A Mother's Hope - Animation Backgrounds

These are a selection of Backgrounds that I created for the Mormon Message entitled "A Mother's Hope". Big thanks to Heather Dixon for letting me be a part of it and for her amazing storyboard & directorial skills.

Inked - Warm Up Sketch

Summer Evening - Warm Up Sketch

Fall Landscape - Warm Up Sketch

Huntress Redesign - Warm up sketch

Disney Infinity - MU Students

In video games and to some extent in animated films background characters need to be designed with duplication in mind. There are lots of reasons for this including saving memory, time, and man hours that should be spent on the star characters of the project.

But that doesn't mean they need to be exactly alike. Here are some concepts that I created to show how we could add variety to the Monsters University Students (background characters) for our game while staying within a small number of body types, surface textures, and add-on's.

This first sheet shows the individual pieces that made up our Monsters U Students.

This concept is a great example of the variety of students we were able to create by using the pieces above.

Disney Infinity - Monsters U Playset

In Toy Story 3: The Video Game we built a world filled with toys in what we called the Toy Box mode. Each toy had a purpose or function to it which added to the overall playful experience. When we started the Monsters U playset we wanted to incorporate many of the same ideas.

These two building concepts were attempts at turning the building designs from Pixar (in the film) into functioning toys. Notice where I called out different toy attributes like Molded Plastic, Stickers, and Interactive buttons. We ordered a ton of toys that now litter our offices to get a better understanding of what makes something a toy.

In concert with designing the toys I did some early map layouts of the Monster University campus. This helped us to define the play-space, it's boundaries, and the overall traversal from one side to the other.

Speaking of boundaries... This concept was created to show how the World Architects could enclose the play-space in a way that felt natural to the environment. The other side of the fence receding into the horizon is meant to be the sky-dome of the game which is non-interactive.

  

Disney Infinity - Cars Playset

Building of the Cars playset started early in the process of developing Disney Infinity, mostly because we had just finished up on Cars 2: The Video Game and the Cars franchise was fresh on our minds. It also helped that we had a ton of assets already created for use when blocking out the Infinity game. However, that created a problem, we didn't want to just rehash what we had done before and we had a deep desire with Infinity to create or own unique style to the worlds and its characters.

This was an early stab at showing how we wanted to exaggerate the relationships of Large, Medium, and Small shapes, as well as the use of flowing lines to create pleasing compositions.

 It was a struggle at first to apply some of the higher level rules that we established to the environments. The above shows an initial 3D blockout that I sketched over during the early development.

These two later concepts addressed the aesthetic rules as well as the lighting, population, design, and textural quality. In the end the Cars team really nailed the Infinity Style.

Disney Infinity - Incredibles Playset

How do you design Toy Buildings that fit into the world of Incredibles? That was the challenge that we had in the early days of creating the playset for the game. We worked closely with Pixar to make sure we didn't lose the flavor of the Mid-Century Modern design style that they used throughout the film. Here are some early concepts that I worked on for two of the HQ buildings.

It's rare these days in our Concept Department that one artists takes an image all the way through to completion. Sam Nielson has a great post describing the process as seen here. The above images were no exception. Special thanks to Emily Dunn and Ryan Neider for heavily influencing these designs.

Disney Infinity - The Lone Ranger Playset

This is an early concept for the Lone Ranger Playset, specifically the Silver Mine. I painted this one way before anything had actually been created for the game as a way to set the tone. I based the look on a few shots of reference we had gotten from the Film Makers during production of the movie.

The below was painted over a 3D block out of a section in our game to help with designing the shapes of the bridge and rock formations.

Disney Infinity Collection

Disney Infinity, the project that I have been working on for over three years hit store shelves this past weekend and is getting rave reviews!

Today our studio had a Sparkling Cider/Wine toast in honor of its release as well as a full catered breakfast (working for Disney is awesome). Then we all got a copy of the game and the toys that are available at launch.

I will begin posting concepts that I created for the game, as well as a process to how things were done for the cover of the starter pack which took me nearly six months to complete. All that and more coming soon!

Storm Mountain

Concept by Collage

Concept by collage is a really fun exercise! The idea is to create concept art only using existing images (Photographs, Art, Textures, etc.)

I started the below concept with an idea and a simple sketch. Then I scoured the internet looking for the right images. Much of the pieces may look like they were already together but if you look closer you can see some of the seems. After it is pieced together I used "Curves", "Hue and Saturation", simple "Mulitply" washes, a painted in Rim Light, and a good old fashioned "Lens Flare" in Photoshop to tie it all together.

If this were for a real project I would spend time painting over the entire image to make it my own. Project completion time - 5 hrs

Mariachi-Dachi Fan Art

I had the privilege of working with Kevin Merriman as he interned with us at Disney. He recently published a Graphic Novel entitled "Mariachi-Dachi" and all of the concept artists here contributed some fan art for the book. Thanks to Kevin for letting me be a part of it!

Disney Infinity & Chip Foose

I had the opportunity to Demo our latest project "Disney Infinity" in Orlando Florida this past fathers day weekend to the public for the very first time.

Guess who showed up?

Chip Foose! The designer of all car designers, Reality TV show host (Overhaulin'), Pixar Concept artist on Cars & Cars 2, and all around nice guy. I've been a fan of his work for a long time and so it was awesome to meet him. Here's some picks and an example of his work.

Man of Steel - Leisure Suit

Warm Up Color Study - 35 min.

Panthro!

Wonder Woman

...and now more Wonder Woman from my fellow office mates! Matthew Armstrong - Jason Kim - Sam Nielson

The Friend Magazine - March 2013

This is an Illustration that I did for the cover of the Friend Magazine. I went through tons of revisions creating it, sometimes scrapping hours of work to rework it again. I was given full reign to do whatever I wanted and so I wanted it to be great. For me, that's usually a recipe for disaster. Looking at it again there are plenty of things I wish that I could fix on it, and maybe I will, but I am happy with what got printed.

Cowboy

This + This

I found a great Getty Images pic (the girl) and combined it with the beautiful lighting from "La Luna" by Pixar.

A Girl

Another sketch to fend off the overtime madness!

Tiger + Angel + Mech = Awesome!

Life/Work has been insane for the past couple of months and will be until we ship Disney Infinity. This is a quick concept sketch to help me keep somewhat sane.

Disney Infinity

Disney Infinity - The project that I have been working on for nearly 3 years was finally announced this week in Hollywood, CA! Woot! It's been an amazing experience laced with plenty of ups and downs and I have had the opportunity to work with the worlds top talented people and artisans.

Working as a concept artist I have the privilege of working on every aspect of the project. Here is a small sampling of some of the images and products that I worked on as well as some links to see more:

http://www.youtube.com/user/disneyinfinity?v=96U2gkgK0o4

https://infinity.disney.com/#!/game

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2013/01/15/disney-infinity-revealed-an-ambitious-cross-platform-gaming-toybox/