Disney Style Animals on Photos

I was responsible for character designs & layout + illustration rendering.

Collaborative project directed by Jacob Reed, portraits by Clay Larsen.

Behind the Scenes

The vision for these illustrated photos was to have the director interacting with cartoon forest animals that had a classic Disney style, like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). The animals would appear as the "director's film crew". Some animals were predetermined with their roles and some items were photoshopped into the scene as rough placement ideas, but the rest was open to interpretation. The overarching goal? Have some fun!

First I brainstormed multiple animals for the wide shot so I could determine believable placements of the characters per image. I decided to illustrate the close shot first, followed by the wide shot and finally mid shot. This rough composition for the wide shot was selected to move forward.

After discussing the characters, I pulled ideas from images like these for inspiration as I designed the film crew. I referenced animals from movies like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950), and Bambii (1942), but also others like Robin Hood (1973) and Brother Bear (2003).

The designs for the raccoon, chipmunk, and squirrel characters needed to match their intended roles and personalities. We went through the most revision stages for the raccoon actor character, going from curious little generic raccoon to cocky train robber to engaged and open-to-critique actor, to achieve the final look. We decided the production assistant chipmunk should look excited because he doesn’t always get to be near the director. And the assistant director squirrel: unimpressed but focused, just keeping everything on schedule.

The bear and the moose characters were a fun challenge because they needed to not only frame the composition well, but also believably hold the placed objects. My approach was to imagine all the animals have anthropomorphic dexterity, but some of them would opt to hold items according to their unique physical attributes (ex: moose holding item with mouth instead of hoof "hand"). Reviewing the animal animations in films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) helped me imagine how each animal would act following this logic. I also made sure the animals were all relative in proportion to each other. I considered the sizes of these animals in real life, but also took artistic liberties similar to those taken in the animated films.

The Little Details

The following includes character details from the wide shot.