had the chance to visit with Dan. He’s a brilliant and versatile artist, a likable guy with strong opinions that he shares in a soft-spoken and thoughtful manner.
In January 2010 Dan was kind enough to give me a phone interview from his desk at Warner Brothers where he is currently designing characters for two Scooby Doo projects. He shared some observations on the industry, offered some advice, and gave his thoughts on The Princess and the Frog from his perspective as an African American in the animation industry.
(Full interview after the break.)
(The above artwork is copyright © Dan Haskett. All rights reserved.)
I'm leaving today to spend the weekend in Lincoln, Nebraska where I'll be attending the annual meeting of the North Central chapter of the National Cartoonists Society. We'll be judging submissions for the "comic strips" category of the NCS Reuben Awards. There will also be some presentations by other artists, some good food, and lots of goofing off. Before I leave...
Here's another concept I worked up for DecoPac, a local company that manufactures licensed toys for specialty birthday cakes. They told me they were working on a cake design for Disney's "The Princess and the Frog" and asked me to work up a couple of rough concept sketches to help them sell it to the folks at Disney. They wanted one...
One of my regular clients is a toy company called DecoPac. Among other things they create many of the fancy birthday cakes you see in the grocery store bakeries. They often develop fun themes using licensed characters to tie in with movie and TV franchises. On occasion they will hire me to develop toy concepts for some of the cakes....
