I woke up from the hangover after finishing Don Bluth Month to see a new comment on the last entry. It was from Kip Goldman, associate producer for Don Bluth Films -- and he said "We've" been reading my "nice blog about Don" the whole time.
My hands managed to type out a nice "thank you" response, while the rest of me was doing this:
I just... I'm still in fangirl-awe. So happy!
Speaking of things that are crazy and awesome. It's crazy and awesome to think that I was sitting at my desk about a year ago throwing in my hat as an illustrator for the Comicbook Artist Guild's then-untitled "Prose Project". And it's pretty hard to remember the process of creating my contribution to the project, now known as Worlds Beyond. Thankfully, I took some photographs of the various steps in the making of the illustration for the short story, "It All Started With a Mouse", by Joe Sergi:
Here's the layout sketch. It's the outcome of several days worth of finding every retro-Walt Disney World / Disneyland promotional poster I could find just so I could get the style down (the story is set in an affectionate parody of Walt Disney World where some strange stuff is going on). A few of the characters would be eliminated and some of the more elaborate designs in the background would be streamlined, but as you'll see, there is a very direct line from this drawing to the final.
Here's the final line drawing. I now had to imitate the colorful look of Disney posters - using only high-contrast black-and-white ink washes. Quite the challenge, I must say.
And here is what I'll call the "almost-final". The biggest and most obvious differences between this and the printed version are the lack of text on the banner and that the image hasn't been cropped yet. Other than that, it is very, very close to the final.
And here is the final version as it appears in the book. I hope this kind of thing never stops being emotional for me. Worlds Beyond may be purchased at eCrater. Get yourself a couple of copies and spread the love around.
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Cartoon Brew recently dug up this Disney promotional literature from circa 1989. And it is deeply bizarre and fascinating in a way that I have a hard time describing without spoiling things. I'll just say that it's the starkest evidence for the Disney/Warner Bros. rivalry I've ever seen.
