Assignment

After last post, I received a couple of emails kindly asking me to describe the minor amount of work I did that involved Disney's Bambi.

The assignment was to envision an entrance way for a grand room, depicting the world of Bambi, and to base the architecture on a specific doorway in Prague, which is a city filled with beautiful doorways. I envisioned the lunette as a delicately painted scene of doe and fawn, the surrounding arch a low bas relief of Bambi's friends, and the surrounding area as a diffuse painting of a forest. The heavy door would be carved, and the handle a bronze bird.

Turning in the assignment, I was thanked kindly, paid handsomely, and never heard another word about it. I did a fair bit of more work for them, but asking about the work once it was turned in was frowned upon.

This is the sketch I kept, having delivered a fully rendered drawing.

Different Effect

Say what you will about the Disneyfication of classic children's stories, Disney's production concept artists were tops in their abilities to evoke mood and atmosphere, as well as giving credibility to fantasy.

Some years ago I did a minor amount of design and artwork for the Disney people involving Bambi, and received an invitation to a reception, and that invitation had this watercolor image on the front:

Later, I clipped the image below from a daily newspaper. You can see that it's the same image, with less cropping, and yet has not only a different color palette, but a subtler rendering to it. Examples of how the same basic artwork can be used to different effect.