Concept Art: How To Break In and Stay In

I had to paint a lot of real-world, turn of the century props for Tinker Bell And The Great Fairy Rescue and these are some of my favorites.

Below are the designs for the biggest glue bottle in the world. That is because this glue bottle was made real and huge and was installed at Tink’s house in Disneyland along with a couple of other things I worked on.  I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ll be sure to post pics here when I do.  Thanks for rocking my world, Imagineers!

[Read more…] about Tinker Bell & The Great Fairy Rescue: ‘Real World’ Props Visual Development

 

In our most recent installment of the Disney Fairies series, the Fairies of Pixie Hollow travel to the mainland (rural England) and set up a Fairy Camp.

The seasonal ritual comes with the logistical challenge of transporting large stores of Pixie Dust (which fuels fairy flight) as well as Tinker Bell’s mount, a mouse named Cheese. Although I enjoyed working on a lot of period, man-made objects, I love the magical stuff the most and these props definitely have the magic.

[Read more…] about Tinker Bell & The Great Fairy Rescue: ‘Fairy Transportation’ Prop Visual Development

To a human, it is a revolutionary convenience, but to a fairy it is a hostile environment.

Here are some of the set designs that I painted for the antique car that is featured prominently in the girl-power finale of Tinker Bell and The Great Fairy Rescue which is now available on DVD & Blu Ray.

It was a very compelling assignment. I worked with expert draftsman/ model builder/ sailor Ron Roesch to create an amalgam of several turn of the century vehicles. (Art Direction by Fred Warter)

Throughout this assignment I learned a lot about cars and the general history of the automobile. Ron knows how things work and thus this car is so precisely designed it would almost run if anyone went to the trouble of actually building it.

While Ron and I worked together, he even explained to me how one concocts moonshine. Moonshine is, in fact, NOT featured prominently in the finale of Tinker Bell and The Great Fairy Rescue.

It took weeks to design. My brains melted as we worked out all of the moving parts. I reconciled the design from every angle: top, left, right, front & bottom views (plus the firewall & steering mechanism which are shown above).

(Remember my disoriented tweets about my walk through the empty halls of the studio and my involuntary burst into song? “You can fly, you can fly…” Yeah. …that was then.)

I also did the Vis Dev painting for the undercarriage of the car, which is a set that is featured near the beginning of the film (not shown here).

I will continue to post my work from the movie in the coming weeks.

Needless to say, I’m very proud of the work we did on this film. I think the movie is our strongest one yet. …and I happen to know that the best is still yet to come.

Exciting times at DTS, my friends…