A few months ago novelty cake maker DecoPac, Inc. hired me to help them develop a jumbo "signature" cake to promote the Cars franchise for Disney/Pixar. Because this would be a large, triple-layer cake there was more freedom than usual to do something really fun and appealing. I started by working up several very rough thumbnail concepts of possible ideas: [caption id="attachment_4833"...
I've got a pretty large collection of art books in my studio library. Too many in fact. They're nice to have and inspiring to look at but the reality is there's a large chunk of them that I never, ever pull off the shelf and thumb through. So I've decided its time to start selling a few. I'm starting with some...
This past weekend I was in Omaha for a two-day cartooning event sponsored by the North Central Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society (of which I am a member). The schedule was jam-packed and the public was treated to a fountain of cartoon goodies including a special headline event that kicked off the weekend: a presentation by Pixar story artist...
Thursday I'll be driving to Omaha for the annual meeting of the North Central Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society. It's going to be a fun weekend with several NCS events planned that will be open to the public. The headliner will be Pixar story artist Josh Cooley. Josh will be giving a keynote presentation on Friday night called "Coloring Outside...
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.)
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....
