Thursday, October 10, 2013

Hey, Disney! Shut Up and TAKE MY MONEY!!

     There's no real point to this blog post. It was just one of those instances that I thought was really cool and decided to yammer on about it in my little corner of the internet.

Fun word.
     First off, a little backstory. A few years ago, my wife and I were lucky enough to visit Walt Disney World in Florida. I could go on and on about how awesome it was, but I'll spare you that novel only to say that one of the many things I loved about that place is how the meet-and-greet characters have their own collectively unique style. This is, of course, due to the fact that the characters at the park are in fact, real human beings and the original stylized look of the characters has to be altered to make a practical costume for these beings with human proportions to wear. But that's the pragmatical way of looking at it. If you want to look at it through my magical rose-colored Disney glasses, you would see it as a consistent style applied to a variety of characters so that they may all coexist in our reality. 

Otherwise, this is just Joyce from Hoboken
     On the flight home, I conjured up in my little nerd brain some form of collectors figures depicting the characters as they appear in the parks. As soon as we got home, I started drawing what I decided to call, "Disney Park Pals." I'll admit, I'm pretty lousy when it comes to titles.

It's at least catchier than "Hind-Legged Pluto and Friends"
     I had a ton of fun drawing these guys! I discovered the wonderful website, CharacterCentral.net and was inspired to draw these six characters.  I imagined them as toys and I also wanted to take a stab at package design, so I thought this would be a fun way to do that!


     I posted the finished product back in 2011, but eventually, I started to rethink how they should look, so I worked up a "cleaner" version.


     I loved the idea of there being figures with this realistic style, but I finally decided that I would have more fun drawing the characters in a completely different way… and this, like everything else on this blog, is for the sole purpose of ME having FUN! So I scrapped the idea of them being toys and just focused on drawing the characters in my own style… whatever THAT is. Here's a glimpse of where I am now in this process.


     It's a completely different idea than what I was imagining on that plane ride, all of those years ago, but that's how it goes, I guess. Flash forward to this year! Here's the aforementioned "cool" part of my story! I recently took a trip to my beloved Disney Store. I was busy debating whether or not it would be appropriate to buy a giant stuffed Vanellope von Schweetz, when my eyes wandered over and spotted THIS! 


     I was like Dr. Grant looking at a dinosaur for the first time! They actually did it! Now, instead of just imagining owning these things, I could actually buy them! Which, by the way, is great for Disney since they would much rather have my actual money instead of my imagination money… the little dears. 


Goofy sends his gawrshes with luv.
     I should add that I realize this idea of mine wasn't the most original and I'm sure the very talented people at Disney thought of this all on their own… BUT if there is a slim chance that someone from Disney Parks is getting ideas from this blog, how 'bout sending a couple of Disney World 'thank you' tickets my way? Oh! Also… when will Penguin Suits be hitting the shelves? 

That last part was a joke.

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